Using the Internet in China is a different ball game to using it in countries such as the U.S. and the UK. Thanks to the Great Firewall of China and the Chinese government’s vice-like grip on the sites it lets its citizens access, there are many sites we use daily that just aren’t available in China. But these issues haven’t stopped Internet use in the country rising massively in recent years.

2008 saw China overtake America as the country with the highest number of Internet users. And new figures show reported by BBC News show that the trend isn’t slowing. There are now approximately 298 million Chinese people on the Web. This is an increase of over 40 percent on the previous year.

This now means that China has around the same number of people with access to the Internet as there are residents of America. But then China does have a population of 1.3 billion, meaning a penetration figure of around 22.6 percent, only slightly above the average global figure of 21.9 percent.

There are some interesting stats when the number-crunching begins. 90 percent of the almost 300 million Chinese Web users access the Internet using Broadband. User numbers in the countryside are growing faster than in the cities (60.8 percent versus 35.6 percent). And 117.6 million people in China accessed the Web using their mobile phones, an increase of 133 percent since 2007.

China has over 600 million mobile phone users and many use them as their link to the outside world. Students particularly use their cellphones on a regular basis to read news, check their emails, and download music. And all this without 3G phones even having made it into the country. Licenses have now been granted and 2011 will see three networks providing coverage over the whole of China.

China is already a massively important country due to its size and population, and as newer technology gradually pours into the country, its importance is likely to grow in other areas. But is the fact that China has such a huge online community a worry when they are all fed what the government wants them to see?

Related:

Entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 2:26 am under Internet, Opinion.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
Stumble It!