At the end of last year, the number of Internet users in China reached 33.7 million, up 49.8 percent over the year before, says a report on China's Internet industry issued in Beijing on Tuesday.

The report, released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), says China has 12.54 million computers linked to the Internet, an increase of 40.6 percent over the same period in 2000, while China's Internet's bandwidth has increased from 2,799 M in 2000 to the current 7,679.5 M.

The report of the ninth comprehensive survey conducted by CNNIC which started in early December, covers two aspects, namely, the general development of the Internet in China and information about Chinese Internet surfers.

According to the report, China has 277,100 "www" websites, of which, 20.6 percent are Beijing-based with those based in Qinghai and Ningxia in west China accounting for only 0.2 percent. In addition, Beijing also ranks highest in terms of the number of domain names with 33.8 percent of domain names being registered by entities or individuals in Beijing.

The report shows that the proportion of female surfers continues to increase and now makes up 40 percent, and the number of surfers with low education is up, which indicates that the Internet is now coming closer to everyone.

The report also offers some interesting figures about the behavior of Chinese Internet surfers. Chinese surfers spend 8.3 hours on the Internet every week on average, the period from 8 pm to 11 pm being their prime surfing time and the major purpose of their surfing is to obtain information or to have fun.

Since 1997, CNNIC has conducted surveys on China's Internet development and released reports twice a year.

(China Daily January 16, 2002)