Internet users in China top 12 million
REUTERS
Wednesday, June 7, 2000
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The number of Internet users in China has more than doubled in the past year to 12.3 million, with men a shrinking majority of the Internet-using population, according to a survey released on Wednesday by a Hong Kong research firm.
The same survey by Iamasia, or Interactive Audience Measurement Asia, found that Hong Kong's population of Internet users totalled 1.85 million in April, or 37 per cent of people in the territory between the ages of 12 and 60.
While 56 per cent of mainland China Internet users had begun using the Internet within the year ending in April, more than 70 per cent of Hong Kong's users had been online for more then a year, the survey found.
China's Internet-using population is younger than Hong Kong's, with two-thirds of the mainland online population under 30 years old, the study found.
Iamasia, an Internet usage measurement firm formed last year, used random telephone calls - including 500,000 in mainland China - to survey the habits and demographics of 6,084 Internet users in mainland China and 2,054 in Hong Kong.
In China, Beijing was the city with the highest level of Internet penetration, with 25 per cent of people between 12 and 60 having used the Internet in the four weeks prior to being surveyed; Guangzhou, Jinan and Nanjing were the next most Internet-penetrated cities.
Iamasia chief executive Kevin Tan said that while the Internet was a nascent medium in mainland China, the survey showed that in large cities "there's some meaningful usage, some meaningful awareness".
While nearly 70 per cent of Hong Kong users accessed the Internet from home, with most of the remainder going online at work, in mainland China home usage was only a little higher than work usage.
However, in some mainland cities a significant share of online users gained access to the Net through Internet cafes, although Internet cafe usage accounted for a smaller share of user access in more economically developed cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the study found.
In Hong Kong, 15 per cent of Internet users had made an online purchase, while just 5 per cent had in mainland China, the study said.
"Hong Kong is getting to the types of penetration levels that start to allow for some pretty interesting things to happen on the Internet," Mr Tan said, pointing to Hong Kong's embracing of wireless technologies and its well-developed financial sector as factors in an environment ripe for e-commerce opportunity.
The study found men made up 62 per cent of Internet users in China, and 58 per cent in Hong Kong, although the gender gap is narrowing in both places. E-mail was the number-one use of the Internet in both mainland China and Hong Kong.
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