An urban high school boy surfing online at home for music at night. He is a typical netizen in China.
The country had 210 million netizens at the end of December last year. But the number of netizens - or those who use the Internet more than an hour a week - in China is likely to surpass the 215 million mark, held by Americans, sometime this year, said a China Internet Network Information Center report on its website (www.cnnic.cn) yesterday.
In fact, China is likely to have 285 million netizens by the end of this year, Liu Bing, director of the center's Internet Development and Research Department, told a press briefing.
Several independent analysts, however, have put the figure at 400 million, which is more than the total population of the US and Canada.
An increase of 73 million netizens, or 140 more Internet users every minute, last year shot the number of netizens in China to 210 million. A large number of these new surfers are either youngsters under 18 or those over 30, with not more than junior high school education and little or no income, the report says.
"The Internet's entertainment functions magnify its appeal to lower-income individuals with limited education," Liu said. "The net has become an economic channel of entertainment for them."
Students, the jobless and freelancers make up more than half of all netizens, 74 percent of who earn 2,000 yuan ($276) or less a month. Overall, only 36.2 percent of surfers last year had a college or higher degree, a sharp decline from 86 percent in 1999.
"The reflection of the income structure among citizens is proof that Net development has become more sound, and that cyberspace in China is increasingly shifting toward a platform that could benefit everyone," Liu said.
This is particularly true for the 120 million online gamers, who by and large are school children with no income. The report shows about 68 percent of such individuals make less than 500 yuan ($69) a month, while 73.7 percent of all netizens under 18 play or have played online games.
Indeed, the majority of people with lower education still don't have access to the World Wide Web, but the main reason for their offline life is lack of knowledge about computers and the Net, rather than time or equipment, says the report.
Net users spent an average of 16.2 hours online every week in 2007, slightly below that in the previous year because a vast number of new netizens are short-time surfers.
Netizens' reliance on the cyber world in general has not waned because 93.1 percent of the 1,951 respondents said virtual experience is "of great help to study and work", and 38.3 percent claimed to "feel short of something without the Net".
A breakdown of netizens' online usage agenda is as follows: music, instant messaging (IM), video, news, searches, games and emails. Nearly 90 percent of all netizens were active music downloaders, while IM topped every surfer's to-do list - "a characteristic unique to Chinese", says the report.
"The email use rate in China has been on the decline. Instead, many people have opted for IM services, which have become better, and replaced the function of emails to a certain degree," said a center official Wang Enhai.
Hence the image of an average Chinese Net user as an urban secondary school boy who chats and downloads music online for about two hours every night through broadband on his desktop computer at home.
But Ministry of Information Industry official Yan Hongqiang said: "China's Net development is still at a preliminary stage."
"The fact that our Internet development is still led by popular entertainment as opposed to commerce-oriented applications is alarming (and gives an idea of) the work that must be done to facilitate its growth more intensively," said the center's senior analyst Chen Jiangong.
The extent to which advertising has benefited from the increase in the number of Net users can be gauged from then fact that a mere 22.1 percent of the country's netizens are online shoppers. And not surprisingly, most of them live in cities, have years of experience with the Net, and work for joint ventures or foreign firms.
The comparative figure for the US reached 71 percent a year before, the report says.
While less than 6 percent of the new netizens in 2007 bought products online, those in Shanghai and Beijing - which have the highest ratio of surfers - were most inclined to pay for virtual environment.
Despite a drop in Internet service providers' rates, netizens' monthly average spending of 74.9 yuan from home, or 51.6 yuan in Internet cafs, is still not cheap enough.
Although 16 percent Chinese are Internet users, they are still below the global average of 19.1 percent.
Source: China Daily
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