More than 20 million Chinese rely on the Internet for news

      China internet users

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has reported that more than 20 million Chinese, or 68.6% of the country's Internet users, are using the web to get their main source of news.

CASS, a top academic institution, released the figure in the Blue Book of China's Economy (2009.

Zhu Huaxin, author of the report, said that disasters such as snow storms during the Lunar New Year holiday, the massive earthquake that struck the southwestern Sichuan province in May as well as the Olympics stimulated the growth of the online news population.

He  said, 'The year 2008 saw rapid development and wide application of the Internet in China.'

At the end of June, Chinese Internet users hit 253 million, the most in the world. The latest official figures put users at 290 million. That's 80 million more Internet users than in 2007 according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
Source: China.com