Jan 24
BEIJING — China is on pace to surpass the United States within two years as the nation with the most Internet users, the government and news reports said Wednesday.
China’s online population grew by 23.4 per cent last year to 137 million people, about 10 per cent of its 1.3 billion population, the China Internet Network Information Center reported on its website.
“We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the United States,” the official China Daily newspaper quoted an official of the agency, Wang Enhai, as saying.
About 210 million of the United States’ 300 million people are online, according to the U.S. government. China would reach 210 million users in two years if it keeps up a 24 per cent annual growth rate.
