Twelve years on from the Internet's arrival in China, the various forms of Internet media have become an 800-pound gorilla that are challenging, if not cornering, the print industry.

No one is predicting that Internet media websites that inform, entertain and sell as well as host discussion groups and blogs will turn books, magazines and newspapers into dinosaurs. But with the print medium's audience and advertising revenue being dented, many of its operators and overseers envisage an enhanced partnership as the only way to remain profitable.

Students in a Chinese school have a computer and Internet lesson in this undated file photo. [newsphoto]

The Forum on the Internet Media of China hosted by the China Daily website and the Yunnan provincial government will see media executives and experts convening tomorrow in Kunming to discuss how the print and Internet media can co-exist to benefit mutually, among other issues, organizers said on Monday.

"Within just a few years, Internet media have stood up to newspapers and broadcasting as an equal," Min Dahong, a participant, told China Daily. "With their exponential growth and ever-expanding capacity, you can well imagine the pressure they exert on traditional media."

Min, a former senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, has followed Web expansion since the country was wired in April 1994. He is now the vice-president of the Beijing Internet Media Society, which conducts research on the medium.

Illustrating how these digital gorillas flex their muscles, Min said that Sina.com, the largest Chinese Web portal, attracted a huge audience last year during the launch of Shenzhou VI, China's second manned spacecraft.

Print medium seeks Internet 'marriage'

It registered a record 450 million page views on October 12 alone, the day of the launch.

China now stands second to the United States in the number of Internet users 123 million at the end of this June, up from 111 million six months before according to a biannual survey released by the China Internet Network Information Centre in July.

Slightly more than half of the Chinese surfers are 35 years old and younger, and 66.3 per cent of them listed news as their most-used service, the survey said.

The "2006 Blue Book of China's Media," published by Tsinghua University and the Social Science Documentation Publishing House, cited Internet media as one reason newspaper ad sales grew by 7 per cent in the first half of 2005, compared with an average growth of 20 per cent in the previous decade.

Chinese online ad sales totalled 3.13 billion yuan (US$396 million) last year, and are expected to jump to 4.6 billion yuan (US$555 million) 48 per cent this year, according to a forecast by the iResearch Consulting Group, an Internet medium research firm in Shanghai.

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