IN BRIEF (Page 4)

Beijing

829 million people online, report says

The number of people online in China hit 829 million at the end of last year, up 7.3 percent from the previous year, according to a report released on Thursday by the China Internet Network Information Center. The country's internet availability rate was raised by 3.8 percentage points year-on-year to 59.6 percent, the report said. A total of 817 million Chinese used mobile phones to access the internet. Some 222 million netizens live in rural areas, up 6.2 percent from a year earlier, it said.