China Has Largest On-Line Population

Smivs writes "China now has the world's largest net-using population, say official figures. More than 253 million people in the country are now online, according to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). About 95% of those going online connect via high-speed links. Take up of broadband has been boosted by deals offered by China's fixed line phone firms as they fight to win customers away from mobile operators. Despite having a greater number of people online, China's net economy still has a long way to go to match or exceed that of the US or even that of South Korea. Figures from Analysis International said China's net firms reported total revenues of $5.9bn (£2.96bn) in 2007. By contrast, net advertising revenue alone for US firms in 2007 stood at $21.2bn (£10.6bn)."

Comments

Inflation.

[FatSean]

Didn't we just have a story about how advertising on the web is way over-valued?

I wouldn't trust the Chinese government to report on the color of the sky, but I suppose there are ways to validate their claims.

Re:Inflation.

[Sigismundo]

NPR's On The Media ran a great story about the media in China a few months ago. Well worth a listen. One of the interesting things they noted was that while reporting on national issues is often self-censored due to fear of reprisal, on the provincial and local level it is possible to do hard-hitting investigative reporting on neighboring areas.

Not much of this stuff ever hits the Western mainstream media, but it is there, and it's made an impact. Censorship on a national level is still a huge problem in China, but there are reporters out there doing good work, and getting that work published.

Here is a link to a partial transcript of the show.

Re:Does it count if it's not unfettered access?

[betterunixthanunix]

Within the borders of China, there is the world's largest number of connected computer users. The fact that their communications across the border is restricted doesn't change the fact that they are online, it just means that they are not online in a "global" sense. Really, within China, the policing of the Internet is done by citizens who are following the laws of that nation; it is a stricter version of laws that require hosting services to take down kiddie porn here in the US. I'm not saying that China is justified in its laws, I'm just saying that the existence of those laws does not mean anything in terms of counting the number of connected users.

Speed of internet access

[FooBarWidget]

It's impressive that 95% of the population has high-speed Internet, but "high-speed" is limited to within the country only. Links to foreign countries are slow - VERY slow. Especially to U.S. sites. It took a very long time to load Slashdot.

That said, the links within the country are insanely fast - and cheap. People over there don't even use Bittorrent: they host all their movies on public HTTP servers. Bandwidth is so cheap that they don't even need Bittorrent. There is even some kind of urban myth over there which says that Bittorrent will wear off your hard drive because of excessive hard drive activity.

Re:Does it count if it's not unfettered access?

[dnwq]

It's massively important because these online Chinese can still visit many, many sites - they might not be able to go to pages with political content, but they can still support Chinese Ebays and Craigslists and whatnot.

Frankly it's likely that Digg and Slashdot have vastly larger Chinese equivalents, and most /.ers would have no idea because they don't read Chinese.

And political discussion still goes on, albeit through euphemisms and with some care. The restrictions exist, but they're not all that effective.

Re:But can they read slashdot?

[gzipped_tar]

Here I am, reading /.

Many of my fellow Chinese don't read slashdot because:
* they can't read English (Most of them);
* they are not interested in the topics (News for nerds);
* they prefer other sites such as ArsTechnica etc (Some of them don't feel good in the slashdot atmosphere).
Or
* They can read /. but can't express their opinions fluently in English. So they don't show up by sending in their comments.