China Economic Net had a good article on December 17, 2003, which contains useful data such as the number of domestic websites and the bandwidth of China’s internet international outlet and inlet. Statistics are very encouraging but there are also problems such as a digital and economic divide within the country. The article started with a title: “China is big but not advanced in cyberspace.”
Here are some highlights from the article: “As of the end of November 2003, the number of Internet users topped 78 million in China, increasing of 32 per cent from the beginning of year; the number of computers connected to the Internet exceeded 30 million sets, increasing 44 per cent; the number of domestic websites exceeded 500,000, posting an increase of 35 per cent. Meanwhile, the number of current network addresses in use hit 40 million, rising 25 per cent; the number of top-level domain names registered in China reached 286,000, increasing 59.3 per cent. “
“Worldwide Chinese Internet contents have seen the same growth rate with the number of users in China, 10 per cent, ranking at par with Spanish and French contents, after English, Japanese and German contents. Users surfing Chinese websites account for 12.2 per cent among all users, which makes Chinese websites rank second among websites in different languages by traffic. ”
“Statistics shows that on average Internet users spend 4.1 days and 13 hours a week online this year, and those who spend more than 100 yuan on Internet use account for about 1/3 of the total number of users. ”
