According to statistics published during the 2009 China Internet Conference held in Beijing, by the end of September 2009, the number of China's Internet users had reached 360 million.
Li Yizhong, director for China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the conference that the scale of China's network users has been increasing. By the end of September 2009, China had 1.044 billion phone users, including 324 million fixed telephone users and 720 million mobile phone users. The number of websites in China had reached 3.2 million. The number of China's mobile Internet users had reached 192 million, a year-on-year increase of 62.7%.
Han Xia, director for the Bureau of Telecommunication Administration of MIIT, revealed that both the Chinese Internet users and market scale have been increasing since 2008. By the end of September 2009, the number of China's Internet users had reached 360 million; and the number of broadband users in China had reached 99.33 million.
Han added that China's basic Internet resources were also enlarging. There were 123 million IP addresses in China at the end of September 2009, the second largest in the world; and there were five million .CN domain names registered in China. For market scale, the scale of China's Internet industry reached CNY150 billion in 2008, stimulating total output of CNY200 billion in the related information technology, manufacturing, software, and digital content industries.
Li pointed out that the next steps for the development of the Internet industry in China are to enhance the construction of Internet facilities to accelerate the development of this industry; make good use of the resources to improve the value of the network; promote the merger of information and industrialization to cultivate new growth points; and strengthen network and information security management to create a healthy and civilized network environment.
Starting its presence in 2002, the China Internet Conference is now held annually and the latest 2009 China Internet Conference lasted two days from November 2 to 3, 2009. With the focus on China's Internet strength and confidence in the economic crisis background, the conference discussed topics like Internet and service, Internet and people's livelihood, and Internet and advanced culture.