China Internet Network Information Center has issued its 19th report about the development status of China's Internet industry, showing that growth is quickening in the Middle Kingdom.

The report shows that as of December 31, 2006, there were 137 million Internet users on the Chinese mainland, accounting for 10.5% of China's total population, which was an increase of 23.4% over that of the same period of last year. According to the report, 104 million internet users in China were using broadband and 17 million were using mobile phones to access to the Internet. Beijing citizens' Internet literacy rate even reached 30%, which was the highest in the entire country.

Of all the internet users in mainland China, 58.3% were male and 41.7% were female, and the Internet literacy rate in the urban areas was 6.5 times of that in rural areas.

By the end of 2006, China had about 4.11 million domain names, of which 1.8 million were .CN domain names, up 64.4% compared with the same period of last year. 1.94 million were .COM domain names, accounting for 47% of China's total domain names.

At the end of 2006, China had 843000 websites and 98 million IPv4 addresses, and all of these were seeing stable growth.

For the first time in its history, CNNIC added Internet access through mobile phones into its report, saying that 12.4% of Chinese Internet users were surfing online via their mobile phones.