China's netizens numbers crosses 500 million: Official

China's netizens' numbers crossed the 500 million, a major milestone in the world's largest web market.

China's netizens' base reached a little more than 500 million in November, last year, Gao Xinmin, the vice chairman of the Internet Society of China said at Internet Industry Annual Conference 2011 held in Beijing.

He said that according to statistics by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China's Internet penetration rate reached 37.7 per cent, up 3.4 percentage points compared to that of the end of 2010, state run People's Daily Online reported today.

The number of the Chinese households connecting with the Internet reached a little more than 155 million, up 18.6 per cent compared to that of 2010, it said.

China has 340 mobile phone netizens, accounting for about 65.5 per cent of the total Chinese netizen population, Gao said. China has nearly a billion mobile phone users fetching a revenue of about USD 90 billion.

Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, saw its members exceed 300 million by the end of last year. That's a figure that exceeds the entire population of many countries, state-run CCTV said in its report. Weibo has nearly doubled in size within a period of six months last year, with 132 million new members registered. It counts over 10 thousand government organisations as its members too.

So much so it has emerged as an alternative media challenging the might of the official media. The government has already initiated measures to crackdown on its users. New rules stipulate that all users should register with their real identity.

The surge in internet users was also spurred by an increasing demand for e-commerce services. Some 173 million Chinese shoppers spent nearly 3 trillion yuan online in the first half of last year. They're expected to spend more than double that amount for the whole of 2011.

Li Guoqing, expert from Report Writing Group of China said: "Online shipping for small towns and counties are growing very fast in both number of users and dollar amount. Main reason could be that its not convenient to buy books or cheap stuff".