Statistics on China’s Internet Sector
On January 31, 2018, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the 41st Statistical Report on Internet Development in China in Beijing. According to the report, as of December 2017, China’s Internet penetration rate stood at 55.8%, 4.6 percentage points higher than the global average. It is safe to say that China is leading the world in the Internet sphere.
772 Million Internet Users
Figure 1-1 Number of Internet users and Internet penetration rate in China
As of December 2017, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 772 million, an increase of 40, 740 over December 2016. The Internet penetration rate was 55.8%, an increase of 2.6 percentage points over December 2016. China has been ranked first in the world for 10 consecutive years in terms of the number of Internet users.
As can be seen from the above figure, the growth rate of Internet users in China peaked in the period of 2008-2013. Since the Internet penetration rate reached 50% in 2015, the growth of Internet users has slowed down.
1.4 Billion Client Devices
Chinese Internet users mainly use five types of client devices: desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and Internet TV. As of December 2017, mobile Internet users accounted for 97.5% of Chinese Internet users, an increase of 2.4 percentage points over December 2016. In contrast, Internet users using desktops and laptops accounted for 53.0% and 35.8%, respectively, lower than December 2016. The decline of the proportion of desktop users (7.1 percentage points) was most notable. The proportion of users using TV to access the Internet was 28.2%, an increase of 3.2 percentage points over December 2016. It is estimated that at least 700 million mobile phones and 700 million other client devices are connected to the Internet. Therefore, the estimated total number of Internet-connected client devices is at least 1.4 billion.
Fast Expanding Mobile Internet Market
Mobile Internet users have reached 96.3% of total Chinese Internet users, consolidating the dominant position of mobile Internet in the Internet industry.
Figure 1-2 Usage of terminal devices
Figure 1-3 Mobile Internet users in China
As can be seen from the above figures, the growth rate of mobile phone Internet users peaked during 2010-2015. Mobile Internet-based applications have changed the structure of Internet users, leading to an increase in the length of time spent by Chinese Internet users online.
The Majority of Internet Users in China are Under 40 Years Old
Demographic studies of the Internet users in China show that Chinese Internet users are young. Most of them are 10 to 39 years old. As of December 2017, 10- to 39-year-olds accounted for 73.0% of the country’s total Internet users. Among them, 20- to 29-year-olds accounted for 30.0% of the total Chinese Internet users; 10- to 19-year-olds and 30- to 39-year-olds accounted for 19.6% and 23.5%, respectively, basically the same as in December 2016. Compared with the situation in December 2016, the proportion of Internet users over 60 years old increased, indicating a continuous rise in the Internet penetration rate among seniors.
Figure 1-4 Composition of Internet users by age
Average Time Spent Online Per Capita
In 2017, the average time spent by Chinese Internet users was 27.0 hours per week per capita, which means each Chinese Internet user spent nearly 4 hours online each day, an increase of 0.6 hour compared to 2016. It is safe to say that the Internet has become an important part of Chinese people’s daily life.
Figure 1-5 Average time spent online per capita
Basic Internet Resources
There are some technical indicators commonly used by researchers to measure the level of Internet development in a country. As of January 2017, China had 338, 704, 640 IPv4 addresses and 23, 430 blocks of IPv6 addresses (/32). The total number of domain names in China was 38.48 million, a decrease of 9.0% compared with previous year. The total number of “. CN” domain names reached 20.85 million, an annual increase of 1.2%, accounting for 54.2% of the total domain names in China. China’s international Internet gateway bandwidth reached 7, 320,180 Mbps, an annual increase of 10.2%. For more information, see Table 1-1.
Table 1-1 Internet resources in China (December 2016-December 2017)
International Internet gateway bandwidth is an indicator used by China to measure the rate of data transmission between China and other countries. As can be seen from the figure below, the annual growth rate of China’s international Internet gateway bandwidth is above 20%, far higher than the growth rate of China’s foreign trade.
Figure 1-6 International Internet gateway bandwidth of China
Websites and Web Pages
The number of websites and web pages reflects the amount of information in the virtual world. As of December 2017, China had 5.33 million websites, 4, 016, 500 website owners, and 1, 274 ISPs. Compared with December 2016, the number of websites increased by 510, 000, website owners by 410, 000, and ISPs by 62, representing an annual growth rate of 10.6%.
Figure 1-7 Number of websites in China
Figure 1-7 shows the changes in the number of Chinese websites in the period of 2011-2017. In 2000, there were 265, 000 websites in China. In December 2017, the total number of Chinese websites was 5.33 million, nearly 19 times that of 2000. The number of Chinese websites declined from 3.23 million in 2009 to 1.91 million in 2010. There are two reasons for this decline. First, many websites crashed following the financial crisis. Second, China shut down a large number of illegal websites in the year.
Figure 1-8 Number of web pages in China
As of December 2017, according to data provided by Baidu, the number of Chinese web pages was 260.4 billion, an increase of 10.3% over December 2016. The number of Chinese-language web pages increased from 33.6 billion in 2009 to 236 billion in 2017 (see Figure 1-8), indicating a steady increase in Chinese-language Internet content.
Websites in China, by Industry and Content
Websites in China are mainly owned by individuals and companies across a wide range of industries. 74% of websites in China are owned by companies, 22% by individuals, and the rest by public institutions, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The majority of websites are owned by companies in such industries as wholesale, retail, information technology, manufacturing, and real estate. The websites owned by companies in health, finance, commerce, transportation, and catering industries are rising steadily. With the advancement of China’s “Internet Plus” initiative, the number of websites owned by companies in traditional industries is expected to increase in the future.
Figure 1-9 Websites in China, by industry
Figure 1-10 Websites in China, by content
In terms of website content, China has a large number of web portals, e-commerce websites, and websites about networking technology, leisure, entertainment, daily life, industries & businesses, commercial services, and education & culture. In terms of languages supported by websites, the number of websites in languages other than Chinese and English increased by 1, 284 in 2017 compared with 2016.