China should not be complacent about its Internet industry. When official figures revealed that the total number of China's netizens has exceeded that of the United States (on a population base four times the latter's), they also exposed problems.
Last week, the national domain sites administrator and online business surveyor CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) published its 22nd statistical report about Internet development.
In the first half-year of 2008, according to CNNIC, there were 43 million people who newly joined the Internet world which, in China alone, means 253 million netizens and 1.9 million websites.
The Internet population's number was just 100 million in June 2005, before it reached 160 million in June 2007, and 210 million in December 2007.
More encouragingly, gender equality has continued to show good signs, when the female segment edged up to 46.4 percent of the online population, representing an increase by 3.6 percentage points over the end of 2007.
But just like many things in China, good records tend to be mainly about having more in size or in number. Yet having more does not mean doing well. It does not necessarily lead to a lift in the quality and in customers' good feeling.
There are major stumbling blocks. One of the mind-boggling things revealed from the latest CNNIC survey is that as many as 85 percent of the individuals think the content in all online forums and blogs were not, at least not ideally, credit-worthy.
This is in contrast with the phenomenon that more than 100 million, or 40 percent, of the netizens own their own blogs or personal spaces. Some 70 million published or at least renewed their blogs or personal spaces within the previous six months.
By comparing the above two groups of data, it is easy to see that people do not quite believe each other in what they have published online. So what? One may ask. People write for fun. And they read for fun. What is to believe or not is for the people to find out. They do not have to trust any forums or blogs just like they do not have to trust what they hear from other people in the street.
But a look at the netizens' view of the security of online transactions, or the buying and selling of things, the approval rate is just as low as the forums and blogs. This can betray a true danger. For ultimately, the Internet is a marketplace. There are already more and more Chinese using it to do business - from shopping things to import and export, then to manage their bank accounts and to buy and sell stocks.
In the Chinese Internet work, as CNNIC reported, 23.4 percent of the total users have used banking; 16.9 percent (lower than last survey's 18.2 percent) have traded stocks or have bought into the mutual funds; 14.9 percent have sought job agencies; and 18.5 percent had taken various education programs.
In online banking alone, there are some 60 million users. The potential can be huge considering the immense number of small entrepreneurs in this country and their diverse business interests.
But obviously, due to the lack of trust in minimum security, the Internet, as a marketplace, still remains marginalized. Many people are testing waters in their online business attempts but are afraid to make major commitments. They are testing, testing, and testing.
Small wonder that electronic business is still lagging behind in China. Only one quarter of the netizens have ever attempted to buy anything online, and only those in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing seem to feel less insecure (with Shanghai claiming 45.2 percent and Beijing 38.9 percent).
By comparison, the proportion of online shoppers in all Internet users is reportedly 57.3 percent in South Korea and 66 percent in the United States.
Despite its development record so far, in the long run, the lack of trust and the poor sense of security can hurt the Chinese Internet.
E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn
