Tuesday, January 2, 2007

132 millions Chinese netizens online


China has the second lasrgest internet community after USA, at 132 millions the numbers of netizens online far exceeded the numbers of total population for alot of small countries.

Growing together with the numbers of online chinese netizens is the amount of businesses that will gain from having an online presences in China.


China’s internet population increased by almost one-third during 2006, reinforcing the country’s position as one of the most powerful internet economies in the world.

The total number of people using the internet in China has risen to 132 million, according to state news agency Xinhua. The number of people accessing the web on high-speed broadband connections also rose rapidly to 52 million.

Such figures indicate 30% growth in the number of web users in just 12 months in the nation of more than 1.3 billion people.

China has the second-largest population of net users in the world after the US, which has 207 million citizens online. The growth has been driven by the country’s booming economy, as well as the huge number of internet cafes that have made the web popular among ordinary Chinese people.

There are more than a billion internet users around the world, dominated by the US and Europe, which has 308 million users across nearly 50 countries. But while online growth in the west is beginning to tail off, the speed of development in countries such as China and India is increasing.

Despite such positive growth there are still widespread concerns about state censorship of the internet in China. The government operates restrictions on websites that can be accessed from inside the country, and has clamped down on political dissidents using the internet to communicate with each other.

Although human rights campaigners continue to demonstrate over these constraints, powerful internet corporations are latching on to China’s rapid growth. Controversy erupted this year when Google launched a censored version of its web search index for people inside China’s “great firewall”.


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EIN News: China News