http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/01/china-half-billion-internet-users/

By Edwin Kee
on 01/16/2012 10:08 PST

China’s government
might be pretty restrictive when it comes to what their citizens can and cannot
see over the Internet, while ensuring not a single person of the general
populace is able to own a Facebook account, but that does not mean Internet
usage is surpressed. No sir, in fact, it seems that the number of Chinese
citizens who are able to access the Internet has already surpassed the half
billion mark, which is more than one third of China’s total population. This
statistic is furnished by the China Internet Network Information Center, a
state-run organization, so it is as close as it can get to the actual figure.

It would be
interesting to see how the Internet generation in China will help shape and
grow the country, which might eventually become the world’s largest economy as
it steps on the accelerator to overtake the US after they sped past Japan last
year. According to a translated quotation from the China Media Project in Hong
Kong, journalist Hu Yong mentioned the importance of the explosion of Internet
use in China by summing it up, “The Internet cannot usher in dramatic change to
political life in China, but it can promote the creation of social capital on
the basis of citizen rights and duties, giving rise to and strengthening social
forces independent of the Chinese state.”