China's web population surpasses half a billion

2011-09-30 04:01:08 GMT+7 (ICT)

BEIJING (BNO NEWS) -- The number of Chinese citizens who have access to the internet has surpassed half a billion, a government official confirmed on Thursday. It represents an increase of more than 15 million in just two months.

In July, the China Internet Network Information Center said the number of Chinese internet users had reached 485 million. On Thursday, Wang Chen of China's State Council told a meeting in Beijing that the number has now surpassed 500 million.

"China's internet industry has been expanding in scale and has become an important emerging strategic industry," Wang said, as quoted by the state-run Xinhua news agency, adding that rural internet users total 130 million.

Wang said more than half of Chinese internet users communicate and share information via social networking websites such as Weibo, which is China's own version of Twitter. Twitter itself is banned in China, which has a total population of 1.3 billion.

The Chinese official added that electronic commerce has created nearly two million direct jobs and more than 13 million indirect jobs. He noted that electronic government services have also increased government openness to citizens and improved government efficiency.

Nearly all Chinese cities and districts, as well as other levels of the government, have official websites. While Chinese citizens in the past had to rely on state-run media as the sole source of news, these government websites have created an additional source of official information.

Nonetheless, the infamous 'Great Firewall of China' still severely restricts access to web users. Restrictions are imposed on foreign news websites, pornography, political commentary, pro-democracy websites, and other politically sensitive subjects such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

According to the most recent estimates from Internet World Stats, an estimated 2.1 billion people worldwide have access to the internet, including 932 million in Asia. The total world population is estimated to be around 7 billion.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-09-30

How many are spammers?

when i was in china, most sites you can access IE news, err porn... but you cant access Facebook !, although EVERY google add you see when browsing in china is for ' how to access facebook ' , access facebook for 9.99 a month .........