Lu Li, a 23-year-old working with a foreign firm in East China’s Shanghai, has found surfing online indispensable in her daily life since she first accessed to the Internet seven years ago.
“It has unfolded a new chapter in my life,” she says, adding that she can hardly imagine living without the Internet.
Lu is one of the new generation emerging in the country in the past ten years, who are learning, entertaining and shopping all electronically. A report released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in July indicates that China has 103 million netizens, or Internet users, like Lu Li.
That means one out of 13 Chinese uses the Internet. Ten years ago, there were barely 50,000 Internet accounts throughout China. A survey on some 2,400 people in five Chinese cities show that an average netizen spends 2.73 hours online daily, reading news, sending or receiving emails, playing games, downloading music, gathering background materials or chatting.