China Soon to Be World's Biggest Internet User

China could overtake the US as the country with the most internet users within two years, according to its government, which released figures showing that the nation's online population had increased to 137 million people in the last 12 months.

Statistics from the China Internet Network Information Centre show that more than a 10th of the country's 1.3 billion people now use the internet, with the figure increasing by 23.4% last year. "We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the United States," the official China Daily newspaper quoted a centre official, Wang Enhai, as saying.

About 210 million out of 300 million Americans are online - a figure China will surpass in 24 months if it keeps up this pace. "The growth is now gaining much momentum. We are expecting even faster growth in 2007 and 2008," the official was quoted as telling reporters.

The China Daily admitted that the two-year estimate for overtaking the US was "bullish", citing a recent report by JP Morgan which forecast that China's internet population would reach 190 million by 2010. But there is little doubt that the country is experiencing a breathtaking rise in internet usage, despite Beijing's forceful censorship of web content. The state often blocks foreign websites and closes down local news outlets with little notice. Dozens of people have been jailed for posting political essays online.

Beijing is aware that the internet is a powerful tool in shaping public opinion and encourages web use for education and business, saying its aim is to only block material the authorities consider subversive or obscene.

Last month Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia with content shaped by contributors, found itself at the centre of a war of words over Chairman Mao. Its English version says the Communist party leader was the founder of modern-day China but also a man whom many saw as "a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese".

In the Chinese version there is no mention of Mao's Great Leap Forward, which historians say led to the world's worst famine, or the bloody purges of the Cultural Revolution. Both English and Chinese sites have been targeted by the censors.

China's struggle to keep control of information has also seen the emergence of a bold online culture which many believe will be difficult to tame.

There are now 20 million Chinese bloggers, and more than 3 million active writers. When a 29-year-old news anchor blogged two weeks ago to say that having a Starbucks inside Beijing's hallowed Forbidden City, was an "erosion of Chinese culture" and that it should be removed there was outrage about the coffee shop's existence. The ensuing row highlighted the risks to foreign companies of offending Chinese nationalist sentiment.

Some observers say Chinese political culture is slowly adapting. Defenders of the government point out that the editor of a prominent website, Freezing Point, was sacked not imprisoned, ostensibly for printing an article on Chinese history that challenged Communist party orthodoxy.

Despite the curbs, foreign firms have flocked to Beijing, willing to set aside principles for profit. Human rights activists have been angered by the argument that moral compromise is the cost of doing big business. Many denounced Yahoo, Microsoft and others for online search services that exclude sensitive topics, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The issue is climbing the political agenda in Washington, where China's rise is often seen as a threat. Politicians in Congress last year attacked Google for accepting curbs on its search engine.