Internet Users Tops 26 Million , 80 Percent Have E-Mail Boxes

China Has 26 Million Internet Users

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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 here 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.

80 percent have E-Mail boxes

Nearly 80 percent of the 26.5 million Internet users in China have their own E-mail boxes, according to statistics released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) Tuesday.

A survey conducted by the CNNIC finds that E-mail is the service most frequently used by surfers in China, with each user having 2.6 E-mail account numbers on average.

The survey also shows that other frequently used online services include search engines, software uploading and downloading, various kinds of information retrievals, on- line paging, etc, with the use ratios reaching 51.3, 43.9, 39.5 and 31.6, respectively.

As for the aspect of Internet service with which users are most dissatisfied, 42.7 percent of Chinese users pour complaints on the slow connection speed, while 19 percent criticize high rates, down from last year.