Ma Junsheng, director of China's State Post Bureau (SPB), said on Thursday that the nation would establish more than 6,000 post offices in its vast rural areas over the next three years.

Ma said there were about 40,000 post offices in rural China, but farmers in some out of the way towns and villages still had no access to mail service, during an online interview on www.gov.cn Thursday afternoon.

Ma said that the country had around 60,000 post offices which employed 780,000 people, 40 percent of whom working in rural areas.

China's postal revenue increased to 140.7 billion yuan (US$20.6 billion) in 2008, up 15.9 percent from a year earlier. However, the postal revenue from rural areas only accounted for about 18 percent of the total last year, Ma added.

With the changes of clients needs, he said, post offices nationwide should make innovations and adapt to new services.

The SPB is the regulator of China's postal industry and the country's biggest postal service carrier, China Post, is under the direct administration of the bureau.

(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2009)