China's netizens to become world's largest this year

Thursday, 17 January 2008, 20:30 IST
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Beijing: The number of netizens or people using Internet in China is set to become the world's largest in 2008, surpassing the US. China had 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007, only five million less than the US, according to a survey released Thursday on the web site of the China Internet Network Information Centre (CINIC). China's Internet penetration ratio has risen to 16 percent, although it is still below the world average of 19.1 percent. Last year, 73 million people were added to the country's total netizen population, of which 40 percent or 29.17 million live in rural areas. This brought the number of rural Internet users to 52.62 million at the end of 2007, up by 127.7 percent year-on-year. The impressive growth was largely due to government efforts to extend telephony to villages and Internet services to townships. According to the CINIC survey, 181 million netizens or 86.6 percent of the total number used the Internet for musical entertainment, while nearly 170 million or 81.4 percent used it for real-time telecommunications. Among other major uses, 73.6 percent browsed for news, 72.4 percent used search engines, and 59.3 percent played games. E-mail services were utilized by 56.5 percent of the Internet users. The CINIC web site said that last year, the number of users under age 18 and above 30 increased rapidly, but it did not give any details. At the end of 2007, users aged 18-24 accounted for 31.8 percent, while those aged 25-30 made up 18.1 percent. Of the total, 57.2 percent were male and approximately one-third of the total surfed the Internet at net cafes, the survey said.
Source: IANS
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