Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

One in four of every social networkers on earth is in the People's Republic of China. A staggering 500 million people in the PRC are online. That's getting on for the entire population of the EU. They spend on average 2.7 hours a day surfing, behind only the Japanese in their internet usage. Sixty-one per cent of the social networking population made a purchase because of a digital marketing campaign. It makes sense that the biggest society on earth will end up as the biggest social network. Whichever way you look at it, the PRC is a huge opportunity for digital marketers. Provided we understand the differences - not least of which is understanding the vast number of parallel organisations that have grown up to take the place of the biggest players from the western world, who are not able to operate in the PRC.

Why is this cyberrevolution happening? Cultural factors, such as the huge number of young people who grow up without siblings, the vast distances that separate young people who move to find work in the cities from their families in the hinterland, even possibly a lack of trust in state-owned media make the internet more and more attractive as a source of entertainment and information. And even though the political conditions in the rest of the Greater China Region are completely different from those in the PRC, internet use is still enormously high and growing.

The sun rises in the east. The future rises in the east. Whoever understands the eastern internet will rise with it