China surpassed 200 million internet users
The number of Internet users in China soared past 200 million in 2007, a new report from the country’s quasi-government Internet overseer said Thursday. China’s Internet population stood at 210 million at the end of last year, up 53 percent from the same time in 2006 when there were 137 million, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in its semi-annual report on Internet use here. That figure puts China just 5 million users away from becoming the world’s largest wired nation — and with only about 16 percent of the population online. At its current growth rate, China will become the world’s top Internet market sometime in the next few months.
The greatest growth came from users under 18 and over 30, CNNIC said. One of the most surprising statistics from the new report indicates that about 40 percent of users added over the last year, over 29 million, came from rural areas. Even in the January 2007 report, the vast majority of Chinese Netizens were based in major urban areas such as Beijing and Shanghai. Also surprising among the new results is that China’s most popular Internet application is online music, used by 86.6 percent of those surveyed, followed by instant messaging with 81 percent. E-mail placed only fifth, with 56.5 percent using it. No matter how impressive these numbers look, the country is with only 16% of population using the Internet still far behind the western countries.
Source: PC World
Comments(24)
wow that’s a lot
more chinese gold farmers…
That’s alot of gold farmers for WoW.
more bloggers in Iran than anywhere else in the world ~fact
main reason: porn
Meh, there is such a huge online gaming market over there all the kiddies are crying to their parents to get the internet so they can play their cutsey characters and grind some monsters.
lawl.
Key point ‘a new report from the country’s quasi-government Internet overseer’ so take it with a pinch of salt…
@5: right. we’ll find more chinese porn in the next few years..
Just because porn is all you could’ve thought of, it proves how low your IQ is.
After all, the Chines will hump you sooner or later..
HA HA HA! Only 200 million when they have over a billion people. That’s not even 20% of their population.
That only shows how technology and used to be nerdy things have become very mainstream. Its like northern europe ten years ago in china now.
@11 Yep ur right- about 10 years ago I was coding on a lpMUD from Finland (stickmud.jyu.fi:7680) and it was alllll the rage up thereaways. Around that time it was all about LYNX and RIPTERM….playing DWANGO… Yeyahhhh boieeeee…guess were lucky to be part of this generation that experienced the wonder years of the internet…
Wow. 16% of China = 210 Million people. The Red Dragon will rule the web when 50% of it’s people start to use the network.
this is when we pull the plug on them and watch them go back to the 7th century…
INCOMING !!!
Lets invest into CHINA!
Anyone who doesn´t see the upcoming market in China must be an idiot. Translate your online business to Mandarin and you can be rich!
heh, who needs food and water when you can have internet…
they are freaking alot.
just imagine all Chinese people start to fart together.
@ 19
Agreed.
“Wow. 16% of China = 210 Million people. The Red Dragon will rule the web when 50% of it’s people start to use the network.”
As long as there is a Communist government, which controls access to the internet and sites, such as pr0n sites…as suggested for the reason for growth above, China will always be an internet backwater.
All they do is reverse engineer, anyway. They don’t produce creativity.
china has as much communism as europe or the usa have a free market. goverments in the “free” western countrys are also starting to masively controle the internet. i even think the chinese government is more open to new ideas and inovation then the mfing bush-administration.
you better start learning mandarin.
the reason for so many users in china is because they are all online trying to sell bootleg clothing, handbags and other bootleg products to other countries…
I aint gonna lie I got some of them chinese connects to keep me looking fly in bootleg fashion..
Ha, funny they said most was online for online music . Duh, my country is next to it and most of the time, ppl go to internet cafe just to listen to music . They won’t charge you if you don’t go online ^^, but will if they see you go chat or open web lolz .
Not really surprising ^^, this is Asia, not Europe or America where Internet at Home is cheaper than the freaking internet cafe . Charging $10 an hour at gaming cafe ??? Yeah, go find some idiot to play, but that is US anyway, they charge that price at where I live .
But my country, they charge like $0.03 cent per hour ~_~ .. go figure when the montly rate for Home use is $40-$100 not include the ridiculous high electric price where US electric price is DIRT cheap. Totally opposite I guess ~_~ .