China Surpasses U.S. In Internet Use writes Forbes.com

Paul Vermeulen reads a lot more than me and pointed to an amazing (or amusing) article in Forbes: China Surpasses U.S. In Internet Use. Chinese internetters are spending 2 billion hours per week online (!!!!) In the US it's 129 million hrs. According to some sources ( Dr Zhang - CEO of Sohu) there maybe even up to 200 million internet users now. The difference between these huge numbers and earlier ones is due to the fact that nobody here  measures the non fixed line traffic although millions connect through their phones. But even if it 's not 200 and only 150 mio, those who are on the net spend a lot more time than in the US. Forbes quotes Zhang :"People log onto the Internet and Sohu.com because, in China, there is no Forbes, Reuters or The Washington Post. Print media was all state-controlled and official, and the Internet filled this void." Indeed, according to the CNNIC, 67.9% of online use in China is spent devouring news, more than searching (65.7%) and e-mailing (64.7%). By contrast, only 3% of Yahoo!'s U.S. traffic clicks over to news.* Moreover, China has a lot more room to grow than the U.S. While roughly half of the U.S. population is actively using the Internet, just 11.7% of the Chinese population is currently plugged in. (.....) As cell phones increasingly become the connection of choice, you can expect China, which is a generation ahead of the U.S. in mobile technology, to lead the world in mobile Internet-access growth. And everything will hit hyperdrive over the next two years, as the country ramps up to host the summer Olympics, which are being held in Beijing in 2008."