eMarketer.com’s recently released a study – ‘China Internet Audience’ - is a snapshot of what will become the world’s largest and most connected county.  The internet research company points out that the number of Internet users will nearly double by 2011 to 245.5 million from 133.5 million; and the number of broadband users also will double, jumping to more than 90 million in 2011 from 46 million today. By 2025, eMarketer.com is projecting the country will have more than a half-billion Internet users.

 Add this to the mix:  The Chinese goverment reports that by the end of this year there will be more nearly 500 million mobile users in China, outpacing the number of fixed lines in the country. That’s more people than live in the United States! 

Having just returned from Shanghai and Beijing, what’s evident about the population in China is that while there is an aging segment holding on to traditions, there is a huge group of 20-somethings who are connected, wired and driving change.  They all seem to have cell phones and they text constantly.  Take a city like Shanghai, and you see the ‘China of the Future”: It’s young, vibrant, cosmopolitan, international, energetic, hip, commercially sophisticated and capitalistic. A trip to a local downtown mall we visited was bursting with activity on a Sunday afternoon: many teenagers and young families hanging out and shopping. 

The Pudong District, located right on the Yangtze River Basin, is a bustling hive of activity. At night, the promenade overlooking the canyons of skyscrapers – punctuated by the distinctive television tower – is full of young people walking up and down.  (Check out the pix.) The restaurants along the strip on The Pudong represent a mix of restaurants from traditional Chinese to Western to Five-Star French.   These restaurants not only catered to tourists, but were full of the growing Chinese Urban Professional (hmmm, ChUPPies?).  Yeah, they’re the ones to whom Starbucks is trying to reach.  Like the US, they’re all throughout downtown Shanghai and Beijing.

The question remains whether the rise of the free enterprise market in China plus the gaining access to the ‘rest of the world’ will inspire these ‘ChUPPies’ to drive government reform.