On Saturday, the state media reported that the number of Internet users in China, by now the biggest in the world, has gone beyond 400 million and accounts for nearly a third of the nation's populace.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, the online populace in the most populous nation globally has reached 404 million. That matches up to with 384 million users at the end of last year.

According to the report, users accessing the Internet with mobile phones were stable at 233 million, whereas the number of populace who had the broadband access reached 346 million.

It has been said that China's twirling internet populace has turned the Internet into a forum for people to put across their judgments in a way seldom seen in a nation where the traditional media is under stern government power.

It is said that the mounting strength and pressure of the online populace has provoked worry in Beijing about the Internet's prospective as a tool for generating communal turbulence, and the system has paced up observation in recent years.

The online content is blocked by the government that it considers politically responsive in a enormous system called the "Great Firewall of China".