China has grown to become one of the world’s largest Internet populations. Depending who you ask they are now bigger than the United States, while others say they are tied. Either way you look at it, China’s growth online has been fast.
Digital Journal — According to Xinhua News Agency, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information reports its Web userbase is up to 221 million users, making it the largest population of Web users in the world.
At the beginning of 2007, China only had 137 million people online, so the country’s Web population has grown by 61 per cent in just over a year. At the end of 2007, China’s population of Internet users was hovering around 210 million and according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), that is only five million fewer users than the United States’ population of Internet users at the time.
Now that it’s up to 221 million, Xinhua reports China has the largest population of Web users in the world, a stat echoed by AFP, but the Associated Press reports China now only ties the U.S. for the most Web users. Citing Nielsen/NetRatings, the AP says both China and the U.S. had 221 million Internet users in March and the Canadian Press agrees.
The exploding growth in China is taking place despite government efforts to crack down on non-government approved sites. The Chinese government promotes Web usage for education and business but officials also use an elaborate censorship system that employs tens of thousands of human monitors along with filters to survey and monitor browsing habits.
In the face of exploding growth, China’s proportion of Netizens to total population is still lower than the global average. China’s Ministry of Industry did not provide statistics to back up this claim, but at the end of 2007 the proportion was 16 per cent compared with 19.1 per cent worldwide according to the CNNIC.
China is also the world’s biggest cellphone-using population, as a reported 540 million people used mobiles in the country at the end of November 2007.
