Traffic - Backpage Briefing - China leads Japan in Internet usage

Telecom Asia, Sept, 2002

China overtook Japan as the world's second most active Web audience, accounting for 6.63% of all global Internet traffic during July, according to US-based Web tracking software vendor WebSideStory. Japan was close behind with 5.24%, followed by the UK and Canada.

China remains a distant second to the US, which accounted for 42.65% of global Web traffic. Still, it's an impressive achievement--especially when taking into account a concurrent report in the Beijing Daily that Chinese authorities spent much of that time closing down over 14,000 Internet cafes (3,100 of thorn permanently) following June's fatal fire at an unlicensed Belling cafe, as well as ordering Net cafes to install Web filters that alert the police when someone attempts to access "illegal" content.