People buy Apple products at Apple’s new flagship store on its opening day following an outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Sanlitun, Beijing, China on July 17, 2020.
Thomas Peter | Reuters
BEIJING: New data shows the extent to which the Chinese connected to the network after the coronavirus pandemic and adopted new habits, such as live shopping.
By the end of 2020, China had 989 million Internet users, according to data released Wednesday by the government agency China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
That rose by 85.4 million from March, just after the worst outbreak of coronavirus in China that forced hundreds of millions of Chinese to spend more time indoors.
For an idea of the scale of the internet population of nearly one billion Chinese, its advantage over the estimated 639 million internet users in India is 350 million, which is greater than all the American population.
The government report also showed that after China’s worst outbreak ended in April, some online trends were trapped, while others were not.
The report said that between March and the end of the year 72.15 million more people were shopping online, mainly with mobile phones, and reached 782 million.
There were also more people spending more money and working more and more from home.
The report said the proportion of Internet users with monthly income of at least 5,001 yuan ($ 774) rose to 29.3% in December, from 27.6% in March.
The number of people working remotely increased from 147 million in June to 346 million in December, about a third of the country’s internet users.
More people watch short videos than buy online
As significant growth was in online shoppers, video viewing increased further (76.33 million in nine months) to 927 million in December.
This means that almost 94% of all Chinese internet users watched videos online, far more than the 79% who bought online.
Short video users alone rose 100 million in March to 873 million at the end of the year.
Live e-commerce users also rose, from 123 million in March to 388 million in December. About two-thirds of those users made a purchase while watching a live stream, according to the report.
Online healthcare users are falling
Although online learning and medical consultation experience experienced significant growth during the coronavirus outbreak, use declined in December.
Online education users stood at 342 million, 81.25 million less than the 423 million of the March total.
Online healthcare users fell to 215 million, below the 276 million the agency had reported in June. March figures were not available.
Wednesday’s report noted that the penetration of online health care in the less developed parts of China increased from June to about a fifth in December.