Internet growth slows in China but microblogging increasingly popular

The China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) releases two reports a year about the nation’s internet usage. It has been doing this since 1997 and is therefore well placed to judge trends. Its latest report identifies a slowing in the growth in numbers of internet users.

The report concluded that there were 485m internet users in China up until the end of June. While this still represented a 6.1 per cent rise, that was still the slowest growth since the Nineties. It is believed that internet use is approaching saturation point in major cities, although it hasn’t had much impact in rural areas as yet.

Those who do use the internet are increasingly getting involved in microblogging with CNNIC estimating 200 per cent growth in the number of people involved in the pastime compared to six months ago. With 195m people registered on one microblogging site or another, 40 per cent of China’s internet users use such sites. Twitter is not available in China. The top microblogging sites are Sina, with an estimated 57 per cent market share; Tencent, with 21 per cent; and Baidu, with 13 per cent.