Arguably, there are currently only two superpowers on the planet: the United States and China. Now that the world is growing increasingly dependent on the Internet, how do these two giants stack up online?
可以说，在当今的世界上只有中国和美国两个超级大国，世界也越来越多地依赖互联网发展，那么这两个大国在互联网方面有什么差异呢？我们选取了网民数量、网络普及率、接入速度、域名数量、热门网站等与互联网有关的因素对两个国家在互联网方面的不同进行比较。
网民数量 Internet users
Ten years ago, the United States was by far the largest country on the Internet. That is no longer the case. It’s been pushed into second place by China, with quite some margin.
十年前，美国是当时的互联网头号大国，现在很明显已经不是，取而代之的是中国并且具有相当的差距。
Together these two countries now make up over 33% of the Internet. China alone makes up 51% of the Asian Internet population.
中美两国的网民数量占到了世界的33%，而中国在亚洲的比例是51%。
互联网普及率 Internet penetration
The United States has a huge lead over China when it comes to the actual Internet penetration, i.e. the share of its population that has access to the Internet.
相对中国而言，美国的互联网普及率要领先很多，近8成公民都有机会使用互联网。
An interesting note here is that China has a ton of room to grow, while the United States doesn’t. To give you an idea: If China had the same Internet penetration as the United States, it would have over a billion Internet users.
相对美国，中国在这一方面具有巨大的发展空间。有意思的是，如果中国拥有和美国一样高的互联网普及率，网民数量将会超过10亿。
互联网增长速度 Internet growth
When it comes to sheer growth, China has been on a tear for the past decade. Its Internet user base grew an incredible 1,767% between 2000 and 2010. The United States more than doubled its Internet population in the same time, but needless to say, wasn’t able to reach those levels of growth. This can be partly explained by the head start the United States already had (a decade ago it was much larger than any other country on the Internet), but China’s growth has nonetheless been spectacular, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
中国网民数量从2000年到2010年10年间增长了1767%，这样的增长速度可以算得上疯狂和令人难以置信；与此同时，美国仅仅增长了一倍。当然，很重要的一点原因是美国在10年前的互联网水平已经相当发达，而在当时中国还是一个比较落后的国家，所以增长的空间比较大也是可以接受的。
In this context, a look back in time is relevant. The United States had 95 million Internet users back in 2000, and now it has 239 million. China, on the other hand, has gone from just over 22 million to 420 million Internet users in the same period of time.
在这种情况下，我们需要回顾一下早期数据。2000年时美国有9500万网民，在2010年为2亿4千万；另一方面，中国在此期间的网民数量由2200万增长到4亿2千万，对比这一组数据就可以知道中国的互联网增长速度远高于美国的原因了。
互联网接入速度 Internet connection speeds
In this area, the United States is far ahead of China. The average connection speed is five times faster in the United States compared with China, indicating that fast broadband connections are in much wider use.
在这一方面，美国远远地超过了中国。在美国，互联网接入的平均速度基本上是中国的5倍，这也反映出宽带接入在美国的广泛应用。
The reason for this difference is clear when you see how connection speeds are distributed. In the United States, 34% of Internet connections are faster than 5 Mbit/s, while in China, only 0.4% are faster than that.
当你知道网络连接速度是如何分布的，也就清楚造成这种差别的原因了。在美国，34％的互联网连接速度超过5 Mbps；而在中国，只有0.4%达到了这一速度。
服务器数量 Internet hosts
In terms of servers connected to the Internet, serving content, the United States is way ahead of China. This is not surprising. It should be. The United States has been the leading web hosting nation from the start, and still is. Even people and companies not living in the United States host their websites there.
服务器是提供网络信息的终端，就数量而言，美国也远远超出中国。这其实并不奇怪，因为美国从一开始就是主机托管服务的领导者，即使是外国企业和个人有的时候也会把服务器托管在美国。
Yes, these numbers (from the CIA World Factbook) do indeed show that there are 28 times as many Internet hosts (machines) in the United States as there are in China. We’re not sure what methodology was used to collect this data, though, and it may have been affected by China’s careful control of Internet traffic. The US number should be large, though, and the country does have a huge hosting infrastructure, so it’s not entirely implausible.
以上来自美国中央情报局《世界各国纪实年鉴》的数据表明美国几乎提供比中国多28倍的网络服务器（主机数量）。我们不知道他们使用了什么手段来收集这些数据，但是统计结果可能受到了中国对互联网流量谨慎控制的影响。在报告中，美国的数字大了一些，但是美国确实有一个巨大的托管基础架构，所以这些数据并不是完全不可信的。
热门搜索引擎 Top search engine
Google never really managed to land the number one spot in China, and now, with Google having largely stepped back from that market, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. Instead, China’s local search engine of choice is Baidu, which got its start back in 2000. It’s essentially the “Chinese Google.”
- United States 美国: Google 谷歌
- China 中国: Baidu 百度
热门网站 Top websites
The top websites in the United States are all very familiar to the vast majority of the Internet users in the world. It’s not until you look at the top sites for China that you realize that there are huge Chinese counterparts that are not necessarily big anywhere but in China. But on the other hand, with such a huge Internet population in China (not to mention the Chinese-speaking population outside of China), these services can blossom in that market.
Top 5 websites in the United States 美国五大热门网站:
- Google.com（搜索引擎）
- Facebook.com（社交网络）
- Yahoo.com（网络门户）
- Youtube.com（视频）
- Amazon.com（B2C购物）
Top 5 websites in China 中国五大热门网站:
- Baidu.com (search engine 搜索引擎)
- QQ.com (online community 网络社区)
- Sina.com.cn (web portal 网络门户)
- Taobao.com (“China’s eBay” C2C购物)
- Google.com.hk (Google Hong Kong 谷歌香港)
Facebook currently has no chance in China thanks to being blocked. Google’s Chinese (.cn) site is practically closed, but as you can see, its Hong Kong version is still heavily used, enough to land it in the top 5. The fact that Google.cn will redirect users to Google.com.hk surely helps with that.
In general, the so-called Great Firewall of China has created a somewhat on/off relationship with international sites in China. Either you’re allowed in (and play by the rules), or you’re not. There is very little in between. That’s not to discount the success of the Chinese alternatives that currently lead the way in China, it’s just a general observation. It’s a very different market.
热门网页浏览器 Top web browsers
China still has a huge amount of Internet users accessing the Internet with the dinosaur IE 6, which can be a bit confusing when you consider that there are so many free alternatives available (newer versions of IE, Firefox or Chrome, for example). Part of the explanation is available further down under operating systems, and it’s spelled “Windows XP” (which has IE 6 as its default browser).
Top 5 web browsers in the United States 美国五大热门浏览器:
- Internet Explorer, 47.5%
- Firefox, 25.5%
- Chrome, 14.6%
- Safari, 11.2%
- Opera, 0.6%
Top 5 web browsers in China 中国五大热门浏览器:
- Internet Explorer, 87.4%
- Chrome, 4.4%
- Maxthon, 3.8%
- Firefox, 3.3%
- Safari, 0.6%
Top web browser version 主流浏览器版本:
- United States 美国: Internet Explorer 8.0, 33.9%
- China 中国: Internet Explorer 6.0, 41.1%
主流操作系统 Top operating systems
We reported the other week that Windows 7 had finally overtaken Windows XP in the United States and is now the most popular OS in the country. However, the situation is very different in China, where Windows XP still has a huge lead. In China, approximately 4 out of 5 computers run Windows XP.
Top 5 operating systems in the United States:
- Windows 7, 32.1%
- Windows XP, 31.1%
- Windows Vista, 19.1%
- Mac OS X, 14.9%
- iOS (iPad), 1.2%
Note also that iPad’s iOS has managed to sneak into the top 5 in the United States. (This stat doesn’t include iOS on iPhone or iPod Touch.)
Top 5 operating systems in China:
- Windows XP, 82.2%
- Windows 7, 13.8%
- Windows Vista, 2.7%
- Mac OS X, 0.5%
- Windows 2003, 0.3%
We should point out that these numbers (from Statcounter) are based on Web usage, so they represent computers connected to the Internet, surfing the Web. Very relevant for this survey, in other words.
域名数量 Domain names
When it comes to domain names, the stats that are usually available are for domain names categorized by country of purchase, not necessarily the country of the purchaser. This means that the United States will be overrepresented since it’s a popular place to register domain names (thanks to the strong US hosting and domain industry).
With that in mind, here are the numbers for generic top-level domain names (gTLDs).
Then we have the country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs), .us for the United States and .cn for China. Something to keep in mind here is that .us hasn’t really been able to establish itself very well in the United States. Instead, .com has dominated, leaving the growth of .us somewhat stunted.
攻击流量的全球份额 Global share of attack traffic
With “attack traffic,” we mean traffic of a malicious nature, for example attempts to gain access to a computer via various ports, exploiting weaknesses in the OS, etc. This includes so-called port scanning to find potential openings. The United States has the dubious honor of being the number one source of attack traffic in the world. China is third (after Russia).
结语 Conclusion
So, what’s the score once we’ve gone through all of this? A few takeaways:
- China’s Internet user base is bigger, much bigger (1.76x that of the United States).
- The US Internet infrastructure is still way ahead of China’s, at least for end users.
- China has much more potential for growth in spite of already being the largest country on the Internet.
- China’s Internet users run older versions of software than the US Internet users are, at least when it comes to operating systems and web browsers.
- The strong hosting industry in the United States keeps the nation ahead, especially since Internet users from all over the world use its services. (One might ask how long that will last, though.)
So while the United States still has a technological lead in many ways, it’s already been passed by China in terms of people on the Internet, and will continue to fall behind in that department. It’s simple math. China has a much larger population, a much lower Internet penetration, and thus has plenty of room to grow. We’ve examined this potential in the past, especially in view of how much the balance changed on the Internet between 2000 and 2010.
Hopefully the world doesn’t end in 2012, because we’d love to look back at this post a few years from now and see how things have changed. How large and powerful will China get? Will the United States be able to keep its strong position on the Internet? As they say in the movies: To be continued…
Data sources: Internet user numbers from Internet World Stats. Internet connection speeds and attack traffic from Akamai’s State of the Internet Report Q3 2010. Web browser and OS stats from Statcounter. Top sites from Alexa. Internet hosts from the CIA World Factbook.
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