China's six most wired provinces -- namely Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong and Zhejiang -- are home to only 24.5 percent of the nation's total population, but claimed 61 percent of China's total Internet users in 1999.

A dramatic 995 percent increase in Shanghai's Internet user base raised its share of China's total Internet population from 4.34 percent to 11.21 percent in a year's time, and helped Shanghai regain the third most-wired position after Beijing and Guangdong among China's 31 provinces.

The central provinces of Hunan and Hubei saw the second and fourth fastest growth in the nation. Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province in North China ranked the third and fifth in user base growth rates.

The southern province of Guangdong--the second most wired province by the size of its Internet user base--recorded a user growth of 162 percent, the lowest increase among all China's 31 provinces. The slowed growth in Guangdong meant the southern province lost eight percentage points of its share of the nation's total base number of Internet users. Beijing saw the second largest drop in growth among the 31 provinces, dropping 2.69 percentage points of its overall share of the nation's Internet user base.

Wired West?

Most of China's outlying Western provinces are among the slowest when it comes to Internet user growth. Except Chongqing, Yunnan, and Tibet, all other North- and Southwestern provinces saw their shares of the national Internet user base shrink, while percentage shares of the total user base among central and Northeastern provinces increased.

The central province of Hunan saw the second fastest growth in the nation. Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province in the North ranked third and fourth in user base growth. The Eastern provinces of Anhui and Jiangxi were far behind their neighbors, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian in adoption of the Internet.

Despite the exponential growth over the 1997-1999 period, Internet penetration in China remains at less than 1 percent of the nation's total population. But it's worth noting the regional distinctions. Beijing has the highest Internet penetration, with 17.4 percent of its residents online in 1999. Shanghai and Tianjin, another two of China's four municipalities with provincial status, had Internet penetration rates of 7.6 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.

Excluding the Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin Municipalities, Guangdong Province has the highest Internet-penetration rate, with 1.6 percent of its total population of 71 million people--including rural residents--going online in 1999; Guangdong was followed by the Northeastern province of Liaoning with a penetration rate less than 1 percent. Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, and Shandong, in the coastal East China region, are all ranked high on the list for Internet penetration.

The table below shows the strong correlation between GDP per capita and Internet uptake in China's provinces.

Other factors likely to have affected the 1999 penetration rankings are:

1. Provincial Internet infrastructure: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong have been taking the lead in this aspect.
2. The effectiveness of promotional and educational campaigns by local telecom authorities and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and even the relationship of cooperation or competition between telecom administrations and independent ISPs.
3. Number of national-reach or local-focused portals/content Web sites in the province.
4. Percentage of provincial population with a higher education, and the cultural heritage and tradition the population inherits.
5. The number of institutions of higher education a province hosts and the number of students enrolled.

The January 2000 CNNIC survey shows that students accounted for 21 percent of China's 8.9 million Internet users, and 84 percent of total users had, or were currently studying toward, a university diploma or degree. Putting these figures together I know that 17.64 percent--one in six of China's Internet users--were university students. It is apparent that the university campuses have the densest Internet population in China. Among China's 4.13 million full-time students, approximately 35 percent had gone online by the end of 1999.

We don't have the raw data from the CNNIC survey for cross-tabulation analysis; still, with a combination of the publicized information from CNNIC and relevant statistics from the State Statistics Bureau, we can make a very conservative estimate of the number of fresh university graduates in the years 1997-1999 who went online by the end of 1999. I conclude that a range betwebetweenen 30 and 50 percent of those new university graduates had gone online. This analysis justifies the strategy adopted by many Chinese Web operators who target the university student audience: today they are China's most receptive adopters of the Internet, tomorrow they're potential online customers.

INTERNET USER PROFILES

A typical Chinese Internet user is male (79 percent), single (64 percent), aged 30 and below (78 percent), and university-educated (84 percent). This demographic showed no significant changes in the 1997-1999 period except that female Internet users increased dramatically from 15 percent just six months prior to 21 percent at the end of 1999. More people logged on to the Internet mainly from their home (50 percent vs. 37 percent from work), and the number of individuals who paid their Internet access charges themselves (instead having them paid for by their work units) increased to 59 percent from 46 percent six-months before.

It is believed that a majority of China Internet users are major city dwellers. About the same time CNNIC's survey went online, China Mainland Information Company, a China Statistics Bureau (CSB) subsidiary, conducted a survey among the residents of China's 14 major cities. The China Mainland results showed residents of those major cities surveyed earned on average a per capita monthly income of 821 yuan (about US$82) in 1999, which is 68 percent higher than the 488 yuan income that is the national average figure for urban residents, according to the CSB. A comparison of the CNNIC survey results with the China Mainland survey results clearly shows that more than half of China's Internet users were among those who earned an above average monthly income. (see table below).

It should be noted that in Chinese tradition an unmarried youth is not regarded as a single household even if he or she lives in different city, for study or work, from where his/her parents dwell. This fact explains why the very low percentage of low-income earners among China's Internet users, even students--the no-income earners--accounted for 21 percent of the total users.

Another point I would like to make is that the Chinese standard of living, when termed by the Purchase Power Parity (PPP), can be much higher than it is in the U.S. dollar term. The 1999 Gallup Survey of Chinese Consumer Attitudes and Lifestyles revealed per capita annual income for China's urban residents in China's ten major cities were US$2,670 (PPP).

IV. THE INDUSTRY AND OCCUPATION OF EMPLOYMENT