Development
China had 538 million Internet users by the end of June 2012. It is projected that China's Internet population will hit 718 million by 2013, accounting for 52.7 percent of the total population.
A majority of broadband subscribers are DSL, mostly from China Telecom and China Netcom. The price varies at different provinces, usually around US$10 – $20/month for a 1M DSL with unlimited downloads.
As of June 2011, Chinese Internet users spent an average of 18.7 hours online per week, which would result in a total of about 472 billion hours spent online in 2011.
Broadband makes up the majority of Internet connections in China, with 363.81 million users at this service tier. The price of a broadband connection places it well within the reach of the mainland Chinese middle class. Wireless, especially the mobile phone Internet access has developed rapidly. 277 million are accessing the Internet via cell phones. The number of dial-up users peaked in 2004 and since then has decreased sharply.
By the end of 2009, the number of Chinese domestic websites grew to 3.23 million, with an annual increase rate of 12.3%, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. As of first half of 2010, the majority of the Web content is user-generated.
Read more about this topic: Internet In The People's Republic Of China
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