• Home
• Analysis
• Policy
• Central Government
• Local Government
• Healthcare
• Education
• Digital Inclusion
• Technology
• Security

Technology

Internet main source of news for 206 million Chinese

By Alice Kok | 30 December 2008

According to a new report, the Internet is the main source of news for about 206 million Chinese.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a top academic institution, released the figure in the Blue Book of China’s Economy (2009) report.

Zhu Huaxin, author of the report, said, “The year 2008 saw rapid development and wide application of the Internet in China. Chinese Internet users hit 253 million at the end of June, amounting to the largest figure in the world.”

He says that disasters such as snowstorms during the Lunar New Year holiday, the massive earthquake that struck the south-western Sichuan province in May, as well as the Olympics stimulated the growth of the online news population.

The latest official figures put users at 290 million. That’s 80 million more Internet users than in 2007, according to the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).

About 80 per cent of these users look for information and news through the Internet with around 60 per cent of them using search engines.

CNNIC found that people younger than 30 are the majority of online news readers, accounting for about 69 per cent of total Internet users.

---