Behind the surge in scale, the structure of Chinese netizens has undergone profound changes in 23 years.

In 2014, among Chinese Internet users’ Internet devices, the mobile phone usage rate surpassed the traditional PC terminal for the first time. As of June 2020, the proportion of Internet users using mobile phones to access the Internet has reached 99.2%.

In the occupational distribution of netizens, agricultural, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery workers have begun to become the third largest group of netizens after students and self-employed/freelancers. Netizens whose monthly income is below 1,000 yuan currently account for 31.5%.

Internet users aged 50 and above account for 22.8%, and this proportion has doubled in the past less than three years. The proportion of young netizens is decreasing year by year. Ten years ago, Internet users under the age of 20 accounted for 30%, but now only 18.3%.

In 1997, only 620,000 people in China used the Internet. Twenty-three years have passed, and this number has increased by 1,516 times. On September 29, 2020, the 46th “Statistical Report on China’s Internet Development Status” released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed that as of June 2020, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 940 million, and the Internet penetration rate reached 67.0% .

The proportion of women and rural Internet users has increased sharply

Behind the surge in scale, the structure of Chinese netizens has also undergone profound changes in 23 years. Netizens with identity tags such as “female” and “rural” gradually walked from the edge of the stage to the spotlight.

The latest 46th statistical report shows that as of June 2020, the ratio of male to female Internet users in China is 51:49, which is basically the same as the male to female ratio in the overall population. It took China more than 20 years to achieve this seemingly ordinary gender ratio of netizens.