ABSTRACT
The rise of information and communication technologies (ICT) in China since the early 1990s has been exponential. From February 2008, according to BDA China,1 the number of Chinese Internet users has become the largest in the world. Over half of these Internet users have broadband. China also has the largest group of mobile phone users, reaching 574.63 million in March 2008.2
The number of Chinese using instant messaging systems has more than doubled in the past few years. By the end of 2007, Chinese blogs (online personal diaries) numbered more than 47 million.3 The new information technology has also reached China’s hinterland. Almost every county (and indeed many towns and villages) now has broadband. Internet cafés with high-speed connections are ubiquitous and cheap even in remote towns. Fixed-line Internet access is still uncommon in rural homes, but in many parts of the countryside it is possible to surf the Internet at landline modem speeds using a mobile handset.
