Untitled - socium.ge

The Internet in China 1057060504030201001997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003Concentration of users in Beijing, Shanghai, and GuangdongConcentration of .cn domain names in Beijing, Shanghai, and GuangdongConcentration of www websites (.cn, .com, .org, .net) in Beijing,Shanghai, and GuangdongSource: CNNIC Survey Reports on China’s Internet Development (October 1997–January 2003)Figure 4.1The concentration of Internet resources in the core region ofBeijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong Province“entertainment” are the top two reasons people go online in China. The mostfrequently used online services are e-mail (92.6 percent), search engine (68.3percent), chat (45.4 percent), and uploading/downloading software (45.3percent). Of the online information accessed, 81 percent are in Chinese and 71percent are domestic. Similarly, an independent survey conducted by theChinese Academy of Social Sciences (Guo, 2003) found that users spent 80percent of their online time viewing domestic websites, 13 percent timebrowsing Chinese websites outside China, and 6 percent time reading foreignlanguage content on websites outside the country.Most users (63 percent) access the Internet from their homes, 43 percentfrom offices, and 20 percent from Internet cafés. 18 Although broadband andwireless services have started to gain momentum in diffusion, the most robustgrowth was in Internet cafés. Only 3 percent of users accessed the Net fromcybercafés in January 1999; the figure surged to 21 percent in January 2001.Since then the percentage has dropped to 15 percent and 17 percent probablybecause of restrictive state policies, especially after a fire in a Beijing cybercafékilled 25 people in June 2002. 19 Yet CNNIC still reported that 20 percentof users visited Internet cafés in January 2003.Besides these official survey results, my fieldwork in south, west, andcentral China suggests the plausibility of continued cybercafé diffusiondespite the national crackdown. Restraining state measures indeed devastatedmany small, private Internet cafés in metropolitan areas, but the effects havebeen less serious on large netbar chain stores with support from local authoritiesor underground operations outside urban centers. Internet cafés are most