Chinese Internet Users Up 53%
Friday January 18, 2008
China seems on the way to surpassing the US in all things--cars, carbon dioxide emissions, consumption--and now soon, the internet.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
China's total number of Internet users rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007 from 137 million at the end of 2006, the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center said. The center said the number of Internet users rose from 162 million at the end of June. China is now just five million users short of surpassing the U.S. as the world's largest Internet market, according to the center. It said about 16% of the Chinese population now has access to the Internet, compared with a global average of 19%.
But, as an article in PC World explains, China is a lot less wired than it should be:
While the new statistics may seem impressive, it highlights how Internet usage in the country still lags behind mobile phone use, and how even greater usage could be spurred by more access through wireless devices. "China's admittedly impressive user statistics hide an important fact: only a fraction of those users have regular access to a PC," said David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based technology consultancy.
The PC World article rightly notes that internet tools like blogs and BBS have helped create a national, public conversation that has never before existed in China, where official censorship and state ownership of the traditional media stifle speech. Not that the Chinese internet is exactly free either.
Comments
I think these numbers are absurd, an example of the Chinese government pretending to an advancement that simply is not a reality. At this rate, in 5 years the CCP will be saying there are 10 Billion active internet users in China…the same is true of the cell phone users reported. Anyone who has been to China knows that a vast vast majority of the 1.3 Billion are dirt poor and can not afford a cell phone service. According to the Chinese government, though, close to half the population are texting and chatting with each other over leisurely lunches in cafes and pubs. There are 100 million people in China, maximum, who can afford anything at all made in the west (hence the trade deficit…why is that too hard to understand for Americans?), the rest are the manufaturing drudges and lackies making the highrise condos that are way way out of their price range. Even automobiles, you’d have to have 15 USD to get across town in Beijing with all the tolls, and the working wage in at least GZ is less than 100 USD/month. We in the west are so eager to make money out of the Chinese machine that we buy into the propaganda the CCP is spewing. IMHO