According to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Centre, the  number of Internet users in China has reached 210 million at the end of 2007.

This represents a 53 percent growth compared to 2006, when China has registered only 137 million Internet users.

CNNIC said that during 2007 China saw an increase of 25 million Internet users in the first half of the year, while 48 million new Internet went online during the second half of 2007.

According to CNNIC’s statistics the growth was fueled especially by users under 18 and over 30 and bout 40 percent of users added over the last year, over 29 million, came from rural areas.

In a press briefing, Liu Bing, director of the center's Internet Development and Research Department, said that China is likely to have 285 million netizens by the end of this year and it will surpass to surpass the 215 million mark, held by the United States.

China now has 163 million broadband users and 50.4 million mobile Internet users, but the penetration rate is 16 percent, still below the global average of 19.1 percent.

Also, CNNIC revealed that the China’s most popular Internet application is online music (181 million users or 86.6 percent), closely followed by Instant messaging (170 million users or 81 percent). Video (76.9 percent), news (73.6 percent) and searches (72.4 percent) have also ranked high in the list of favorite uses of the Internet in China.

In addition, there are 120 million online gamers (59,3 percent), while only 118 million users have ranked e-mail as their favorite application.

"The email use rate in China has been on the decline. Instead, many people have opted for IM services, which have become better, and replaced the function of emails to a certain degree," said a center official, Wang Enhai, for China Daily.

Chinese net users spent an average of 16.2 hours online every week in 2007, slightly below that in the previous year because a vast number of new netizens are short-time surfers.