RSSChina surpasses US as largest online nation
By Ed Oswald | Published April 24, 2008, 11:52 AM
Although China is one of the world's most populous nations, until recently it lagged behind the US in terms of its online population. That changed in February however, when the country's population online reached 221 million.
Even with the jump ahead of the US, China still lags behind the worldwide average in terms of a percentage of its population. At the end of 2007, that number stood at about 16 percent, versus a worldwide average of 19.1 percent.
The numbers were released by the Ministry of Information Industry, and was reported by state media on Thursday. Analysts said that the number of online Chinese could number 280 million by the end of the year.
Certainly, the surge in Internet usage has presented the government with some interesting problems considering it prefers to keep a tight hold on the dissemination of information.
The decentralized structure of the Internet and the Web in particular make it difficult to control, although the government has called for "purification" of the Internet.
Unfortunately those commies are hawking their hard core pornograhy, wherevere and whenever they feel like it. Commie perverts turned my local newspaper's forum into another XXX rated advertisement with color photos of CS and BF shots. www.archive.org is the latest website to be with their fux flix from China...
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|Oups, wasn't supposed to be a second post.
I was wondering, that's almost the population of USA, so I wonder how USA fare in the charts.
*EDIT* duh, after reading the title again, I think that USA are number 2 after all.
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|Obviously most comments here are off topic and only aimed at bashing China while conveniently not mentioning that the posters' own countries are not exactly governed by angels either.
But back on topic, yes, with 1.2+ billion people, that would be expected. I wouldn't be surprised if India came second.
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|This is an article about China and the Internet. How can you comment on it and NOT mention censorship???
BTW, I just found the answer to what I was wondering in my previous post. This is what chinese Internet users see when they google "Tiananmen Square":
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/...nternet/sidebyside.html
Really amazing ...
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|I wonder what those 221 million people see on their screens when they google "Tiananmen Square Massacre" ...
Then again, most may have never heard of it thanks to brutal censorship, even though it happened right in the middle of Beijing
And those who know about it, probably know what would happen to them should they dare to look for info about it on the Internet ...
For those of you who are not in China:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyj-3S_ulvI
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|"I wonder what those 221 million people see on their screens when they google "Tiananmen Square Massacre" ...
Most of the time I see smut or some Chinese export business trying to advertise his wares for FREE instead of buying a classified ad.
9down is about the only Chinese website that isn't X rated or a hard sell for everything under the sun...
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|"9down is about the only Chinese website that isn't X rated or a hard sell for everything under the sun"
I get more spams and popups from USA than from China. If you were correct, that wouldn't be the case.
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|lol, I always hear of the great firewall of china! and blah blah blah ... just think its funny that they choose not to filter most of the xrated stuff ... but hey, eveyone gets horny.
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|They have the most because thats where all the gold/item farmers for online games are at.
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|I'll just note that they do not say these are people with a connection in the home.
Now, having lots of visitors to Internet cafes is good, but not the same as a wired nation.
Mind you, the US is far from a wired nation, but most are not renting a computer by the hour at a storefront either.
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|The US is still the largest uncensored online nation though most US politicians now owned by major corporations are hard at work trying to change that.
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|Hmmm, ..... and most of them are sending spam.
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|Actually most spam according to studies comes 1st from the US and then Africa.
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|of course, most of what is online is banned by the government unless it's Yahoo which helps the Chinese dictatorship put dissidents in jail.:)
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|Gee with 1,321,851,888 as of mid-2007 you would think there would be more online then 221 million
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|then again, a lot of them still can't afford Internet. And there are still a lot of farm people there.
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|And then again youd think they'd stop having kids.
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|dvferret,
China actually has a government mandated population control program. Women who have 'unauthorized' pregnancies have them aborted by force. Doctors in that country inject formaldehyde into the babys skull as it is being delivered.
Yet another reason why these barbaric animals shouldn't be hosting the olympics.
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|Yah, I know about the control program. Didnt know about the formaldehyde thou it doesnt surprise me.
I most certainly disagree with the Olympics being held there as well.
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