China and the Internet

[John Simkin]

China has a population of over a billion. So far only 70 million of them are online. That is just over 5% of the Chinese population. This is about to undergo a dramatic change. Five large Chinese companies have just announced that they are about to go public and expect to raise $1bn between them to expand their activities online. Registrations of Chinese websites is up 100% from last year. Economists have argued that if China is to become the world's economic superpower, it will have to expand its online activities. One expert said recently: "If people aren't thinking about what is about to happen when China logs on, they soon will." He adds that "if everyone in China went online at the same time, it would bring the whole net down".