The number of Internet users in China made its highest recorded jump to reach 137 million at the end of 2006.

This according to CNNIC the China Internet Network Information Center. That is up 23.4% from a year ago. Most of them, again according to CNNIC, surfed the Internet via broadband, which accounted for 75.9 percent of the total. But broadband can be a very flexible definition. To see for yourself how fast it can be go to Shanghai Daily where one account of this story appeared.  I play Patience while I wait for the page to load. You may be luckier.

Not only, according to the report, are most of the users on broadband, depending on definition of broadband, most of them are men as well. The proportion is 58.3% which sounds reasonable when you consider that the whole population is skewed in that way because of the one baby per family policy which resulted in a large percentage of boy children.

Most of the people using the Internet in China are, according to the report, in the city which is pretty likely. You are talking big numbers. If you take Shanghai in its fullest sense that is the population of Australia. Again, according to the report, China had 4.11 million domain names. During the same period, China owned about 840,000 Websites.

17 million people use their cellphones to go online even though 3G or its equivalent has yet to be announced.

Interesting stuff. Not riveting but interesting. Sadly, it skips one phenomenon. Reading the figures you get the idea of these earnest people at home surfing the Internet for truth and knowledge and, perhaps, beauty. As if it were the American Internet model written in Chinese.

It is not like that at all.

Which is why Yahoo! and eBay and Google have fallen flat on their fat faces in China. China is not a large version of Chicago. Not at all.

First of all Internet cafes play a major role in Internet access. Yes, they are policed, checked, sometimes shut down. But they are, in many cases, where the young people go to access the Internet. Not home. The Internet cafe.

Next these figures ignore the fact that online games are a major part of access to the Internet. How major no one is willing to guess. Not even an analyst. But it is one of the most important part of Internet usage in China. Far more so than in the United States.

Finally, these figures were issued by a state body. Thus there is no mention of censorship. There is no mention of Internet cafes. There is no mention of online game playing.

So, yes, they are interesting. And tell a sort of truth. But not the whole truth. Far from it.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 am under Internet.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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