The internet revolution has well and truly arrived in China (but political reform may take much longer):
On Dec. 26th, 2007, CNNIC published “the Survey Report on Blogs in China 2007”. According to the report, by the end of Nov. 2007, the number of blog spaces has reached 72.82 million in China, and with 47 million blog writers, it is reaching one fourth of the total netizens. This indicates the rapid growth of the blog market in China.
The survey statistics show that by the end of Nov. 2007, the number of blog spaces has reached 72.82 million in China, while that of blog writers has totaled 47 million, which means that one out of every 30 Chinese, or one out of four netizens writes blogs. Also, the active blog writers have taken up 36% of the total blog writers, approximately 17 million, and the number of valid blog spaces of the active blog users is 28.75 million.
By the end of 2006, the number of blog writers was 17.5 million, and within one year the increasement reached nearly 30 million, indicating the large-scale growth in number of the blog writer group. However, as indicated by the survey, the future growth of the blogs will slow down: 65% of the investigated said they only registered one blog, and showed little tendency to register another in half a year; only 11% of the investigated said they would definitely register a blog in the future half a year.
Chinese net users are continuing to develop innovative ways to combine social networking with practicalities:
Here’s an interesting, locally-based website that mixes up social networking with an offline service that people actually want: Ruzuo.com allows users to vote for movies that they want to watch on the big screen.
When enough people have requested a particular film, Ruzuo.com’s owners, who apparently work in the film business, get prints of the film from distributors and then arrange a screening in Beijing. Ruzuo (入座) means ‘take your seat’.