Chinese Internet users in growth surge, could top US user numbers in 2 years

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 20:52

Your IT - Home IT

The economic boom going on in China is being shared in the Internet space, with a 23% increase in the number of Chinese Internet users to 137 million last year.

During an interview with China Daily, Wang Enhai of the ‘CNNIC’ or Chinese Internet Network Information Center said that: “We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the United States. We are expecting even faster growth in 2007 and 2008 given that internet penetration now has exceeded 10.5 percent in the country. An increasing number of people are now getting hooked to the Web as PCs and Internet access are becoming affordable and internet-based offerings diversified.”

Instead of surveying every Internet user in China, CNNIC conducted phone interviewers 32,325 times with any Chinese citizen over the age of six who used the Internet for at least an hour per week, with the CNNIC extrapolating its figures from those responses.

Naturally, Chinese Internet users use the same kinds of services that English speaking Net users enjoy daily – search engines to find information, the eternally popular but increasingly under phishing attack email service, online buying and selling, news, blogs and games.

Interestingly, broadband users were a majority of the 137m user figure, at 90.7m users – a 41.1% increase year-on-year, showing excellent growth in broadband access for Chinese users. Mobile devices with Internet access are being used to access the Internet, as smartphones allow, and 17 million people with a mobile chose to access the Internet that way.

As is to be expected, the Chinese Government is not standing still and basking in the growing numbers, but instead wants to boost ‘wireless broadband’ through 3G mobile technology, in addition to other forms of broadband. China has often wanted to create its own standards to both avoid paying royalties and because it now has the technical know-how.

Still, the number of Internet users no matter how they connect are dwarfed by mobile phone owners, which number nearly half a billion with a userbase of 461m.

It’s also crucial for the Chinese people to be much more “online aware” and savvy, not only to protect themselves again private data theft and malware/crimeware/spyware, but also to be able to enjoy the Beijing Summer Olympics with knowledge on how access all the information you need – online!