Chinese government reports say that just over 10 percent of China's population uses the Internet, according to a new
Pew Internet and American Life report.
Users are relatively young, male, urban, and are disproportionately composed of students. Just over 70 percent of the user population is under age 30 and almost 60 percent are men. The penetration rate in urban areas is about 20 percent, compared with just over 3 percent in rural areas. Among occupations, students make up nearly a third of Chinese Internet users, and business workers account for 30 percent more. The rest are a mixture of self-employed, non-profit workers, the unemployed, teachers, government workers, and army personnel. Peasants or farmers account for only about 0.4 percent of the online population.
The growth rate of China's Internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years.
The influx of tens of millions of new online participants each year can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for the Chinese population, for China itself and for the larger world. At the very least, said the report, the Internet will offer ever greater numbers of Chinese a much more sophisticated information and communications world than the one they currently inhabit. And because the Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues, it could have a unifying effect on the country's widely dispersed citizenry. An expanding Internet population might also increase domestic tensions that could spill over into China's relations with the U.S. and other countries while the difference between Chinese and Western approaches to the Internet could create additional sore points over human rights and problems with restrictions on non-Chinese companies.
