The number of people using the Internet in China rose to 457 million at the end of 2010, up 73.3 million from a year earlier, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) announced Wednesday.

This meant over one-third, or 34.3 percent, of China's population was using the Internet at the end of last year.

And about 66.2 percent of Internet users, or 303 million, used mobile phones to surf the net, an increase of 5.4 percentage points from the previous year.

But the number of people getting online via laptops increased at a faster pace than that of those surfing the net using mobile phones or desktops. About 45.7 percent of netizens used laptops to surf the net, a year-on-year increase of 15 percentage points.

The number of people shopping online climbed the most compared to other online services, up 48.6 percent year on year, followed by people using e-banking and online payment services, up 48.2 percent and 45.8 percent respectively.

Despite harsher measures on network security management, about 45.8 percent of Internet users encountered viruses or Trojans, while 21.8 percent of them fell victim to account break-ins and password theft.

Chinese netizens spent about 18.3 hours online every week, the report said.

China's Internet connection speed was relatively slow, 100.9 kBps (kiloBytes per second), the report said.

The speed was about half the global average of 212.5 kBps, according to figures from the US network giant Akamai in early 2010.

Microblogging users mushroomed to 53.11 million, about 13.8 percent of China's total netizens at the end of last year, the report said.

The survey was carried out among 60,000 individuals and 5,103 enterprises in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities on the Chinese mainland, as well as nearly 90,000 completed online questionnaires.

(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2011)