China to lead global Internet traffic

The latest statistical figures released by the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center reveals that China is due to surpass the United States as the nation with the most Internet users, some time this year.

The figure reported by the Chinese government institution was a 53
percent jump from 137 million Chinese Internet users reported at this
time last year. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: China says number of Internet users rises to 210 million, could overtake US this year

“Currently China’s online population is about 50 million
less than that of the United States and is the world’s second-largest,”
the agency, also known as CNNIC, said on its Web site. “CNNIC forecasts
that (China) will become the largest online country in 2008,” it said.

The U.S. Census Bureau said last year that about 218 million of the country’s 310 million people used the Internet.

China promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to
block the public from seeing material deemed pornographic or that
opposes communist rule.

This latest figure only consolidates the fact that China is a very ripe market for web hosting.
With a population of 1,323,128,240 [over 1.3 billion], China currently
ranks as the most populous country in the world with the USA coming 3rd
after India. China’s current population is 19.83% of the world’s total
population whilst that of the USA is 4.55%. Economists are predicting
that China and India would be the world’s next super-powers in as soon
as ten years time, going by the strong annual economic growth the two
countries have been marking over the years.

Having realised all the above-stated points, many of the leading
dot-com companies have opened shop in China to reap from the economic
windfall: Google, Paypal, ebay, Microsoft, Yahoo etc

Now, China is not exactly a virgin market if the figures by
WebHosting.info are anything to go by. Chinese web hosts share
2,735,314 domains amongst themselves whilst Chinese ICANN-accredited
registrars have registered 3,275,345 generic domain names.

My point is simple: web hosting firms in other parts of the world
that can target a section of their marketing website at the Chinese
population stand to reap economic benefits from China’s fast-growing
Internet population. A website with a Chinese language version would be
a first step though its important to point that many educated Chinese
individuals can handle the English language fairly well.