China’s number of Internet users - already the world’s largest - rose to 450 million this year, more than a third of the country’s population, a senior official said on Thursday.
Official statistics show that the number of users, as of the end of November, is an increase of 20.3 percent compared to last year, Wang Chen, head of China’s State Council Information Office, told a news conference. China’s population is more than 1.3 billion.
China’s boom in Internet usage has come with the growth of an equally extensive policing system, from technical filters that block sites based on certain words to human monitors who scan bulletin boards and micro-blogging posts for political dissent.
Chinese authorities investigated nearly 2,200 criminal cases, and courts handed down sentences in 1,164 cases, he said. More than 1,300 people were punished by the courts, while 58 people were given more than five years of prison time.
Much of China’s online growth has come as more people access the Internet through their mobile phones using popular services that support video and other Web products. A report earlier this year by the China Internet Network Information Centre said about 277 million people get online with their phones.
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