Penetration rate of internet users in China 2006-2016

About This Statistic

The graph shows the internet penetration rate in China until December 2016. As of 2013, about 46 percent of the Chinese population had used the internet. The penetration rate denotes the share of the population that has access to a certain communication medium.

Internet penetration in China – additional information

According to the graph at hand, the share of internet users in China’s total population had reached nearly 48 percent as of end 2014. For comparison, the worldwide average internet penetration rate had resided at about 42 percent as of January 2015. The internet penetration in China had also been above the average rate in the Asia-Pacific countries.

Over the past decade, the number of internet users in China has grown at a remarkable pace. By the end of 2014, the total volume of internet users in China had amounted to approximately 650 million, an increase by 31 million users compared to the previous year.

Apart from extended access to broadband internet connections, mobile internet took up a large share in internet user growth. As of 2014, the share of users accessing the internet via mobile device had exceeded the share of those going online via desktop in China. About 86 percent of Chinese internet users accessed to the web via mobile phone.

However, neighbor countries such as Japan and South Korea had displayed substantially higher internet penetration rates than China. Internet usage in China had faced a large regional disparity. As of 2014, eastern coastal areas like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Zhejiang had an internet penetration of over 60 percent, whereas some of the remote western regions had shown penetration rates of below 30 percent.