It seems like, considering the size of China, an incredibly wise decision. But I know that they were wearing a foreign technology as well.
According to Eric Hartwit in his China's Telecom Revolution, the Chinese did in 1881 with the Imperial Telegraph Administration which oversaw 34,000 miles in some way by the 1900s. Just for comparisons sake, the US had around 50k miles of wires in 1860.