Historical Development of the Internet in China
Zixue Tai · 2007
During the past decade China has fostered an impressive telecommunications industry with the potential to become the world’s leading communication market in both its user base and investment prospects. Leading the latest growth in China’s telecommunications market have been the Internet and wireless communications (e.g., see Wong and Nah, 2001 for an overview). By the end of 2001, China surpassed the United States to become the world’s biggest mobile telecom market, and as of the end of May 2002, mobile phone users in China reached 170 million, standing far ahead of any other country.1 By the end of August 2005, mobile phone users rose to 372.8 million, according to the statistics released by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).2 But as a market report by USB AG, a Swiss investment bank, indicates, the official statistics may be inflated because there is an emerging business culture among Chinese entrepreneurs to have more than one cell phone, and the official statistic only reflects the actual number of cell phones in use, which may be higher than the number of cell phone users.3 Nevertheless, that does not change the fact that the diffusion of cell phones has been on a fast track and that China boasts the most cell phone users in the world. Meanwhile, its fixed phone users totaled 190 million by the end of March 2002, roughly equaling the number of fixed phone population in the United States at the time.4 As of August 2005, fixed line phone users rose to 342.3 million.5