CNNIC Report: 27.9% Of Chinese Netizens Live In Rural Areas

China Internet Network Information Center's latest Internet statistics showcase the breadth of the country's online population.

Its recently published 36th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China states that by June 2015, China had 668 million netizens, representing an increase of 18.94 million netizens over the past six months.

At the same time, China's Internet penetration reached 48.8%, an increase of 0.9% compared with the end of 2014. The overall netizen scale growth continued to slow down.

According to the report, the number of netizens in Chinese rural areas reached 186 million, accounting for 27.9% of total netizens in the country, and it marked an increase of eight million compared with the end of 2014. Meanwhile, the Internet penetration in urban areas and rural areas were 64.2% and 30.1%, respectively.

By June 2015, China's mobile netizen scale reached 594 million, an increase of 36.79 million compared with six months ago. The ratio of people who use mobile phones to surf the Internet increased from 85.8% in December 2014 to 88.9%.

The report also pointed out that by June 2015, China had 22.31 million domain names, including 12.25 million .cn domain names. At the same time, there were 3.57 million websites in China, an increase of 6.6% over half year ago.

During the first half of 2015, Chinese netizens' average surfing hours per week were 25.6 hours, decreasing by 0.5 hour compared with end of 2014.