The ranks of Chinese Internet users swelled by a whopping 75 percent to 59.1 million people by the end of 2002, overtaking Japan as the world"s second-largest Web population, semi-official report revealed on Thursday.
China, already the world"s largest mobile telephone market, added 25.4 million Web surfers during the year, the China Internet Network Information Centre said in a report on its Web site www.cnnic.net.cn.
A centre spokesman said Japan, by comparison, had between 50 million and 56 million Internet users in 2002, while the United States had about 170 million.
Growth in the Chinese market remained steady throughout 2002, the report said.
In July, China,which had just 8.9 million Web surfers at the end of 1999, overtook Japan to have the world"s second most-active population of Internet users after the United States.
China accounted for 6.63 percent of global Internet traffic, well behind U.S. users who accounted for 42.65 percent, said WebSideStory Inc, a California-based supplier of Internet tracking software.