Thursday, April 20, 2006
China’s Internet Craze
by from BeijingI first came to China in the fall of 2002 on a study abroad trip to Chongqing, a city in southwest China on the banks of the Yangtze River. Throughout the course of the semester, we studied and learned, not so much in a classroom sense, but more through the experience of being dropped in a city of 30 million people on the other side of the world. Throughout this time, one of our main sources of information about back home, and the rest of the world outside Chongqing, was the Internet.
At that time, it was uncommon for Chinese people to have Internet access in their homes, so most of the access came from Internet cafes. The Internet cafes were often full of Chinese students chatting with friends, playing games and surfing the net 24 hours a day. I remember going to an Internet cafe at 2 AM with some of my classmates in order to register online for our next semester classes, and we had trouble finding one that wasn’t full.
It’s been three and a half years since then and Internet cafes are still just about everywhere in China. According to a story by CNN, the number of Internet users in China is now estimated at 110 million, second only to the United States. Internet usage is becoming easier and easier for the average Chinese person to access. Internet cafes are cheap and welcomed in almost every neighborhood.
In addition, more Chinese people are getting Internet access in their homes. I was just at my Chinese friend’s house that consists of two rooms with a cement floor, and in the corner is a computer with Web access. Chinese people, like people all over the world, are realizing the Internet is not only helpful, but a necessity for daily life.
The increasing number of Chinese Web users is making Internet censorship more difficult for the Chinese government. China now employs over 30,000 people to patrol the Internet looking for new sites and information that needs filtering. When I first arrived in China, there were many websites that were blocked from viewing. CNN.com, for example, was an everyday stop for me back home in the states; however, in China it was inaccessible.
Today, from my own personal experience, the Internet in China is becoming less restricted every day. With the growing number of Chinese people accessing the Web, and so many new sites popping up daily, keeping up with Internet filtering seems like it will be an impossible task for the government to maintain.
