The United States has just fallen to China in that whole I-have-more-people-on-the-internet-than-you battle. Because according to numbers* by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the country now has 253 million people online-that’s 30 million more than we have in the United States. And by 2012, China expects that number to swell all the way to 490 million.
Just in case you’ve forgotten the massiveness of China’s population, that 253 million person figure represents only 19% of their population. Meanwhile, US numbers show that 71% of its citizens access the internet.
* The dark irony, of course, is that the new largest internet-using body of people are seeing a censored internet. It should be noted, however, that some progress has been promised in this area with the coming Olympic games. [BBC]
