According to the most recent government figures, as of the end of 2018 China had 829 million internet users. The power of China’s internet population is huge as it was also reported that the combined net worth of China’s 1,000 wealthiest people topped over 11 trillion yuan. This list is of course lead b y people like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma on Tencent.

As of November 2018, about 1.56 billion mobile phone subscriptions had been registered in China. The number of mobile phone subscribers in China has been skyrocketing since 2011, hitting a new landmark of more than 1.25 billion users in April 2014.

This give China great influence over new wireless technologies and has spurred a massive domestic high tech industry. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) which is a branch of the Ministry of Industry and Information and is responsible for controlling the .cn country code said over 30 million people in China came online for the first time in the second half of 2018. To put that into perspective, that’s more than the entire population of Australia.

Here are some other fascinating facts

• 21% of China’s internet users are also online banking users
• 71% use online payments or e-commerce services
• 74.1% watch short video applications, which include ByteDance’s Douyin app (known as TikTok outside of China)
• 30.6% use bike sharing apps
• 43.2% use taxi-booking apps
• 37.3% use the internet to reserve buses and trains

Looking through these numbers it’s easy to see that the power of China’s internet will keep growing and alongside it, so will economic opportunities.