Mobile rules the Chinese web

The mobile phone has overtaken the PC as the prime means of going online in China, according to official figures.

In its latest biannual survey, the China Network Information Centre (CNNIC) reports that 388m people used a handset to access the web in the first half of the year, compared with 380m who logged on via a computer.

The survey (Chinese language only) shows that on June 30 China had an internet population of 538m, up 24.5m from the end of last year, and accounting for 39.9% of the 1.35 billion population.

The survey counts all methods of going online by individual users.

It shows the number of mobile users increased 9.2% or 32.7m, over the period, while mobile video use grew by about a third to more than 100m and the number of weibo, or microblog, users rose 24.2% to 170m.