China quickly catching up with U.S. in Internet users

William Atkins
Saturday, 19 January 2008 16:27

Your IT - Home IT

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has stated that China’s total number of Internet users is only five million less than the United States, the world’s largest Internet population.       

Leaders at the CNNIC, according to the China.org website, stated on Thursday, January 17, 2008, that based on a survey it conducted: at the end of 2006 China had 137 million Internet users, at the end of June 2007 it had 162 million, and at the end of 2007 China had a whooping 210 million people connected to the Internet.

According to the CNNIC survey, China’s Internet users use the Internet primarily for musical entertainment, real-time telecommunications, searching the Web, playing games, and sending e-mails.

The survey also reported that 31.8% of its Internet users were 18 to 24 years of age, 18.1% were 25 to 30 years of age, and 12.0% were 31 to 35 years of age.

The survey would, therefore, imply that the other 38.1% of its Internet users were aged 17 years or younger or 36 years and older. Of these Internet users, 57.2 were male and 42.8% were female.

According to The Wall Street Journal, beginning in 2008, the United States had 215 million people surfing the Web. China has only five million less people on the Internet. No doubt, it will surpass the United States—and lead the world—in total Internet users sometime early in 2008, assuming, of course, these figures are correct. 

According to The Washington Post, experts have stated that CINIC probably provides the most reliable source of information about Internet use in China—a country that does not always provide the most reliable information about itself for the world to see. However, experts caution that the sampling method used by CNNIC of the Chinese population was not revealed in the survey so its estimates may not be accurate.

In addition, experts state that the Chinese organization defined Internet user as someone who used the Internet at least once in the month prior to when the survey was taken. In any case, the survey does give the world a sense of the growth of the Chinese Internet market in 2007—a growth of about 53% in 2007, according to The Washington Post.

According to the CNNIC website, the organization was founded as a nonprofit organization on June 3, 1997, in order to provide a state network information center for China. CNNIC is administered on a daily basis by the Ministry of Information Industry and is operated by the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.