In January, CNNIC, the organization that administers the Chinese portion of the Internet, released its 21st Statistical Survery Report. This was a big deal because it included the startling fact that at the end of 2007 China had a whopping 210 million Internet users, representing 53% year-on-year growth. This was duly reported far and wide.

In fact, at the beginning of 2007 there had been a bout of similar stories when, at the release of the 19th Statistical Survey Report (there are two a year), a CNNIC official had projected that China would overtake the US sometime in 2009. That was when China had a paltry 137 million Internet users.

Fast forward to March, 2008. We're all teleporting to work and wearing spandex body suits. Also, Nielsen Netratings says the US has about 212 million Internet users. Actually, this is a 2007 number, representing a big 2.1% leap over 2005, the prior year on the table. Even if those figures are from the beginning 2007, that would put the US at about 214 million now, assuming a consistent growth rate. Let's take 215 million as the optimistic upper limit since that's also the number hinted at by the Wall Street Journal.

Looking at CNNIC's figures, China has been adding about six million Internet users a month. The latest report isn't out in English, but the Chinese version shows that adoption has actually been accelerating (1.3MB PDF - see page 10), so I think we can go with the 6m.

So today China should have at least 222 million Internet users, and officially be number one. In fact, this is more or less what CNNIC predicted in the press release linked to in the first paragraph above. I am pretty surprised that CNNIC hasn't put out a triumphal press release announcing this very thing. Perhaps it will materialize during the National People's Congress, which is going on this week and next. It seems like the kind of feel-good announcement that plays well before big, political shindigs.

In which case, let me steal CNNIC's thunder by being the first to congratulate China. You're number one. Imagethief blows you a kiss.

Now let's see about getting some of your sites up into Alexa's global top ten. If you're going to be number one, you can't very well settle for having your top two sites rate twentieth (Baidu) and thirty fifth (QQ) respectively, even allowing for the popularity of English. 

A big hand for China's Internet users, please