Houston Community News >> Internet Use in China Jumps Almost 25 Percent
1/23/2007-
China had 137 million people online by the end of last year, up
by almost a quarter from 2005, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)
said Tuesday.
The number of Internet users rose by 23.4 percent to comprise 10.5 percent of
the country's population, said the CNNIC in a report.
The statistics were based on telephone sample surveys of 32,325 Chinese, and
only those above the age of six and use the Internet for at least one hour a
week on average were counted as Internet users, said the CNNIC.
Online services like e-mail, search engines, e-commerce, blogs, online news and
games saw rapid development, while new technologies had brought new
opportunities for the development of the Internet, Minister of Information
Industry Wang Xudong has said.
Broadband users exceeded 100 million for the first time to reach 104 million, or
75.9 percent of all Internet users.
Another 17 million Chinese went online via mobile phones, accounting for 12.4
percent of the Internet population.
High costs and low speed were the major factors that prevented more Internet
users from going mobile, said the report.
Most of the country's Internet users were male, accounting for 58.3 percent of
the total.
The report shows a yawning disparity between the urban and rural areas, with
Internet use in cities 6.5 times that in the countryside.
A lack of knowledge of computers and the Internet as well as inadequate access
to equipment and networks remained the main difficulties for those who failed to
get online, according to the report.
(Contributed by People's Daily Online)