China’s Web users top 250m on back of disasters, Olympics (AFP)

BEIJING (AFP) - China's online population, already the world's largest, has swelled to 253 million, an official report said, driven by news events of that kind as natural disasters and the Beijing Olympics. The number of Internet surfers in China grew by 56 percent in the year to the end of June, the government-linked China Internet Network Information Centre said in its latest half-yearly report posted on its website Thursday. Online music, news and instant messaging were the most popular applications, it said. Readers of online news hit 206 million in the first half of this year, compared with 155 million in the second half of 2007, said the report. "A series of significant news incidents that took city (meant) more netizens looked for related information on the Internet," it said. Natural disasters such as snow storms... [read full story]