China's digital and online communities are the world's leading users of mobile communication, instant messaging (IM) and web 2.0 applications, according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The report, entitled "China's Digital Generations: The 570-Million-Hour Opportunity", analyzed the rapid surge in the use of digital services in China, predicted the speed and direction of future growth, and showed what companies would have to do in order to successfully connect to China's online consumers. In the course of this, BCG, the global management consulting firm and the world's leading advisor on business strategy, also dispelled a number of myths that surround the Chinese Internet.

"Many people in the West think that China is still early in its digital development. In fact, in many activities such as IM and blogging, China is more advanced than the United States and other Western economies," said Christoph Nettesheim, one of the report's co-authors and a senior partner and managing director in BCG's Beijing office.

Today, China's Internet users do not only outnumber Internet users in the United States, with 2.7 hours daily-or, collectively, just under 570 million hours per day-they also spend more time online.

They are quicker in adopting the most advanced kind of services such as watching videos and movies, playing games and sharing music. Where most American netizens still rely on emails to communicate with each other, their Chinese counterparts use IM and web 2.0 applications.

The magnitude and speed of these developments, according to the report, have outpaced the common understanding about digital life in China.

In 2007 alone, more than 80 million Chinese acquired their first mobile phone, and nearly 40 million became new Internet users. With this influx of new digital consumers, China now has more than half a billion mobile phone subscribers and 210 million Internet users.

Also contrary to common belief, this trend is not restricted to young people in large cities. It already extends far into other segments and into lower city tiers. Even in many smaller cities, more than half of the population already has access to a computer, a mobile phone, or both.

On the other hand, lower overall penetration, especially in rural areas, will ensure continued growth for years to come.

BCG estimated that the proportion of Chinese consumers with digital access could increase to 87 percent by 2015.

The report is a product of an extensive research project where the group interviewed 3,700 people from 12 cities and conducted eight focus groups.

The research also shed light on why Chinese netizens were behaving differently from their Western counterparts.

The quick adoption of fairly advanced services, for example, is in part driven by the relatively slower development and less variety of more tradition media, said BCG.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games do not have to replace game consoles, but bring the whole genre to China. Conversely, Chinese consumers are slower in embracing online shopping and electronic banking, because trust issues and concerns about security are more entrenched.

In the course of this research, three generations of digital users in China emerged. The first is "little emperors"-people aged 14 through 25 are often Internet addicts, yet they are critical about the quality of much Internet content.