China has more than 829 million internet users, representing 59.6% of its population, according to a China Internet Network Information Center report.
Of all these users, 817 million connect the internet via their mobile phones.
The report also shows that among all services, instant messaging had the highest utilization rate. 797 million internet users had tried instant messaging by the end of 2018, accounting for 95.6% of China’s entire internet population.
Reading news, watching short videos, and watching longer videos on streaming sites followed, with a utilization rate of 81.4%, 78.2%, and 73.9% respectively.
Online shopping and payments had similar utilization rates of 73.6% and 72.5% respectively.
A total of 610 million Chinese had shopped online by the end of 2018, up 14.4% year-on-year.
However, only a total of 406 million internet users had at least once ordered food online by the end of 2018. That’s up 18.2% year-on-year, but still accounts for only 49% of the country’s internet population. Ordering food had the lowest utilization rate among all internet services listed in this report. As entrepreneurs would say, there is more room to grow for food delivery services than other services.
