China's Online Population Explosion

Hot off the research block, the Pew/Internet Research Group has published a report yesterday which indicates that China's internet population of 137 million is growing at a faster rate and is expected to outpace that of the U.S.'s of 165 to 210 million in a few years. This is not suprising considering the population of China which is at 1.3B compared to the U.S.'s at 300M.

There are many implications of this notwithstanding the impact on site globalization requirements for more and more companies wanting to do business in the lucrative Chinese market. The upside is that the "Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues..." (Source: Pew http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/218/report_display.asp). What is potentially trickier is understanding the social, political, and cultural nuances in the usage of language translation, color, metaphors, and imagery. I also recently read somewhere that China is expected to surpass India in the outsourcing arena as well.

Read the report (pdf).