China's online population, already the world's largest, has swelled to 253 million, an official report said, driven by news events such 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 on 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 place (meant) more netizens looked for related information on the Internet," it said.
Natural disasters such as snow storms during the Lunar New Year holiday and the earthquake that hit Sichuan province in May were huge news events online, along with news of the Olympics that start on August 8. People younger than 30 accounted for 69 percent of total Internet users, the report found, adding that 29 percent of users accessed the Internet with mobile phones, reflecting the rapid growth of cellphone subscribers to 601 million at the end of June.
The report said that with 19 percent of the 1.3 billion population accessing the Internet, China lagged the global average of 21 percent.
While the fast-growing online population has made the Internet a new forum for Chinese to express opinions in a manner rarely seen on the strictly government-controlled traditional media, the communist government does attempt to keep tight controls on how it is used. President Hu Jintao called last year for efforts to "purify" the Internet, and in March the authorities introduced a licensing system in the online video service sector in the latest example of tightened government control.