The Imperial Telegraph Administration (ITA) or Imperial Chinese Telegraph Administration (ICTA) was a Qing-era government-controlled corporation (spec. guandu shangban) supervised by Sheng Xuanhuai. The ITA was established in AD 1881 and swiftly given a monopoly on Chinese telegraphy. By 1900 the ITA administered 14,000 miles of telegraph wires and supervised another 20,000 miles under local control. The same year, it absorbed the infant Chinese telephone network started in Nanjing.