Mobile and broadband speeds for download and upload are key measures of internet quality, network reliability and consumer satisfaction. Although there are significant disparities in the broadband internet speeds of coastal provinces and inland ones, China ranked 22nd out of 178 countries in 2019, with an average download speed of 90.6 Mbps. Since hundreds of millions of Chinese access the internet through their smartphone, mobile internet speeds are also important to gauge for internet access quality. With the largest 4G infrastructure in the world, China ranked 53rd of 139 countries in terms of mobile download speeds, averaging 28.9 Mbps in March 2019. Germany has been used as a benchmark because of its high performance in indicators of digital connectivity.
Prepared by
Rahul Karan Reddy
Rahul Karan Reddy is Senior Research Associate at Organisation for Research on China and Asia (ORCA). He works on domestic Chinese politics and trade, producing data-driven research in the form of reports, dashboards and digital media. He is the author of ‘Islands on the Rocks’, a monograph on the Senkaku/Diaoyu island dispute between China and Japan. He is the creator of the India-China Trade dashboard, the Chinese Provincial Development Indicators dashboard and co-lead for the project ‘Episodes of India-China Exchanges: Modern Bridges and Resonant Connections’. He is co-convenor of ORCA’s annual conference, the Global Conference on New Sinology (GCNS) and co-editor of ORCA’s daily newsletter, Conversations in Chinese Media (CiCM). He was previously a Research Analyst at the Chennai Center for China Studies (C3S), working on China’s foreign policy and domestic politics. His work has been published in The Diplomat, 9 Dash Line, East Asia Forum, ISDP & Tokyo Review, among others. He is also the Director of ORCA Consultancy.