After Sun's killers were sentenced to prison or death in June 2003, the State Council in the same month announced the abolition of the 21-year-old detention and repatriation system, which is seen as an important milestone in China's social development

"Almost every major domestic and international news event is hotly debated online in China," said Peng Lan, a professor at Renmin University of China who has been observing Internet media for a long time.

Min Dahong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Chinese Web users are participating in commenting on current affairs with unprecedented enthusiasm, which creates an enormous pressure of public opinion that no government department, organization or public figure can afford to ignore. This trend had taken only a few years to materialize. Min said. "The right of speech used to be monopolized by the social elite but the online forum has granted ordinary people, even the disadvantaged group, a certain right of speech. The principle of the online community is the absolute equality of all Web users. What matters is your reasoning, not your ranking, title or academic background."

Peng Lan pointed out, "At least, the Internet might enhance people's enthusiasm for participating in social life and nurture people's habit of free thinking and speech, which will be good for the future development of the media's functions."

Role models

The rapid development of the Internet's role in Chinese people's lives is as much attributed to the model effect of government leaders as to the colossal scale of the netizen population of the country. Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have said on various public occasions that they are regular Internet users.

In a visit to Guangzhou during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003, Hu told a frontline doctor, "You have put forward some wonderful suggestions and I have read them online." Wen told students during a visit to Peking University in the same year, "I was deeply moved by your writings on the Internet."

Sima Yuwen is a 23-year-old private-company owner in Beijing. She said, "You can find the answer to almost any question on the Internet. I log onto the websites of government departments whenever I want to learn about the Central Government's new policies and regulations."

In China, every ministry and department of the Central Government and almost every county-level government has its own website. Following a decision at a regular State Council conference last December, the Central Government's official web portal, www.gov.cn, formally opened on New Year's Day of 2006 after a three-month trial operation. "E-government, as part of the 'sunshine government' campaign, is bound to create a more transparent and efficient government for ordinary people," Sima said.

Chinese farmers are also gaining increasing economic benefits from surfing the Internet.

Wu Kaimao, a litchi farmer on the southern island Province of Hainan, has been selling his fruit online. The 41-year-old farmer, who has cultivated over 10 new subspecies of litchis, owns a litchi plantation of over 66 hectares. After a good harvest, Wu worried about how to sell his fruit far and wide. Then he thought about the Internet. He registered his supply information on agricultural trade websites, which helped him to expand his sales channels. "Sales have never been better and my litchis have been exported to France, the United States and Canada this year," said Wu, who managed to register his own fruit trading company this November.

Stories like this have been happening every day among China's netizen population of 123 million, the second largest national group after the United States. The growth potential is huge, with an increase of 12 million users in the first six months of 2006.