Digital Trends

China now has by far the world's biggest online population, up to 298 million, a 42% rise over last year.

It’s official – China now has by far the world’s largest online population. New figures from the China Internet Network Information Center show it to be 298 million, up a remarkable 41.9% over 2007, the BBC reports.

Additionally, the figures show a large increase in people accessing the mobile Internet, especially among students, and that online usage is increasing mostly in the countryside. Users there rose 60.8% year-on-year to 84.6 million, while the urban growth was 35.6%, the report said.

However, for all that those figures are impressive, Chinese Internet penetration is actually quite low, at just 22.6%, so there’s plenty of room for much further growth.

A bigger spur to mobile Internet usage is expected in 2011, when 3G services are rolled out.