The 49th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China, published on 25 February by the China Internet Network Information Centre, puts the number of internet users at 1.032 billion as of December 2021 — up 42.96 million from a year earlier — for a penetration rate of 73.0%.
The infrastructure underneath
Domain names totalled 35.93 million, IPv6 address blocks grew 9.4% year on year, and IPv6 carried 35.15% of mobile network traffic. The country had 1.425 million 5G base stations in service, 654,000 of them added during the year. More than 150 industrial internet platforms with national reach connect over 76 million devices, and more than 2,000 5G-plus-industrial-internet projects are under construction.
Who is online
The urban-rural gap keeps narrowing: every administrative village now has broadband, rural users number 284 million with 57.6% penetration, up 1.7 points, and the urban-rural gap narrowed by 0.2 points. Older users are coming online faster too — 119 million people aged 60 and above, with penetration at 43.2%.
Weekly time online per user reached 28.5 hours, up 2.3 hours year on year, and 99.7% of users go online by phone.
Instant messaging is effectively universal: 97.5% of users, or 1.007 billion people. Online video reaches 94.5% (975 million) and short video 90.5% (934 million). The fastest growth is in work and health: online office users reached 469 million, up 35.7%, and online medical users 298 million, up 38.7% — the two fastest-growing application categories of the year.
Republished for information. The original text has not been independently verified and does not necessarily reflect our views.
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