Chinese-Americans Have High PC, Internet Penetration Rates

More than half of Chinese-Americans have Internet access and almost all of them own a PC, according to a study commissioned by SINA.com.

The research, based on interviews with 1,005 citizens of Chinese descent living in the United States and Canada, found that three-quarters of the surveyed Chinese Internet users go online every day to shop, send email, engage in online trading or other activities, while a majority of them have a college degree and an average income of $69,000.

The survey was conducted by Interview Service of America and asked respondents about their frequency in going online, online purchase behavior, types of sites most frequently visited, and levels of interest in such select product and service categories as travel, telecommunications, and finance.

Key findings of the survey include:

• 65 percent of Chinese-American Internet users are online everyday, with 97 percent owning a home computer.
• About 60 percent of Chinese households in the US and Canada have an Internet connection at home.
• Nearly 60 percent of Chinese-American Internet users have purchased one or more products/services online within the past year. Books are the most frequent online purchases, followed by computer products and electronics. Telecommunications products are more likely to be purchased by Chinese-Canadian Internet users.
• 58 percent of Chinese Internet users in the United States have investments, and of those, 70 percent trade stocks online at an average of nine trades per month. Forty-two percent of Chinese Internet users in Canada have an investment portfolio, and 51 percent of them trade online with an average of approximately five trades per month.
• Close to one-quarter of Chinese Internet users in both the US and Canada conduct online banking.
• The majority of United States (73 percent) and Canadian (63 percent) Chinese Internet users visit Chinese-language Web sites.
• The vast majority of Chinese Internet users in the United States and Canada make an average of eight international calls a month.
• 77 percent of Chinese Internet users in Canada have at least one cell phone in the household versus 61 percent in the US.