A few weeks ago, the China Internet Network Information Center (a Chinese government affiliated agency) released information saying that there are now 591 million Internet users in China. That's almost twice the entire United States population, but represents slightly less than half of China's population. Some other interesting tidbits of information from a Bloomberg Business Week article discussing some of the effects of this massive online migration are:
464 million of the 591 million Chinese netizens don't generally use computers to access the Internet. Instead, they use smartphones. One of the positive aspects of this is that many Chinese on the lower middle class end of the economic scale now have Internet access through their cellphones.
Of course, the vast majority of Chinese Internet users only have access to a limited portion of the whole Internet since the Chinese government blocks many popular foreign websites (Facebook, Twitter, most foreign blogs, etc.). In addition to the goal of censorship, this also gives a huge benefit to Chinese online businesses over foreign ones. But I guess if Chinese people are mostly interested in chatting (in Chinese with other Chinese people) and online dating (with other Chinese people), they probably don't care much about (or aren't even aware of) what they're missing. Instead, like most people anywhere, Chinese people are primarily concerned with how they can use Internet technology in practical ways that affect their individual lives.
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