Bridging the divide

China is now the country with the world's largest number of Internet users. That is not surprising, as we have the largest population on the planet.

Like many other issues, our prominence in Internet is less striking when the mammoth population is taken into account.

But the truly exciting news from the China Internet Conference 2008 is the growth seen beyond cities, particularly the fact that 40 percent of new Internet users in 2007 were in rural areas. The number of rural netizens more than doubled last year.