China has 3.51 million websites: Report

BEIJING: There were 3.51 million websites in China last year, a huge increase since the first website two decades ago.

The websites, with 4.61 million domain names, were owned and operated by 2.82 million founders, 70 per cent of which were organisations and 30 per cent individuals, a report released by Internet Society of China said.

Over 16,000 websites provided professional information for education, medicine and news, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

After years of advance, China's homegrown search engine Baidu.com and e-commerce platform Taobao.com were capable of competing their global peers, it said.

China's first website connected with the global network was built by researchers at the Institute of High Energy Physics under Chinese Academy of Science in 1994.

The site, along with high-tech articles, contained a column "Tour in China" introducing China's culture, news and economy to the world.

China has about 618 million online links at the end of 2013, nearly half of the nation's total population.