The two superpowers, a.k.a. The US and China, have arguably the best resources and economies in the world. But what is their internet like? Which of those two countries has the best internet speeds? A few years ago, the United States was the largest country on the internet. But that is no longer the case, with China rapidly approaching to challenge the same.
Number of Internet Users
According to the results taken from Statista in the year 2021, as of now, there are around 854 million internet users in China, and that is way ahead of the US which has approximately 313 million internet users. Together both the countries make up more than 35% of the internet, with China covering almost 50% of the Asian internet population.
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Internet Penetration
Back to the difference in internet speeds of the US and China, it is important to note that China’s largest population means that it has the greatest number of internet users in the world. If you look at the internet penetration of both countries, the US has the lead. According to data from Statista, around 90% of the American internet users accessed the internet, and that is bound to increase by 2025 to 94%. In China, the internet penetration rate is at 70% of their whole population.
Internet penetration is the percentage of the total population of the country that is using the internet.
Internet Speeds
The download speed of the broadband internet in the US has been reported to reach up to 100 Mbps or higher in 2021, though results from 2018 showed that the average speed of internet connection was around 18 Mbps. The average download speed of broadband internet in China was reported to be around 37 Mbps, but the fastest internet speed recorded has been less than 100Mbps. The fastest mobile internet speed in the US has been recorded at 47.6 Mbps in 2020, whereas in China the fastest mobile internet speed has been reported at 24.02 Mbps in 2019.
Internet Hosts
The United States is the leading website hosting nation, and that is not surprising. Even internet users and companies not residing in the US host their websites there. The US has internet hosts 28 times more than China, reaching up to around 430 million servers, with China having only 15 million servers. This surprisingly low number of servers in China could be possible due to their careful control of the internet traffic.
Search Engines
Although Google is the number one search engine worldwide, it never managed to land its spot in China. China has its internet top engine called Baidu, which is the Chinese version of Google. Also without a doubt, Google is the topmost search engine being used in the United States.
Websites
The top five websites used in the United States are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, and Amazon, and the top five websites that internet users use in China are Baidu, QQ, Sina, Taobao, Google Hong Kong. Most of the social media apps like Facebook, Google, etc. have been blocked by the so-called Great Firewall of China.
Internet situation in China
China’s Great Firewall has limited access to several websites by routing all international traffic through a handful of access points, where government servers block access to those that are on the blacklist – nearly 3000 of them including Wikipedia, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google, etc. It has been reported that China has around 50,000 internet police who are regularly monitoring the online activities of internet users and deleting posts that are deemed seditious or critical of the government. Though internet users in China routinely bypass the Great Firewall by using the VPN, telecommunication companies have blocked access to VPNs as well.
Despite this blocking of access to certain websites, China has been able to accommodate their internet users by providing them access to the social media websites of their own making such as Weibo (an equivalent of Facebook), Baidu (Chinese version of the Google search engine), WeChat (WhatsApp), etc.
To summarize, the internet speed in China is not as fast as it is available in the US, in terms of broadband and mobile internet. However, owing to its fastest-growing economy and cultural inclination towards internet access, China might rapidly beat the US to it and have the fastest internet speeds in the world.
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