BEIJING, Jan. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese netizens had paid 100 billion yuan (12.5 billion U.S. dollars) for the Internet services last year, said China Internet Information Center here Tuesday.

    According to a report released by the center, China has 111 million netizens. Both the numbers of the Internet users and broadband users in China are ranking the second in the world.

    The report said the actual Internet expense of each Chinese netizen amounted to 103.6 yuan (12.9 U.S. dollars) per month on the average, excluding the charges of various kinds of services like the e-commerce provided many websites.

    Currently the Internet popularization ratio in China is 8.5 percent, much higher than the world's average of 1.52 percent.

    But the report also said the distribution of Chinese netizens is quite unbalanced.

    Nearly 90 percent of the Internet users are urban citizens and the number of the netizens in west China is greatly outnumbered by that in China's eastern part. Enditem