The Chinese Internet Gold Mine

I hate writing business plans. Writing a business plan is equivalent to having a proper technical design document of an entire software project scoped out. You need to spell out the entire venture and chances are that in execution nothing will go as planned.

So while I plough through my own business plan, I thought I'd share some of my research about the Chinese internet:

- As of June 2008, China has the most netizens in the world. This is around 18% of 1.3billion people compared to second place; the United States has 223.1M netizens which is around 71% penetration.

- Research firm BDA China Ltd. estimates that China’s online population will keep growing by 18 percent annually - a modest estimation, considering that this growth was 56% this year - and reach 490 million by 2012.

- According to a report by professors at HKUST, they expect the Chinese economy to surpass that of the U.S in purchasing power terms between 2012 and 2015; by 2025, China is likely the world’s largest economic power by any measure.

- Survey of 16-25 year olds:
I live some of my life online: CN 86%, US 42%
Online is as real as offline: CN 37%, US 16%
I have a parallel life online: CN 61%, US 13%
The Internet helps me make friends: CN 77%, US 30%

Sorry, I hate sourcing, but i'll send them to you if you ask. Now back to my business plan...