[Updated in Jan 2022]
China continues to wow the world with rapid growth in Internet adoption and Internet related business activities. From the 2020 release of the "47th statistical report on the development of Internet in China" from China's Internet Network Information Center, we have picked 10 statistics and turned them into an infographic.
They give you some insights into the current affairs of the Internet in China and business opportunities, particularly in mobile Internet, including the development of 5G technology. As of December 2020:
- Almost 1 billion people have internet access in China, and 99.7% of them connect to the internet via a mobile device, resulting in fast-growth in an already strong and enormous mobile app market in the country.
The number of worldwide internet users is about 4.66 billion, making Chinese internet users account for 19.5% of the world’s total. - 1.289 billion of the internet subscribers in China use 4G mobile internet, the number of mobile device users who use 4G has increased from 29.6% to 80.8%, which is much higher than the global average. Commercial deployment of 5G made solid progress in 2020, with more than 718,000 base stations built nationwide, with more than 200 million terminal connections.
- Almost 800 million people in China make online purchases, accounting for roughly 80% of China’s internet population. There are 2 billion people in the world who made at least one purchase online in 2020, and Chinese buyers make up for 38% of the total.
- Since 2013, China has become the largest online retail market in the world for eight consecutive years. Online retail sales nationwide reached ¥11.76 trillion ($1.8 trillion) in 2020. Livestreaming e-Commerce has become very popular among Chinese consumers, 66.2% of them have made a purchase while watching a livestream event.
- The number of mobile payment users in China reached 853 million, making up 86.5% of total mobile phone users. About 1.17 billion people in the world have made mobile payments, Chinese users account for a staggering 72.9% of global mobile payment users.
- The number of online video users (including short videos) in China reached 927 million, accounting for 93.7% of the total Internet users. Among them, short video users reached 873 million, accounting for 88.3% of the total netizens.
- Approximately 981 million people have used instant messaging services to communicate in China, accounting for 99.2% of the total netizens. The number of mobile instant messaging users has reached 978 million, accounting for 99.3% of mobile Internet users. WeChat is the most popular instant messaging app in China.
- Online game users have reached 518 million, accounting for 52.4% of total netizens. And 52.4% of Chinese internet users (516 million) play video games on their cell phones. In 2020, the actual sales revenue of China’s mobile game market reached ¥209.67 billion ($32.43 billion).
- The number of online travel booking users in China reached 342 million, accounting for 34.6% of total internet users.
- The number of people who work remotely in China reached 346 million, accounting for 34.9% of the total internet users. About 22.8% of meetings was conducted via video call or teleconference, online document collaboration was 21.2%, online task management or approval process was 11.6%, and enterprise cloud storage was 9.4%.
To learn more about succeeding in the China, check out our other articles.
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