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More than 59.1 million Chinese were logging onto the Internet for an hour or more each day by the end of 2002 - more than any country in the world except the United States.

But only 4.6 per cent of the 1.3 billion Chinese people have become netizens, which means there is large room for the development of the Internet industry.

The figures were disclosed by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) when it published a report on the development of the industry in the country recently.

It is the 11th report unveiled by the centre since 1997.

Experts attribute the fast increase in the number of Internet users to government's efforts to build infrastructure and restructure the telecoms industry.

According to the report, 20.83 million computers are connected to the Internet in China. There are almost 371,600 websites, including 179,544 websites with the domain suffix of ".cn."

A total of 20.2 per cent of the websites are Beijing-based while those based in Qinghai Province and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China account for 0.3 per cent.

The 11th survey by CNNIC shows that the proportion of females surfing the web continues to increase and comprises 40.7 per cent.

And the number of users with a low education is rising, indicating that the Internet is coming closer to every member of the public.

The report also offers some interesting figures about the behaviour of Chinese Internet users.

Chinese spend 9.8 hours surfing the Internet every week on average with the period from 8 pm to 11 pm becoming prime time. The major reason for their major surfing the web is to obtain information or have fun.

"The Internet has totally changed the Chinese people's way of life," said CNNIC Director Mao Wei.

"Without leaving your room, you can do so much online ranging from education and meeting people to playing video games and shopping."

More and more ordinary Chinese are participating in government decision-making and legislation via the Internet because it is convenient, efficient and cheap.

While drafting the outline for China's 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05), the State Development Planning Commission received more than 10,000 submissions - of which more than 300 were adopted - from ordinary people through websites.