China - 100 million bloggers

CNNIC: Over 100 Million Bloggers in China
see also report in chinese


CNNIC released its semi-annual China’s Internet development report today. According to the report, by June 2008, there are 253 million Internet users in China, making China the World’s largest Internet market by users. CNNIC said Internet users with broadband access has amounted to 214 million, and over 73 million users have used mobile handsets to go online in last six months. Yes, the number of China’s Internet users is huge, but the value of China’s Internet market is still far below that of US Internet market.

Comparing with last report by CNNIC, the increase of number of new Internet users is slowing down with 43 million new users added in first half of 2008 vs. 48 million in second half of 2007. On the other hand, new mobile Internet users increased significantly from 50.4 million to 73 million.

CNNIC said that over 107 million users in China own blogs/spaces, doubled in six months. By the end of 2007, it was reported that there were about 49 million users having blogs/space. The report does not provide a definition of blog/space. I guess the statistics includes users in SNS as well. Since many users write posts in SNS, for example, users will write articles in 51.com, it will be counted as a blogger as well. According to the report, over 70 million users updated their blogs/spaces in last six months.

Online music is still the most popular services with 84.5% usage rate. Notably, IM usage rate decreased from 81.4% in January 2008 to 77.2% while email usage rate increased from 56.5% to 62.6%. About 81.5% people read news online, a big increase from 73.6% in half a year ago.

The report said that 38.8% of Internet users in China, or about 98 million users, visited BBS/online forum in last six month, the number is much lower than I expected. BBS/online forum is one of the most important service in China’s Internet, there should be more users of BBS, I think. About 23.4% or 59 million users have posted articles in BBS/online forum in last six months.

About 25%, or 63.3 million users go shopping online, an increase from 46.4 million in half a year ago, and 22.5% or 57 million users made online payment, an increase of 23.8 million users.