At the 2007 China International Audio, Video and Electronic Exhibition Summit Forum, it was announced that there has been a rapid increase in the number of Chinese reading on the internet, with the average growth rate as high as 107%.

The China Research Institute of Publishing Science surveyed a number of people and found that the number of Chinese reading traditional books has fallen while the number reading internet publications has increased sharply.

The investigation found that people's reading rate was 60.4% in 1999, 51.7% in 2003, and 48.7% in 2005, falling 11% in six years.

Although the popularity of book reading continues to fall, online reading has grown rapidly, from 3.7% in 1999 to 18.3% in 2003 to 27.8% in 2005. Experts say that the development of digital technology and the internet has changed Chinese people's reading habits.

By People's Daily Online