How many Chinese internet users read English?

Luke Wiley

How many Chinese internet users read English?

I know there are something like 300 or 400 million internet users in China but has anyone seen any data on how many of those read English and regularly access English-language websites?

posted almost 2 years ago

Luke Wiley		Internet surfers in China have clocked 500 million people, official data has revealed. According to the data released on Monday, nearly 50% of those who surf the internet also use Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter http://asianbusinessdaily.com/2012/01/over-half-a-billion... posted 4 months ago

Juan Carlos Madrigal		Let me join the chorus and say that unless you are targeting expats, your site should be localized. There is an interesting interview with Jeremy Goldkorn where he describes the mindset of the Chinese netizen here http://ichinaforum.com/interviews/meet-chinese-netizen posted 11 months ago

Carey Chambers		China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the state network information center of China, publishes regular survey results on China internet usage, plus other China web data. Here's the link: http://www1.cnnic.cn/en/index/index.htm posted about 1 year ago

Luke Wiley		McKinsey & Company published a fairly detailed report in February that analyzes Chinese Internet users. It's called Understanding China's Digital Consumer. Worth reading, though again no data on English usage among Chinese Net users, Here's the link: http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/greaterchina/mckonchina... posted about 1 year ago

Leon Yu		Few people visit english websites due to the simple fact in China-many are learning english and few can master english. Casey, very frankly, I am totally do not agree with you. Run business in China need to know how to deal with the government officials--google, amazon, ebay are failed to do so. posted about 1 year ago

Luke Wiley		This DigiCha article doesn't answer the question but it does provide an excellent overview of the differences between internet use in China and in the West, and the mindset of China's internet users. http://digicha.com/?p=1490&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&... posted about 1 year ago

joes shi		Hello,everyone.That's a good question.By the way,I am a chinese man. I can not give you the detail number of people who can read English and regularly access English-language websites.But in my own opinion，here are huge amount of people can read english. English is very important in our country right now.For instance,students in the university must pass a english examination(CET)，which is held by our government.Then we can get the diploma accordingly. posted over 1 year ago

David Tutelman		According to a Xinhua article a couple days ago, there are now 450 million Chinese internet users. No mention of how many access English language sites though. posted over 1 year ago

Dave Wong		Most Chinese decision makers prefer to read localized content. However, expatriates in China like to read English content. posted over 1 year ago

Luke Wiley		I still haven't found a definite answer to this question but I did find some additional data that is interesting if accurate. The top 3 internet languages globally are English (536 million users), Chinese (449 million users), Spanish (153 million users). Here's a link to the source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm posted over 1 year ago

Tait Lawton		Yes, Casey is right. For any web project I do, we always localize for China, even when targeting English-speaking demographics such as English speaking tour-guides, interpreters or students of English. posted over 1 year ago

Sean Morris		Carey is right. It would be very low. Also, I don't know the percentage that access the internet at home. That would be even lower. Outside work, most would be in internet cafes, and there, would mostly be young guys playing online games. What type of product are you interest to introduce here? posted over 1 year ago

casey xiao-morris		Hi Luke, The best approach to reach out Chinese customers is to localize your service for local tastes. Good examples are Google, Amazon and more. They are able to succeed in China because they did not force their American business model on to a foreign market where many differences exist. posted almost 2 years ago

Carey Chambers		I haven't seen data on that but given that the most popular sites in China are in Chinese (baidu, qq, sina, taobao, sohu, youku, etc) I'd say it is pretty low. posted almost 2 years ago

How many Chinese internet users read English?

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