YouTube in America and China

This week my colleague ijohnpederson blogged about YouTube‘s January analytical results.  For the first time over 100 million internet users in the U.S. watched 6.3 Billion videos.  In the globalized world today that number is not very big. Consider how the world is connecting to the internet in larger and larger numbers:

Population
China: 1,330,044,544 (July 08) Source
US:         303,824,640 (July 08) Source

Internet Population
China:   298,000,000 (Jan 09)  22.4% of the population Source
US:        220,141,969 (June 08)  72.5% of the population  Source

China has almost as many people connected to the internet as America has people.  Think about that for a moment.  At Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society this week former Berkman fellow Rebecca MacKinnon addressed “The Tao of the Web: China and the future of the Internet” in a webcast about the role of censorship in China.

Over the past two years leading up to the summer Olympic games many publications (print and digital) wrote articles about “The Great Firewall of China” and China’s censorship efforts.  But MacKinnon shared the Chinese Communist party has lost control over their own young citizens.  The webcast alone is worth the view and here are two amazing facts regarding China’s youth culture:

Over 65% utilize the web as the primary source of video entertainment.
Over 60% found YouTube videos via social networks and IM.

MacKinnon’s webcast (view it here) proves China has not only embraced YouTube. China’s own premier conducted a two-hour webcast available on YouTube.  The Great Firewall of China still has oppressive control over their citizens but YouTube has shown a small crack in their armor.

Tags: China, YouTube, The Great Firewall of China, globalization, Population, Internet Users, Censorship, education, technology, trends