At the end of 1999, China had 8 million Internet users, Song Ling, the head of the Ministry of Information Industry's Information Advancement Department announced at the "National Information Resource Development and Use Strategy Symposium".

According to statistics from China Internet Network Information Center, China had 675,000 Internet users at the end of 1997, 2.1 million at the end of 1998 and 4 million by June 30, 1999.

However, 8 million Internet users out of 1.3 billion Chinese people is still insignificant, especially compared with the percentage of Internet users in the US, Japan and other developed countries.

Industry experts say that the development of China's Internet industry has the following problems: 1) its restrictive policy results in a short waste of resources; 2) the state-owned telecom does not provide a level playing field, making it difficult for Internet companies; 3) its policy towards foreign businesses is vague and lacks sufficient regulations; 4) Chinese Internet service provider's (ISP) nor Internet content provider's (ICP) technology lack originality and tend to follow foreign trends; 5) China lacks the skilled personnel.