Most Chinese would welcome the Internet into their homes and their lives, according to a new survey.

The survey, published on Sept. 17 in Beijing, aimed to gauge the influence of the Internet on the Chinese society, and Chinese attitudes towards the Internet.

Conducted by the Social Development Research Center of the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), it showed 62 percent of people said the Internet was helpful in their work or study.

Nearly 34 percent of those polled said the Internet had no clear influence, while a mere 4 percent said the Internet hampered their work or study.

Responding to a multi-choice questionnaire, 52 percent of Chinese likened the Internet to the library as a source of information and material, while 46 percent compared it to an amusement park, which offered games and other entertainment, and 44 percent said it was like a place to meet with friends and other netizens.

The survey also showed that despite the divergence among polled netizens on the content of Internet, nearly nine in ten Chinese agreed that it was necessary for the authorities to supervise and manage the Internet.

News on the Internet was deemed less reliable than news disseminated by TV, radio and print media, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, reliability of news on the Internet differed with its sources. Chinese netizens were more willing to believe news articles on websites run by traditional media, like Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily. Chinese netizens considered news produced by foreign media less believable than that of Chinese media, according to the survey.

The survey also indicated that 58 percent of city dwellers were aged between 17 and 24. Netizens polled in the survey spent an average 3.2 hours per week surfing the Internet, but less than 20 percent went on-line every day.

From Jan. 25 to Feb. 15, 2003, the survey conducted interviews with a random sample of 3,941 Chinese living in urban areas, all aged between 17 and 60. It was conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Changsha, Xi'an and Shenyang and the smaller cities of Nanhai in Guangdong Province, Yima in Henan, Jimo in Shandong, Guangshui in Hubei, and Fengbei in Hebei.

It was the second time the CASS had conducted such a survey since 2000, the year it started the project in cooperation with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), which initiated a program called the "World Internet Project". The project was intended to find out how the Internet would affect society.

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