One company: 300 million Chinese cellphone users

Also: that Internet thing? Still popular in China

Published January 23, 2007 7:43PM (EST)

Two data points from China, thanks to the China Net Investor blog.

  • One single Chinese telephone company, China Mobile, now has 301 million wireless subscribers. As of July 2006, the population of the United States was estimated at 298,444,215.
  • According to the China Internet Network Information Center the number of Internet users in China reached 137 million at the end of 2006, jumping by 26 million, or 23.4 percent, from 2005.

What should we make of this information, outside of standing agape at the sheer boggling-ness of large numbers? The cultural implications will surely be wide-ranging.

But the increase in spam, viruses, and associated malware may well be too much for civilization to withstand.


By Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21.

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