Step into any Internet café in China and you are bound to see this sight: rows of young faces, their eyes fixed on computer screens, earphones over their heads, their fingers moving rapidly on the keyboards. A chorus of mouse clicks provides the background music.

Take a closer look and you will see guns shooting, grenades exploding, monsters fighting each other. Fortunately, this is only taking place in online games. You can also see dialogue boxes on the screens, through which soundless communication is taking place, or simply a movie is being watched on the computer.

The Research Report on Internet Entertainment Trends of China’s Youth, issued by the Institute of Public Governance of Beijing-based Renmin University of China, may shed some light on the Internet café scene. The report, which was released during the 2005 China Youth and Entertainment Forum last September, outlines how the country’s young people entertain themselves. The top three activities are online entertainment (39.9 percent), sports (18.3 percent) and watching television (12.3 percent).

While blogs, or personal Web logs, have drawn a lot of media attention as a major focus of Internet use, it is clear that young people in particular use the Web for entertainment.

“Seeking leisure and entertainment has been the primary reason that drives many netizens online, the majority of whom are youngsters. So the issue of China’s youth resorting to the Internet for entertainment deserves some attention from our society,” said Liu Shulin, professor at the Center of Moral Education for Higher Education of Tsinghua University.

Amusement base

The number of China’s netizens reached 111 million in 2005, according to the 17th China Internet Development Statistics Report, released in January by the China Internet Network Information Center. And China’s cyberspace is dominated by young people. Those between the age of 18 and 24 make up the largest proportion of Internet users, at 35.1 percent. Netizens under the age of 30 account for 71 percent of the total, the report shows.

Another important Internet survey, which was released in July 2005 by Professor Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, offers an overall perspective of how Chinese people surf the Net.

The Chinese go online for news more than any other purpose, but mostly it’s for entertainment news. They also use the Internet more for chatting and playing games than seeking information or for work-related purposes.

The survey shows that the top five Internet activities are reading news (65.9 percent), browsing Web pages (65.2 percent), playing online games (62.2 percent), downloading music (56.5 percent) and downloading entertainment content (53.5 percent).

The survey also listed the top five websites that are most favored by netizens, most of which are Chinese portals. The five are Sina, Sohu, Netease, Baidu and Yahoo.

“The Internet provides various entertainment activities for youth. The popular ones are playing online games, online chatting, joining online communities, downloading music and movies and raising e-pets online. More and more websites are opening up entertainment sections to attract young people or they will be washed out,” Professor Liu noted. “Our youth turning to the Internet mainly for entertainment is not a trend but already a fact now.”

‘More good than bad’

Although game playing in particular has been accused of causing Internet addiction among many of the nation’s young people, Liu said that online entertainment “is doing more good than bad for the youth.”