More Chinese Internet Users Buy Online

More than 73.9 percent of on-line users say they "sometimes" or "always" surf e-commerce websites and only 2.8 percent of users say they had never visited such websites, a recent survey found.

The survey, done by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), said that this indicated more and more people began to accept this new shopping method.

But the survey also found that only 31.9 percent of users rarely bought on-line in the past year, indicating the facts that most of Internet users still have doubts about on-line business.

The CNNIC noted that China's Internet users are usually young people under 30 years old and their average monthly incomes are less than 1,500 yuan.

The other reason for the low proportion of buying online, the survey said, is the traditional shopping habits of Chinese people.

"Time saving" and "convenience" are still the major inducement for on-line buying, the survey found, adding that books, computer- related products are the hot commodities.

The study found that most of Internet users in China are confident about China's e-commerce future, though they currently worry about the security of transactions.

When asked "when China will see popular on-line buying," about 79 percent of people said it will be within five years.

China Has 26 Million Internet Users

As of the end of June, China had 26.5 million Internet users, up 56.8 percent from the same period last year, according to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released Tuesday.

So far, China has had 10 million personal computers linked to the Internet, up 54.1 percent over the same period last year.

Experts noted that this indicated that the Internet is still in its rapid development stage in China despite the growing junk pile of failed dot-com companies.

The survey made by the CNNIC found that the proportion of female and older people is now increasing, but the number of highly educated people is down, which indicates that the Internet is now coming closer to common residents. Statistics show that 38. 7 percent of the Internet users are female.

The study was based on 78,300 online questionnaires and 4,828 sample telephone calls.

The CNNIC began to release information on the Internet users, as a whole, in 1997.






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