Online payment apps like Alipay and WeChat Pay are popular in almost every Chinese city, offering convenience to both businesses and consumers. [For China Daily/Bao Xinguo]

 

The 6th World Internet Conference kicked off on October 20 and will run through October 22 in Wuzhen, China's Zhejiang Province. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of the internet and also the 25th anniversary of China's access to the internet.

With 25 years of rapid development, China has quickly become an internet giant.

Let's see some of the country's major development achievements in cyberspace over the past 25 years.

The number of Chinese netizens jumped to the top spot in the world in 2008, with internet users totaling 245 million by June of that year.

1 China's internet users jumps to the top spot

By the end of 2018, the number of internet users broke 829 million, with new internet users for that year reaching 56.53 million and internet users by cellphone reaching 817 million.

In June 2019, the number of internet users in China hit 854 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

2 China domain '.cn' becomes world's largest

The number of top-level domains using Chinese code ".cn" reached 21.24 million by the end of 2018, No 1 worldwide for country and regional domain names over the past three years. Also about 1.72 million domain names use the Chinese characters ".涓?浗", meaning China.

3 China's internet availability surpasses worldwide rate

By the end of 2018, China's internet availability rate was 50.6 percent and the proportion of internet users by cellphone reached 98.6 percent, figures surpassing the world's level.

In June 2019 the country's internet availability rate reached 61.2 percent, the China Internet Network Information Center said.

4 Digital economy is one-third of GDP

In 2018, China's digital economy hit 31.3 trillion yuan, accounting for 34.8 percent of the country's GDP.

5 E-commerce on the rise

The turnover of China's e-commerce surged to 31.63 trillion yuan in 2018 from 2008's 3.14 trillion yuan, and online retail turnover increased from 0.13 trillion to 9 trillion yuan over those 10 years.

The spread of the internet promotes the country's e-commerce to rise, and also facilitates new driving forces for economic growth.

6 Chinese internet firms spring up

A number of Chinese internet firms came to the fore over the past 25 years including Sina, Netease, Sohu, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Jinri Toutiao, Meituan and Didi Chuxing.

7 China's information infrastructure quantum leap

A 5G-based remote driving system is one of the new experiences at this year's Light of the Internet Expo. [For China Daily/Gao Erqiang]

 

China's information infrastructure has improved fast, going from 2G to 5G, building the world's largest fixed fiber network and 4G network, deploying internet Protocol version 6 and establishing a space-earth integration network.

8 Core technologies see breakthroughs

China has made breakthroughs on some core internet technologies.

Basic general technology development is in a race to catch up with the rest of the world, including integrated circuit and operating system. At the same time, cutting-edge technology research is accelerating, including artificial intelligence, big data and Internet of Things. Moreover, a major breakthrough has been made in quantum communication and high-performance computing.

9 Chinese people's lives changed by internet

The internet changes Chinese people's daily life, satisfying many different demands. Traveling without cash, ridesharing and shooting short videos to share with friends have become an essential part of young Chinese people's lifestyle.

 

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)