China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the 13th report on China's Internet industry on Jan. 15. The statistics in the report are simply so "beautiful that one can't take them all in.

Netizens still number 2 and growing by 55,900 each day

On the macro-scale all the statistics keep a rapid developing trend. Till December 31, 2003 China's Internet users reached 79.5 million - still number 2 worldwide. The number grew by 20.4 million - up by 48 percent. It is something like 55,900 new netizens entering the net-space each day. The other statistics were also encouraging: there were 595,550 WWW websites - up by 60.3 percent; computers linked to the Internet were 30.89 million - up by 48 percent.

Netizens' structure more reasonable and balanced

China's netizens are mainly composed of males who are single and under 35. However the number of married female netizens who are above 35 is growing with stronger momentum. Low-income netizens with an education below undergraduate still are the majority while netizens with postgraduate education and an income above 2,000 Yuan are growing. Internet users are concentrated in industries like manufacturing, education, public management, social organizations and IT industry.

Internet used mainly at home

About the ways that Internet is used we see expanding proportion of "surfing at home" - up to 66.1 percent. It indicates that as PC is being popularized, broadband becomes common in neighborhood and the cost of using Internet lowered, more and more homes are linked to the net and become the principle places for Internet surfing.

Number of broadband Internet users shooting up

As to the forms that network access took, access means like direct access and broadband began to be accepted and used by netizens. The proportional differences between computers using different access means are shrinking. Compared with last year's data broadband users increased by 10.8 million - approaching 17.4 million and was 164 percent up. Their proportion in the total number of netizens was up to 22 percent.

Mao Wei, Director of CNNIC, believes that China's Internet has, on the whole, finished the transition from initiation to expansion phase and has gradually freed itself from the abnormal condition of the last a few years during which speculative capitals blindly flew in. It is now back to the healthy track of rational development.

Internet popularization rate is still very low

China's netizen number is second only to the United States. In every 9 netizens there is a Chinese. Yet on the whole China Internet development is still in the primary stage of development. A huge gap still stands between China and the average level of the world. Only 6.2 percent of China's population is using Internet - 50 percent less than average global level. It goes without saying that China is still a "big Internet country" not a strong one.

Few of the many corporate websites are utilized

Su Jinsheng, director of Telecommunications Administration Bureau of Ministry of Information Industry, says among 8.3 million medium & small sized enterprises 47 percent of them take their business into the Internet while only 11.1 percent conduct electronic transactions. For most of the enterprises they only opened up their front pages and email addresses leaving the websites to grow old without updating the information. By comparison 60 percent of American small-sized corporations, 80 percent of the medium-sized and 90 percent of the large-sized are using the Internet to conduct commerce transactions. China is rated 27th in the analysis of 28 countries' informationalization level conducted by National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC).

Infrastructure construction remains to be reinforced

Statistics show that China's IP address resources grew rapidly in dimensions during the last a few years. However these resources still cannot fulfill the development need of China's Internet operators. As Chinese netizens number increases and network application gradually deepens the inconsistency between the development of IP addresses and China's Internet network will be made more conspicuous.

Disequilibrium of regional development

The report also shows that the development of Internet in different regions is imbalanced. Beijing, Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang and Shanghai have a development level far above that of the mid-west regions.

Further popularization and application

Experts believe that "popularization" and "application" should still be the two major jobs in the area of Internet: on the one hand we should further popularize computer and Internet knowledge and encourage citizens to use the Internet, especially students so that we can do a better job in talents storing; on the other hand we should vigorously push forward Internet application and provide more network services and content to make network life a reality. Xu Guanhua, Minister of Science and Technology Ministry, pointed out: the essence of technology is its application. Apart from the research and development of technology China will vigorously push on the popularization and application of Internet and the development of electronic commerce transaction, electronic government administration and other information services, so as to promote industrialization with informationalization.

What do netizens do on the Internet?

According to the report, mailing and getting news are still the principle reasons that netizens get on the Internet. An important change in the 2003 was that on-line shopping, short messages services and on-line games were three rapid growing application of the Internet.

On-line shopping and messages service began to prevail

During the SARS epidemic in 2003 on-line shopping and message service found a second development opportunity. Among the surveyed netizens only 8 percent never visited a shopping website. Forty percent of them have made on-line purchase. Books, audiovisual material and products, communication apparatus were the principle products of on-line shopping.

The report also shows website message service users sent out 10.9 messages a week, which is obviously a large market everybody wants to take a share of. Almost all the major websites and many specialized-service websites opened message services, which has become one of the important and steady income sources. We have seen the stock prices of SINA, SOHU and NETEASE soar on NASDAQ. Short message service played a vital role in the process.

A new on-line game appear every 10 days

The long favored on-line game has become the principle reason that many young netizens get on line and is bringing generous profits to on-line game industry. Among the on-line game users who often or only occasionally played it, the average play time was 11.3 hours every week. Now that China's on-line game industry has matured. There are a lot of participants and the competition is fierce. According to the data provided by General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPPPRC) it had examined and approved 37 on-line games in the year 2003. The rate was one in every ten days.

Statistics also sent the message that Internet service market represented by various charging services is now in the ascendant. Ecological chain of Internet industry is beginning to take shape and the exploration of the ways of running Internet value-added services is beginning to make progress.

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