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China has 688 Million People Online, More Than Half Its Population

688 million Chinese Internet users

More than half of China’s population are Internet users according to a new report.

Released earlier this week, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) report revealed that there are 688 million Internet users in China, 39.5 million more than the year before for a growth rate of 6.1 percent. Incredibly, the number of Internet users in China has nearly doubled since 2009.

Central to the spread of China’s Internet use has been the proliferation of cell phones. With 620 million mobile Internet users across the country, over 90 percent of all web users access the Internet on mobile devices.

This of course is in addition to any other devices they may use including laptops and desktop PCs. However the number of Internet users in China who exclusively use their phones is still an astonishing 127 million users, or 18.5 percent of the population.

While the number of Internet users in China explodes, so too does the number of websites. There are now 4.23 million websites in the country, an increase of 26.3 percent since 2014. Equally impressive is the number of webpages which now exceeds 200 billion.

Charles Liu

The Nanfang's Senior Editor