China 'on track to become biggest internet population'

China’s number of internet users could surpass the US' as the world’s largest within two years, after expanding by 23.4% last year to 137 million people, the government and news reports said today.

China’s online population is equal to about 10% of its 1.3 billion people, the China Internet Network Information Centre reports on its website.

“We believe it will take two years at most for China to overtake the US,” the official China Daily newspaper quoted an official of the agency, Wang Enhai, as saying.

About 210 million of America’s 300 million people are online, according to the US government.

China will reach 210 million users in two years if it keeps up a 24% annual growth rate.

China’s communist government encourages internet use for education and business, but tries to block its public from seeing material authorities consider subversive or obscene. Dozens of people have been jailed for posting political essays online.

The country had 111 million internet users in January 2006, according to the internet agency, also known as CNNIC.

China also saw strong growth in wireless internet use, with about 17 million people online from mobile phones, the agency said.