BEIJING, July 21 (Xinhua) — China has made important strides in web improvement through the 14th Five-Year Plan interval (2021-2025), with the web changing into extra inclusive and fueling the rise of the digital financial system.
As of June 2025, there have been greater than 1.12 billion web customers, and web penetration in China reached 79.7 p.c, a rise of 1.1 share factors in contrast with December 2024, in accordance with a report launched by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) on Monday.
According to the report, important efforts have been made to allow key teams, such because the aged and rural residents, to entry numerous web companies and share in the advantages of this progress.
As of June 2025, China had 161 million web customers aged 60 and above, and 322 million dwelling in rural areas. Internet penetration amongst these teams reached 52 p.c and 69.2 p.c, respectively.
“Internet resources are now more abundant, strengthening the digital economy and reducing the internet penetration gap between urban and rural areas,” stated CNNIC director Liu Yulin.
Liu added that 5G companies now lined over 90 p.c of administrative villages throughout China’s huge hinterlands. Thanks to this, extra rural residents are having fun with the comfort and dividends introduced by the digital financial system, promoting specialities by way of livestreaming and tapping into tourism.
Meanwhile, the continued improvement of the web in China has performed a key position in selling Chinese tradition each domestically and internationally, the report stated, citing the rising export of Chinese on-line literature and video games, together with the rising synergy between in style internet collection and associated vacationer locations.
For occasion, in 2024, the abroad market scale of Chinese on-line literature exceeded 5 billion yuan (about 700 million U.S. {dollars}). Reaching greater than 200 international locations and areas worldwide, Chinese on-line literature now has greater than 350 million abroad readers.
In explicit, Japan noticed its variety of Chinese on-line literature readers develop by an astounding 180 p.c, making it the fastest-growing rising market within the sector.
Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, stated that China’s on-line literature has emerged as a brand new mass cultural artwork type and promoted the event of a diversified worth system throughout the trade, and that its integration with micro-short dramas opened up new paths for the trade’s transformation in 2024.
Online video games emerged as one other progress level of China’s digital improvement within the cultural and leisure subject. In the primary half of 2025, 25 home video games generated 11.6 billion yuan in income abroad, unlocking extra alternatives for extra Chinese gaming merchandise to go world.
For occasion, online game “Black Myth: Wukong” had offered 28 million copies worldwide by the tip of final 12 months, producing over 9 billion yuan in income inside 5 months of its launch.
Apart from on-line artwork and leisure creations, the report additionally highlighted China’s outstanding progress in generative synthetic intelligence (AI) improvement. It famous that within the first half of 2025, generative AI merchandise noticed improvement on all fronts, from know-how to utility.
As of March 2025, a complete of 346 generative AI companies have been registered on the Cyberspace Administration of China, the report stated.
In 2024, the dimensions of the AI market exceeded 700 billion yuan, sustaining a robust progress momentum of greater than 20 p.c.
In phrases of utility, home Chinese AI merchandise have achieved important breakthroughs, reaching parameter scales within the tons of of billions and reaching multi-modal capabilities. They have been deeply built-in into situations akin to workplace collaboration, training, industrial design and content material creation, forming an clever utility ecosystem overlaying a number of fields.
Zhang Xiao, deputy director of CNNIC, took DeepSeek for example that showcases China’s progress and affect within the AI sector globally. Within 20 days of launch, the open-source AI mannequin amassed 30 million every day energetic customers worldwide, making itself a generative AI utility that boasts the quickest progress price of world customers.