The number of internet users are increasing day by day, especially in the Asian region. According to an official report, China has become the world largest online community with a user base of more than 800 million people as of June 2018.
The 42nd bi-annual statistical report from the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) said that with an increase of 3.6 percent the number of internet users counts increased to 802 million people over the figures registered in past six months. The report also said that 98 percent of the people access the internet through their mobile phones.
This increase in the number of internet users brought the internet availability ratio of China to 57.7 percent out of which 26.3 percent of internet users come from rural areas, CNNIC said, adding that in the last six months i.e. between January 2018 to June 2018, 788 million people used mobile phones to access the internet in China which is 98.3 percent of the internet users in the country as of now.
Quoting a report, state-run Xinhua news agency said that the country’s cumulative mobile internet traffic showed an increase of 199.6percent, which is the traffic reached to 26.6 billion GB of data.
This speedy increase in the use and spread of internet in China in the last few years led to the social media revolution resulted in millions of people taking over Weibo, which is regarded as the twitter of China which broke the monopoly of the state-owned media.
However, the control over the content which is politically sensitive spreading over the internet lies in the hands of the government who framed strict laws and regulations to prevent the spreading of the sensitive news on the web. Commercially, the online shopping and online payments accounted for around 71 percent of the total internet users which is giving a great boost to the e-commerce sector in the country.
The value of online retail sales marked a year on year increase of 30.1 percent which means it reached to about $594 billion (4.08 trillion yuan). According to a report the total number of online shoppers were 569 million.
During this period there was also an increase in the number of online takeout users with 43.6 percent of people using the internet through their mobile phones orders takeout food in China.
According to a report, an increase in the spread of the internet in China in the first half of 2018 had a great impact on China’s employment scenario. “It provides the youth with low cost, low threshold opportunities, stimulates large-scale business start-ups and unleashes grass-root innovation capabilities.” said a report.
A user base of China’s online government services reached to 470 million people which is around 56.6 percent of the total internet users as of June 2018, the report said. India ranks 2nd in the number of internet users with 391 million users as of December 2017.
