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April 29, 2020

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Smartphones a big player as Internet users top 904m

Source: Xinhua | 00:00 UTC+8 April 29, 2020 | Print Edition

THE number of Internet users in China had reached 904 million as of March this year, up by 75.08 million from the end of 2018, according to a report on China’s Internet development released yesterday.

Internet penetration in China had reached 64.5 percent, up 4.9 percentage points over the end of 2018, according to the report issued by the China Internet Network Information Center.

The number of netizens accessing the Internet through mobile phones in China had increased by 79.92 million from the end of 2018 to 897 million in March 2020, accounting for 99.3 percent of the total number, said the report.

The proportions of Chinese netizens accessing the Internet through desktop computers, laptop computers, TVs and tablet computers stood at 42.7 percent, 35.1 percent, 32 percent and 29 percent by March respectively.

China has seen a boom in Internet-related industries and the digital economy amid the COVID-19 epidemic, the report showed.

Users of Internet applications such as online shopping, online videos, online education, e-government services and online payment had grown significantly during the epidemic.

The number of online shoppers had grown by 16.4 percent from the end of 2018 to 710 million by March 2020, accounting for 78.6 percent of the total number of netizens.

Despite the negative impact brought by COVID-19 on the economy, the online retail sales of physical goods nationwide increased 3 percent year on year in the first two months, with its share in the total retail sales up 5 percentage points to 21.5 percent, the report said.

With a vast online market in China, the country’s Internet-related industries will see a new round of opportunities for rapid development after the epidemic, said Wang Yukai, a member of the Advisory Committee for State Informatization.

Wang predicted that major progress will be made in the building of Internet infrastructure to foster a boom in online businesses.

As schools and universities in China postponed their spring semesters earlier this year amid the epidemic, around 265 million students switched to online learning, leading to explosive growth in online education applications.

As of March, the number of online education users had risen 110.2 percent from the end of 2018 to 423 million, accounting for 46.8 percent of the country’s netizen population.

Standardized and systematic

China’s Ministry of Education has rolled out a series of measures to make the online education industry more standardized and systematic.

The ministry has also launched 22 online course platforms with about 24,000 courses offered, ensuring students’ access to classes during the epidemic.

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data have been widely used in the field of online education, yielding positive results. The commercial use of 5G will see more technical problems such as video buffering solved, according to the report.

In addition, the industry has strengthened cooperation with short-video platforms to cater to more young users, said the report, adding that in 2019 around 200 million education-related short videos were produced on Kuaishou, a leading Chinese online short video platform.

The number of online entertainment application users had also increased. As of March, online video users in China had grown by 126 million from the end of 2018 to 850 million, accounting for 94.1 percent of the country’s netizen population.

The number of short video users reached 773 million, or 85.6 percent of all Internet users, representing an increase of 125 million from the end of 2018.

Both the user number and usage time of online video have seen a significant rise early this year due to the novel coronavirus epidemic, said the report, noting that online videos had become the second most used Internet application next to instant messaging.

Short video platforms are increasingly integrated with other industries, in particular playing an important role in driving economic development in impoverished regions, it said.

Users of online entertainment applications have grown in number during the epidemic, with online music users reaching 635 million and online game users 532 million, accounting for 70.3 percent and 58.9 percent of the total netizen population respectively, according to the report.

The size of Internet users in the country’s rural areas had reached 255 million or 28.2 percent of the total netizen population, up 33.08 million from the end of 2018, while the number of urban netizens had grown by 42 million from the end of 2018 to 649 million.

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