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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

China Claims World's Largest Internet User Base

Mark Long, newsfactor.com Mon Jul 28, 3:24 PM ET

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, more than 253 million people in China are now online. By contrast, Nielsen Online reports more than 220 million Americans have Internet access at home and/or work, and 73 percent of those were active in May.

"This is the first time the number has drastically surpassed the United States, becoming the world's number one," the nation's official net monitoring body said in a statement quoted by BBC News. However, western researchers say some caution is advisable when it comes to weighing statistics about Internet use in China.

"Estimates of the size of the Chinese Internet population vary a great deal, depending on the definition of 'Internet user,' among other things," noted the authors of a report issued by Pew Research and the American Life Project earlier this year. The estimates are more "interesting for their trend, rather than for their absolute numbers," Pew Research analysts said.

Inevitable Eclipse

For comparison, comScore reports Internet use in China rose 14 percent in April to 102 million visitors. Moreover, the research firm currently ranks the Chinese-language search engine Baidu as No. 3 in the worldwide search market, behind Google and Yahoo.

Despite the uncertainties involved in making statistical comparisons between Chinese and western data, researchers agree that China's eclipse of U.S. Internet usage is inevitable. Though the U.S. still accounts for 21 percent of Internet users worldwide, growth in the number of users has been slowing, comScore reports. Only 19.1 percent of China's 1.3 billion residents have online access, whereas 71 percent of Americans are connected to the Internet.

Among other things, the overall growth trend for China is a harbinger of the growing online shopping and advertising dollars that will be at stake moving forward. More than 85 percent of the world's online population has used the Internet to make a purchase in the past two years, according to Nielsen Online. Though China-specific figures are not available, the research firm noted that the Asia Pacific region recorded almost 10 percent advertising growth in the first quarter, even as North America's ad spending figures rose a paltry 1 percent.

Controlling the Internet

Concerns over who controls the Internet have not dampened demand for Internet connectivity in China. If anything, the strong control that the Chinese government exerts on Internet activities is viewed benevolently by most Chinese citizens.

Citing a domestic survey last year by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Pew Research notes that most of China's residents approve the concept of Internet control and management, especially when control is managed by the government. "Over 80 percent of respondents say they think the Internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85 percent say they think the government should be responsible for doing it," the researchers said.

More than half of all Internet users in China are under the age of 25, and 20 percent are under the age of 18, which gives many Chinese parents enough reason to look to the government for reassurance about Internet safety. "Many have parents who are less sophisticated and more wary about computers and the Internet than their children are," they said.

"People's acceptance of government control and management of the Internet is born of the realities of modern Chinese governance and a historical sense in which the state is assumed to be broadly responsible for social management and public values," the researchers said.

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