A Flood Of Tears
Saving The Caves
Internet Celebrities
China's Soccer Blues
Earning Vs Learning
Mentally Ill Man Locked Up

Beyond the Headlines has reported before on the phenomenon of internet celebrities in China. One of the more famous, or notorious ones, is Luo Yufeng, better known as Fengjie. She became popular online after publicly announcing some ridiculously high demands for a boyfriend and distributing leaflets on the streets of several main cities. A supermarket cashier, she claimed herself to be cleverer than Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, and said she was partial to men such as US president Barack Obama and Britain’s Prince William.

It's no secret to anyone following the internet here in China that the country's base of web users is huge and still growing growing fast—the country went from having 210 million web users in 2007 to more than 380 million at the end of last year.

But all these newly-plugged in Chinese may find themselves encountering a stop sign at the on-ramp to the information highway in the inability of the country's 3g internet providers to provide the kind of services they need.

The number of young Internet addicts in China soared to 24 million last year as the world's largest web population exploded, according to a survey carried by state media Wednesday.

The number of young addicts almost doubled from 2005 and now accounts for one in seven young Internet users, according to the poll conducted by the China Youth Association for Network Development.

China now has more than 4.2 million internet users under the age of 10. That's according to the first annual report on internet use by minors. It's only a tiny fraction of China's total internet population – estimated at around 400 million or so – but it's a figure that's got some people here worried.

And it follows a study released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences saying that the number of young Chinese adults addicted to the Internet has risen to more than 33 million.

Attempts by local governments in China to regulate human flesh searches on the internet, or crowd sourcing as it's also known, has sparked controversy here.

A human flesh search is when thousands, sometimes millions, of inpidual internet users piece together every detail of a person's life and then publish them online. It's part online detective work, part manhunt. And it's proved particularly popular with internet users here who have used the power of the web to expose everyone from corrupt officials to a woman who filmed herself killing a kitten with her stiletto.

What's the general reaction from Chinese Internet users? Well, most Internet users do support it and say it's no different from giving birth in Hong Kong. One person says that as a human being, no matter where you come from, if there is a country that can provide a better society, environment and welfare, then why not? Another person says that it is very cheap for a Chinese person to give birth in the US, and that it costs about the same to get a Beijing Hukou, or residence permit. Others think that it’s not harmful to China at all, because with such a huge population, it might even be good for the country to ease the number of people here.

In June - a report by The China Internet Network Information Center showed that the number of Internet users in the country had climbed to 420 million - a staggering 36 million more than just six months earlier. This increase also- unsurprisingly- coincides with a surge in online shops and shoppers. BON’s Kelda Yuen has more on China’s online shopping craze and the companies that are cashing in on this booming market.