"More netizens are attracted to online shopping, despite strong reservations on safety, quality and billing," said Wang Juntao, president of 8848.com, adding that the new style of shopping has spread from large cities to medium and small towns, and that household net shoppers are increasing.

A recent survey by the government-funded China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that 73.9 percent of Internet users “sometimes” or “always” surf e-commerce websites while only 2.8 percent of users say they had never visited such websites.

CNNIC, the most authoritative data collector on the Chinese Internet industry, released the survey result yesterday.

Already among the world's top five, China's Internet population hit 26.5 million at the end of June. The latest official statistics reported the figure was 16.9 million in 2000 and only 8.9 million a year earlier.

Netizens between the ages of 18 and 30 remain the driving force, but this age group's share of the whole community dropped steeply from 91 percent in 1998 to 52.9 percent at the end of June.

This decrease was attributed to the steady growth in numbers of adults 35 and older, the report, released twice a year, said.

Meanwhile, netizens' attitudes towards the Internet are changing as they now exploit the Net not just for news, but for entertainment and business as well.

CNNIC reported that 31.9 percent of the Internet users bought online in the past year and that books, computer-related products are hot commodities.

However, most of the netizens are confident about China's e-commerce future. About 60.5 percent of the Internet users think the most prospective course about Internet in future is online shopping

When asked "when China will see popular online buying," about 79 percent of people said it will be within five years.

The study was based on 78,300 online questionnaires and 4,828 sample telephone calls.

The CNNIC began to release information on the Internet users, as a whole, in 1997.

(CIIC 07/18/2001)