Internet in China

and Southeast Asia, 1995–2012 From 1995 to 2004, internet use in China was almost entirely in urban areas. By 2003, less than 0.2% of rural people had used the internet. China began implementing a National Broadband Strategy in 2013. 500 million were accessing the internet via cell phones in 2013. The number of dial-up users peaked in 2004 and since then has decreased sharply. Generally statistics on the number of mobile internet users in China show a significant slump in the growth rate between 2008 and 2010, with a small peak in the next two years. In 2015, the State Council promoted the Internet Plus initiative, a five-year plan to integrate traditional manufacturing and service industries with big data, cloud computing, and Internet of things technology. with a goal to provide domestic China satellite internet to rural areas. Beginning in 2019, US (SpaceX Starlink) and UK (OneWeb, 2020) private companies had begun fielding large internet satellite constellations with global coverage; however China does not intend to license non-Chinese technical solutions for satellite broadband within the jurisdiction of Chinese law. ==Structure==

An important characteristic of the Chinese internet is that online access routes are owned by the Chinese government, and private enterprises and individuals can only rent bandwidth from the state. The first four major national networks, namely CSTNET, ChinaNet, CERNET and CHINAGBN, are the "backbone" of the mainland Chinese internet. Later dominant telecom providers also started to provide internet services. China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile control operate the internet exchange points through which incoming traffic must pass. In January 2015, China added seven new access points to the world's internet backbone, adding to the three points that connect through Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. As of 2023, the internet in China is characterized by uneven development, with the adoption rate and availability of the internet varying by region and population groups. ==Userbase==

in Lijiang City English-language media in China often use the word netizen to refer to Chinese internet users in particular. Size As of 2024, China has the largest number of internet users of any country. Demographics In the early years of China's internet, the userbase primarily consisted of young males of the elite or middle class, with higher educational and working in professional fields, located in the most developed regions and biggest cities.'''''' Over time, the demographics of Chinese internet users has developed closer to the demographics of the country as a whole. Throughout the history of the internet in China, the majority of users have been between ages 20 and 50. == Regulation ==

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is the primary agency for data regulation and content regulation. It coordinates data regulation enforcement among relevant ministries, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the State Administration for Market Regulation. It also discusses principles for developing a "community of common destiny in cyberspace." In 2020, the Xiao Zhan/227 incident, a conflict among online fan communities arising from a slash fiction novel posted on the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own, resulted in public attention and scrutiny from policymakers on the issue of hostile online communication. The Cyberspace Administration of China's Qinglang Xingdong ("Sweep-Up Campaign") began in June 2021 and sought to clean up harmful actions in fandoms such as fan wars. CAC initiated a series of policies and campaigns against "resentment and abuse, upvoting/downvoting and trolling, disinformation and name-calling, doxing, and privacy violations of online fandom communities."In 2022, the CAC issued measures and guidelines on security assessments for cross-border data transfers as part of an effort to institutionalize data transfer review mechanisms. Among other provisions, these regulations mandate the registration of algorithms with "public opinion properties" or "capacity for social mobilization". In March 2024, China's Provisions on Promoting and Regulating Cross-Border Data Flows, which CAC had issued, became effective. requiring service providers to require users to provide identity information when they obtain or use services including phone services, Internet access, and posting on social media. This marked the start of the Internet real-name system in China, in which Internet service providers and online platforms (especially user-generated content sites) are required to collect users' real names, ID numbers, and other information when providing services. In 2015, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced a Provision requiring users to sign up with their real name on internet services. The real-name system was codified in the Cybersecurity Law in 2016. Starting from 2016, use of cell phone numbers in mainland China have been required to be registered with real names. In 2017, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced regulations requiring online platforms to request and verify real names and other personal information from users when they register, leading China's largest apps to start implementing the system. In 2025, China launched the national online identity authentication system, allowing netizens to submit their personal information to receive an "Internet certificate", a unique code that can be used to verify real-name identities and access online accounts. Regulations regarding minors As a result of public outcry over parent-child online gaming conflicts, the government issued legislation in the early 2000s. In 2002, the government passed legislation which forbid Internet cafes from allowing minors. The Law on Protection of Minors was amended in 2006 to state that the family and the state should guide minors' online behavior. These amendments place "indulgence in the Internet" on par with misbehaviors like smoking and vagrancy. In 2009, the government requested that to aid parents in monitoring what children were doing on the Internet, "Green Dam Youth Escort" software be pre-installed on personal computers sold in most parts of China (excluding Special Administrative Regions). This resulted in public criticism on the basis of privacy concerns, and the government abandoned the effort after several months. The state requires online games to set limits for minors' playing time. ==Content==

According to Kaiser Kuo, the internet in China is largely used for entertainment purposes, being referred to as the "entertainment superhighway". However, it also serves as the first public forum for Chinese citizens to freely exchange their ideas. Most users go online to read news, to search for information, and to check their email. They also go to BBS or web forums, find music or videos, or download files. Messaging As of 2023, the most used internet services in China are instant messaging and mobile messaging apps. Search engines Baidu is the leading search engine in China, while most web portals also provide search opportunities like Bing and Sogou. Efforts to establish state-owned search engines in China have not succeeded. Since 2009, microblogs (weibo) have become one of the most widely used internet services in China. In Chinese internet discourse, "self-media" refers to independently operated social media accounts that produce original content and are not registered with an official media agency. Online shopping Since 2013, China is the world's largest e-commerce market. China accounted for 42.4% of worldwide retail e-commerce in that year, the most of any country.In 2019, online retail sales were 21% of China's total retail sales. In 2024 Alibaba's e-commerce platforms accounted for 36.4 percent of China's e-commerce market, a slight decrease from the previous year. In November 2025, Alibaba's profit halved in its fiscal second quarter due to competition in the food-delivery sector, but revenue growth remained steady as its artificial intelligence initiatives gained momentum, with a specific emphasis on the consumer AI space, which is one of the largest. The drop was 53% year on year to 20.99 billion yuan, while adjusted net profit dropped by about 72% to 10.35 billion yuan, which was below expectations. This slump is mostly due to intense competition and heavy spending in the food-delivery sector. Alibaba's food delivery applications include Ele.me, which introduced many discounts to gain customers. Some local governments have created e-commerce platforms in an effort to facilitate sales of local products. Furthermore, with the advent of broadband, utilizing GIS has become much faster and easier. Increasingly, non-specialist members of the public can access, look up and make use of geographic information for their own purposes. Tianditu is China's first online mapping service. Literally World Map, Tianditu was launched in late October 2010. The Chinese government has repeatedly claimed that this service is to offer comprehensive geographical data for Chinese users to learn more about the world. Online payment In 2013, Alipay overtook PayPal to become the world's largest mobile payment provider. As of January 2015, Alipay, owned by Alibaba Group has 600 million counts of users and has the largest user group among all online-payment providers. It continues to be China's largest online payment service as of at least 2023. On January 5, 2021, Trump considered banning Alipay and seven other Chinese applications, WeChat, QQ, Wallet, CamScanner, SHAREit, VMate, and WPS Office, citing national security threats. By June 2020, there were 805 million users of mobile payment in China. By June 2024, about 954 million individuals were actively using mobile payment in China. Online gaming As of 2022, China is the second largest market for online games after the United States. In 2023, the country has 668 million internet users playing online games and the industry was worth US$42 billion. 53.8% of gamers are male, 46.2% are female. In 2007, the Ministry of Culture (MoC) and General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) along with several other agencies implemented the Online Game Anti-Addiction System which aimed to stop video game addiction in youth. This system restricted minors from playing more than 3 hours a day and required Identification (ID) checking in order to verify you are of age. Later in 2019, the Chinese government announced in November that gamers under the age of 18 would be banned from playing video games between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. In addition, gamers under 18 would be restricted to 90 minutes of playing during the weekdays and 3 hours of playing during weekends and holidays as per new guidelines. As of 2021, the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) further restricted rules limiting playtime for under-18s to one hour per day from 8p.m. to 9 p.m. and only on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Online literature Censorship The Golden Shield Project was proposed to the State Council by Premier Zhu Rongji in 1993. It is overseen by the Ministry of Public Security. However, there are some methods of circumventing the censorship by using proxy servers outside the firewall. Users may circumvent all of the censorship and monitoring of the Great Firewall if they have a secure VPN or SSH connection method to a computer outside mainland China. In 2017, the Chinese government declared unauthorized VPN services illegal, requiring VPN providers to obtain state approval. Although China restricts VPNs, they remain widely used by private individuals. State-owned enterprises or state institutions also use VPNs for official work. In 2009, motivated in part by its desire to prevent color revolutions, China banned Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. It banned Google the next year. These ten hoaxes reportedly originated in response to increasing online censorship and have become an icon of Chinese internet users' resistance to it. Green Dam Girl, a satirical character, is among the Chinese memes that draws on visual elements of Japanese popular culture such as moe culture. The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued a directive on 30 March 2009 to highlight 31 categories of content prohibited online, including violence, pornography and content which may "incite ethnic discrimination or undermine social stability". Many Chinese internet users believe the instruction follows the official embarrassment over the "Grass Mud Horse" and the "River Crab". Industry observers believe that the move was designed to stop the spread of parodies or other comments on politically sensitive issues in the runup to the anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square protests. The meme "Shut up, we're discussing democracy and you do not have a say" is used in online political discourses to mock liberal democratic public intellectuals, contending that they are self-interested, ideologically intolerant, and thus hypocritical. ==Internet advertising market==

The size of China's online advertising market was RMB 3.3 billion in the third quarter 2008, up 19.1% compared with the previous quarter. Tencent, Baidu.com Inc, Sina Corp remain the Top 3 in terms of market share. Keyword advertising market size reached RMB 1.46 billion, accounting for 43.8% of the total Internet advertising market with a quarter-on-quarter growth rate of 19.3%, while that of the online advertising site amounted to RMB 1.70 billion, accounting for 50.7% of the total, up 18.9% compared with the second quarter. Currently, Baidu has launched the CPA platform, and Sina Corp has launched an advertising scheme for intelligent investment. The moves indicate a market trend of effective advertising with low cost. Online advertisements of automobiles, real estate and finance will keep growing rapidly in the future. ==See also==