Growth of Chinese Netizens Slows Down, Number of Female Surges up

China Has 26 Million Internet Users

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China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) July 17 published its statistics report on development of Internet in China, which shows that the growth speed of netizen number has slowed down but female has surged up.

The survey mainly covers computer number and users on the Internet, number of domain names and distribution, bandwidth of Internet exports and number of WWW sites and distribution; general conditions of net surfers; as well as their habits in using Internet and their views on some big events.

Latest statistics indicate by June 30, 2001 Chinese netizens numbered 26.5m, of which 4.54m access via leased line, 17.93m dialing up and 4.03m both. Around 1.07m people surfed the Internet with devices besides computers. While by 31 December 2000, Chinese netizens had reached 22.5m. This means that in half a year netizen number only grew 4m, or 17.8 percent, much lower than that in later half of 2000 (5.6m).

The chief purposes for surfing Internet are: Seek information (including news), 42.9 percent; leisure and recreation (chatting and making friends), 34.4 percent; for work, 5.8 percent; and for studies, 4.3 percent.


China Has 26 Million Internet Users

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There are around 10.02m computers on the Internet in China, of which 1.63m via leased line and 8.39 via dial-up accession. The total capacity for international lines is 3257M, connecting to countries as the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France, Japan, and ROK.

Growth of female netizens maintained a fast pace. Of 26.5m netizens 61.3 percent is male and 38.7 percent is female with the proportion standing at 1.6:1. While during the same period last year only 25.32 percent were female.

About 52.9 percent netizens are aged between 18 and 30. While surfers above 35 grew steadily and 1.2 percent are above 60 years of age.

Surfers with college degree (or above) dropped nearly 5 percent over last yearend to 35.8 percent, indicating that the Internet is drawing closer to the general public.



By PD Online staff member Li Heng