BEIJING - China had 59.1 million
Internet users by the end of last year, the second
largest number in the world after the United States,
according to an industry report. The number of netizens
accounted for 4.6 percent of China's population of some
1.3 billion, said the China Internet Network Information
Center (CINIC) in its latest report on the country's
development of the Internet industry.
The report
predicted the number of net surfers in China would jump
46 percent to 86.3 million this year. This is the 11th
report released by CINIC, which has surveyed the growth
of the Internet twice each year since 1997. The United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimated
there were 655 million Internet users worldwide by the
end of last year. Based on that figure, China's net
surfers account for nine per cent of the global total.
At the end of last year, according to the CINIC
report, China had 20.83 million computers connected to
the Internet, and 371,000 websites including 179,000
websites under the domain name of "CN", which
represented increases of 66.1 percent, 34.1 percent and
41 percent respectively over 2001. The latest CINIC
survey showed that Chinese Internet users on average
spend 9.8 hours each week on-line. Each user has an
average of 1.5 e-mail addresses including 1.2 free ones.
The report includes statistics about IP
addresses and Internet growth in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
According to the report, there are 29 million IP
addresses on the Chinese mainland, 3.42 million in Hong
Kong, and 7.85 million in Taiwan. Hong Kong has 2.75
million Internet surfers and 1.26 million computers
connected to the Internet while Taiwan has 8.61 million
Internet users, making up 38.25 per cent of the total
population on the island province.
