Citizens select books at the largest private book store in Qingdao. [Photo/Qingdao Today]

The reading rate among the adults was 62.7 percent, as revealed by a survey on Qingdao residents’ reading habits in 2016.

The survey released late September covered all the residents in the city.

According to the survey report, 80.2 percent of adults had experience of reading online, 24.9 percentage points more than the national average, 79.3 percent of them had experience of reading via mobile phones, 13.2 percentage points more than the national average, and 75.9 percent of them were habitual WeChat readers, China’s most popular social media platform that attracted Qingdao residents to read average 41 minutes per day via its system.

The report also mentioned that more adults believed that they increased in digital reading in comparison to 2015.

Analysis on juveniles showed that the group aged between 14 and 17 read 11.85 books after school on average, higher than the national level of 9.11 books.

Digital reading became prevalent among all Qingdao residents. The rate of digital reading reached 80.7 percent, 12.5 percentage points higher than the national level. Digital reading includes reading online, through mobile phones, on electronic readers, and from compact disc contents.