BEIJING – China now has more than a billion internet users, a government agency said on Friday, while Alibaba Group Holding attracts more countries in the world with more population, with services ranging from shopping to payment of invoices.
China had 1.01 million Internet users in June, 8% more than the previous year, to over 1 billion for the first time, according to China’s Internet Network Information Center. Internet penetration increased to 71.6%.
As online services become an element of Chinese daily life, expanding the reach and influence of the technology sector, President Xi Jinping is overseeing the repression of the country’s technology sector as its influence increases.
A new data security law will come into force in September, strengthening oversight of how digital data is managed, followed by a data privacy law in November. Developments have made the prospects for digital services more difficult to predict.
The growth of China’s Internet population over the past year has fueled much of the consumers who stayed home due to the pandemic, which made them more dependent on e-commerce, mobile payments and other online services.
Online shipping services increased by 15%, to 468 million users, meaning that almost half of Internet users have searched for them. Passenger services experienced a 17% growth in users to 396 million.
Video streaming platforms such as Douyin, the national ByteDance version of TikTok, expanded 6% to 943 million users. Live broadcast viewers grew 13% to 637 million.
Meanwhile, the number of online shoppers rose 8% to 812 million. Electronic payment services, a field dominated by Alibay of Alibaba and WeChat Pay of Tencent Holdings, also expanded 8%, to 872 million users.