More than 15 million - 02/2001

More than 15 million people aged five and above are connected to the Internet in mainland China, according to the latest figures from iamasia.

Internet penetration is now at 7 percent of the Chinese urban population. Penetration is far higher in Hong Kong at 34 percent (2.2. million) and Taiwan at 31 percent (6.4 million).

However, the figures show that China is slowly catching up with Hong Kong-during the six months between Q2 and Q4 last year, the number of Internet users in China increased by 15.4 percent, while Hong Kong recorded growth of just 9.7 percent.

In mainland China, where many households do not have PCs, 39 percent of Internet users surf the web from work and 35 percent log on from Internet cafs. In Hong Kong, the vast majority (84 percent) of web users connect to the Net from home, while only a quarter do so from work. Meanwhile, 40 percent of Taiwanese Internet users go online from school.

Other figures from the iamasia survey reveal that ecommerce penetration remains low across the region-only 13 percent of Hong Kong web users have purchased goods or services online, followed by China and Taiwan at 10 percent each.

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