China surpasses US as largest online nation

Although China is one of the world's most populous nations, until recently it lagged behind the US in terms of its online population. That changed in February however, when the country's population online reached 221 million.

Even with the jump ahead of the US, China still lags behind the worldwide average in terms of a percentage of its population. At the end of 2007, that number stood at about 16 percent, versus a worldwide average of 19.1 percent.

The numbers were released by the Ministry of Information Industry, and was reported by state media on Thursday. Analysts said that the number of online Chinese could number 280 million by the end of the year.

Certainly, the surge in Internet usage has presented the government with some interesting problems considering it prefers to keep a tight hold on the dissemination of information.

The decentralized structure of the Internet and the Web in particular make it difficult to control, although the government has called for "purification" of the Internet.