As many as 253 million Chinese log on to the Internet regularly, making the country the largest web-user market, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said yesterday.

The semi-official organization, regarded as the most authoritative source of statistics on the country's Internet users, said China had overtaken the US in terms of the number of netizens in the first half of this year.

According to www.internetworldstats.com, the US had 218 million net-users till December 31, 2007, and China, 210 million. Based on the US' growth trend, CNNIC estimated its number could have reached 230 million by the end of June.