The Chinese internet

Posted Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 6:34pm in PR General, Technology  | 

There’s a great piece on the Chinese (People’s Republic of China) internet in this week’s Economist which basically sums up that the Chinese internet community is a world unto itself. And it really is. We all know the internet is a global platform restricted only to those that don’t have a connection but the Chinese internet is like a new universe. Some Western internet companies, notably eBay, have tried a failed there; Google isn’t the dominant search engine either. Instead it’s Baidu, a Chinese owned search engine.

A few other interesting tidbits:

⇒ The number of Chinese internet users has reached 210 million. Up by 50 percent on the previous year.

⇒ The proportion of the total population using the internet is still low at 16 percent. This rise is expected to continue for some time surpassing the US in the process.

⇒ More than 70 percent of Chinese internet users are under 30 years of age.

⇒ The distribution of pirated films is a primary use of the internet in China.

⇒ The mobile web is huge in China. With half a billion mobile phone users, China has more subscribers than America, Japan, Germany and Britain combined.

⇒ Online multiplayer subscription games are popular. Probably due to low take up of large console makers’ (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) products.

The above points are worth noting for obvious reason. China’s population (1.3 billion) makes up one fifth of the world’s total; it’s economy is the second largest in the world when measured in purchasing power parity; it’s the fastest growing major country for the last 25 years and is one of the largest importers and exporters: second and first respectively, if memory serves me well.

It’s an emerging Superpower according to Wikipedia. Alongside India, Russia and … wait for it … the European Union (Who’d have thought?)

“And why is all this relevant to public relations?” you might ask. Well, for one thing, the media is taking off there too. It’s not the controlled media you’d expect from a communist country either. Although that does still exist. Take a read of the Wikipedia entry on the media of the People’s Republic of China. Things are a changing.

Note: I’ve been careful with my words in this post. Some websites/blogs are blocked over there when they contain certain keywords. If you google it you’ll find a list of banned words.

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