The Chinese government may be keeping a close eye on which websites, blogs and search engines their people can visit, but that’s not stopping internet usage from growing fast throughout the country. The government-related information center CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) claims the nation’s online population has grown 41.9% in 2008 to an astounding 298 million users, reports the BBC.
That’s about the size of the entire U.S. population, while eMarketer pegs the online population in the States to be about 200 million.
This further cements China’s position as the world’s largest online population, although internet penetration is still fairly low (22,6%) even if it exceeds the world’s average by almost one percent.
According to the study, usage in the countryside is growing much faster than in urban areas (60.8% year-on-year compared to 35.6% in cities), the numbers of bloggers has increased to +162 million, and accessing the internet through mobile phones is still immensely popular. CNNIC reports that 117.6 million people accessed the internet using their mobile phones last year, up 133% from 2007. A further surge is expected after licences for 3G-enabled mobile phones have finally been issued to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom as from last week. The roll-out of the faster 3G network is expected to commence in 2011.
Imagine what it would be like if the government weren’t so keen in controlling what the Chinese are allowed to view or search on the web.
That’s a huge number for Internet users in China. In the following years, I expect it to boom more.
Go China!
Go to Hell, GFW!
Will China top the world in terms of Internet knowledge? Or just topping the population?
ya, thats what happens in a socialist country.. government keeps an eye on what sites, blogs, search engine people use…
China is booming ahead of most of the economies. The only thing they lack is a presentable English language skills. But they are working hard on it and in say 10 years I expect they’ll be the No:1
What does English skills have to do with this? Probably most people reading this post lack presentable Chinese-language skills….
Learning Mandarin is probably not a bad idea.
I’m an expat in Shanghai and yes there are some forbidden sites.
!!
What Hemanth said about their lack of english is true but they work on it by taking the problem where it is: childhood. Sometimes I feel sad for those poor kids, they just wanna brainstorm them with english lessons and just like he said right after, they might be number 1 in several years. Watch out america
Also as Josh Smith said learning mandarin might be a good idea, I will cuz I’ll gimme more job opportunities.
One thing I forgot to mention. Internet usage might boom in china but if you go on a chinese regular website it’s just a mess, you can’t find anything because there are too many useless informations, advertisements, etc… and it’s confusing and just plain crap. They need to hire some real web designers.
I would say that’s part true. Personally, I often find Chinese sites to be hard to use. That’s not very relevant though. If they (the Chinese people) find it hard to use, then it’s a problem and usually they don’t.
Now… the hardest thing is making a site that both Chinese people and foreigners like. It’s not uncommon to have a website loved by Chinese people and hated by Westerners or vice-versa.
I would like to see a no-restrictions-internet in China. Then it would be just a matter of time before it would be #1 in e-commerce.
Have the restrictions been hindering e-commerce? I would say it’s been poor payment systems and lack of trust that have slowed it down. In what way is censorship hindering e-commerce in China?
Re: crowded Chinese web pages – I think that may be an Asian thing. Korea is the same way. I talked to a guy at Flickr who said their usability tests in Korea yielded comments like “your site is too empty”
I would say “your site is too empty” is one of the two most common comments made by Chinese people about Western websites. The other is “it’s not colourful enough”.
China will become the most powerful country in the world before 2010, also their Social Networks greatly trump anything in the US…
http://www.adri...r-that-is-asia/
Sounds like cooked books to me. You really expect me to believe that 162 million Chinese are are bloggers!!! That means every 1 in 9 Chinese is a blogger. That ratio would include infants and the elderly. If you took out kids and the aged, that would be something like 25% of able bodied Chinese were bloggers. These numbers are just laughable.
Another thing, I think all the China boosters in this thread need to take a pill. In case you weren’t aware, China is just about to have the biggest blast crater slammed into it’s economy that the world has ever seen. They are going to have massive negative growth in their economy this year. I think they’ll be more concerned with civil unrest and just trying to keep the whole freaking thing together than pipe dreams of internet domination.
Question?
So are the Chinese ever able to get past the govenment control of the internet and get the real NEWS worldwide?
If so, how?
http://www.VeyronBugatti.com