China's usage new media the highest in the world

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-07-01

A man at an internet cafe. (File photo/Xinhua)

The number of internet and smartphones users in China reached 578 million and 1.1 billion in 2012, the highest number of users in the world in 2012. E-commerce volume in China has reached 8.5 trillion yuan (US$1.4 trillion), according to our Chinese-language sister newspaper Want Daily.

Zhao Tianxiao, vice director of the Institute of news and broadcasting at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the number of people using new media and the country's internet usage increased steadily last year.

The country recorded 242 million online shoppers in 2012. Zhao estimated that the average revenue of online service providers is likely to grow over 25% a year and exceed 600 billion yuan (US$98 billion) during the 12th Five Year Plan between 2012 and 2017.

Sina Weibo was the most popular microblog in the country during the year, said Tang Xujun, who is also the vice director of the institute. The number of visits to microblogs in the country reached 15.556 billion and Chinese internet users spent 1.518 billion hours surfing around on them.

Most of the users were men but the most frequent users were women. Around 80% of users were aged between 10 and 39 but majority of them were teenagers. Three fourths of the users were studying in or had completed senior high school education. Since most of the users are students, the low-to-no income represented the major economic group of users.

The number of corruption scandals that were uncovered by internet users has increased steadily between 2010 and 2012. Over the past three years, 156 corruption scandals were exposed by new media, which was almost double the 78 reported by traditional media.