China reports a total of 694,000 websites, over 20% being individual's. The number of domain names surged 40 percent to reach 2,592,000, according to a report on China's Internet information and resources 2005 published by the State Council Informatization Office on Tuesday.

The webpage number soared 269% to reach 2.4 billion in 2005. Each website has 3,748 pages on average. 18.6% of websites locate in Beijing, 16.6% in Guangdong, and 9.7% in Zhejiang.

Company websites account for 60.4% of the total number; then comes individual's website, which account for 21.9%; educational and scientific research websites account for 5.1 %.

There are about 150,000 individual's websites in China, which mainly offer BBS (43.5%), download of music, novels and images (35.7%), and academic discussion (24.9%) and online transaction (11.9%).

44.2% of people build their websites "out of interest and with the attempt to do something they like"; 31.4% do it to "communicate with the world outside, and offer their references for others"; 16.2% take the websites as "foundation for their business" and 6.1% for "needs of work".

Not all websites enjoy high page views. Daily page view averages below 50 in 39.6% of websites. The rate is as high as 51.5% for company's websites, indicating the websites are not functioning very well.

Updating deserves webmasters' attention too. Only 17.62% of websites are updated within one week. By contrast, 18.58% are updated once over six months.

Most websites are run by teams with less than ten people.

(People's Daily May 18, 2006)