Mainland Chinese internet users grew to 648 million at the end of 2014, state media reported on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s largest national online population gained 16 million new users from June to the end of last year, the China Internet Network Information Center announced on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Internet retail sales totalled 331 billion yuan (47 billion euros) in the first 10 months of 2014, up 55.6 per cent from 2013, centre deputy director Jin Jian was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s online economy accounts for 7 per cent of its total GDP, he reportedly told the Beijing Daily.<\/p>\n
The announcement of the blossoming domestic market followed a speech by Alibaba founder Jack Ma on Friday in which he said he wanted his New York listed e-commerce company to overtake retail giant Walmart in sales in the next 10 years.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the World Economic Forum\u2019s annual meeting in the Swiss alpine resort of Davos, China\u2019s richest man reportedly shared his goal of serving 2 billion consumers and helping 10 million small businesses outside China sell their products through the internet.<\/p>\n
The entrepreneur\u2019s gung-ho optimism came as Beijing this week intensified its ongoing crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs) that enable mainland surfers to bypass the country\u2019s increasingly rigorous censorship controls.<\/p>\n
Popular with foreign expats, VPNs encrypt and reroute internet traffic past the nation\u2019s \u201cGreat Firewall\u201d to access more than 2,700 blocked websites including Amazon, Gmail, Google, Picasa, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Bing, WordPress, Instagram, Pirate Bay and Dropbox.<\/p>\n
Popular VPN provider Astrill warned users on Saturday that \u201cdue to increased censorship this year,\u201d iPhone and iPad VPN services had been temporarily halted in mainland China.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur fight with Chinese censors is not over,\u201d read a company statement to users, citing Apple\u2019s slow processing of apps as part of the cause for the delay. Provider Golden Frog also reported similar issues on its blog on Friday.<\/p>\n
25 worst passwords on the Internet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n