Internet users in China exceed 600 million

Official statistics from the China Internet Network Information Centre or CNNIC show that the country's networked user base continues to swell to an enormous size, having added tens of millions last year.

In the report [PDF - Chinese], the CNNIC says that in 2013, the number of Internet users in China rose by 53.6 million to 618 million in total.

This represents 45.8 per cent Internet penetration of the approximately 1.35 billion population, making it the largest group of networked users and devices in the world.

In comparison, the United States has the second largest number of Internet users with just over quarter of a billion, followed by India with over 150 million. Japan and Brazil both have around 100 million Internet users.

Number of Internet users in China; source: CNNIC

Over 330 million hosts are connected through the older Internet Protocol version 4 addressing scheme in China, a small decline from 2012; The newer IPv6 scheme is growing rapidly in China with the number of hosts growing by a third in 2013, and now stands at just under 17 million.

CNNIC estimates that the aggregate bandwidth in China rose almost 80 per cent in 2013, hitting 3,406,824 megabit per second.

Chinese Internet users increasingly access the Internet over mobile devices. Last year, the CNNIC says China had over 500 million mobile Internet users, up by over 80 million from 2012.

More than two-thirds of Chinese still access the Internet via desktops and 44 per cent use laptops however, but both of these categories showed declines last year according to the CNNIC.

Instant messaging, online news, search engines, music, video and shopping were the most popular activities on the Internet for Chinese users in 2013, with each category registering substantial growth.

Mobile applications showed a similar usage pattern, with instant messaging users jumping more than 86 per cent last year.

Online gaming however while still popular in China with over 300 million users, did not register much growth in 2013.

CNNIC says that user growth has tailed off in recent year, with the Internet development theme moving from quantity to quality as more sophisticated applications such as online shopping become popular.

The vast majority of Chinese business or 93 per cent, used computers in 2013, with 83 per cent of them being connected to the Internet CNNIC says.