According to Xi Guohua, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, the number of Chinese netizens increased by 16.2 million in the first quarter of 2009, reaching a total number of 316 million.

Xi said though the global financial crisis brought great impact to the real economy, China's Internet industry did not slow its development speed. Meanwhile, the development of broadband was more obvious with the number of broadband users accounting for over 90% of total netizens in China.

In addition, the IPv4 resources grew rapidly, reaching 180 million in 2008, the total number of domain names reached 16 million, and the number of domestic websites in China reached 2.878 million.

Xi said that e-commerce, online advertising, and online games occupied important places in China's Internet industry. During the past year, China's e-commerce market scale was estimated at CNY3 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 41.7%; the scale of the online advertising market was about CNY12 billion, a year-on-year increase of 55.8%; and the scale of the online games market was between CNY19 billion and CNY20 billion, a year-on-year increase of about 50%.