China's net savvy population crossed 450 million mark, the world's largest "netizen" network, while the numbers of Chinese micro bloggers crossed 100 million, heralding a new media culture that could challenge the tightly controlled state press.

The numbers of "netizens" has gone up to 450 million as China registered 20.3 per cent growth compared to the last year, Wang Chen, head of China's State Council Information Office told the media here today.

This meant that around 33.9 per cent of the Chinese population has gone online, a ratio above the world average of 30 per cent, he said.

China has emerged as the country with biggest online population ever since the net was introduced in 1994.

As the internet expanded at a rapid pace in China, the numbers of micro blogger have also gone up who used the medium as their main source of information.

According to a report on China's micro blog market released by top news portal sina.com in September, China's micro-blogging population had grown from more than 54 million people in March to more than 103 million people.

Today, around 25 per cent of China's Internet users are micro bloggers, the report said.

A study released by Analysts International, an Internet consultancy organisation, said there could be 145 million people using micro blogs in China next year.

With micro-blogging attracting so many people, including officials, scholars and celebrities, it is playing an increasing role in almost every field.

The fast spread of micro blog is having its impact on the official print and television media which trying to expand its critical editorial content to make itself interesting.

As the internet emerged as a major catalyst of change, this year saw a major show down between the government and the Google over the intrusive censors to control the web content.

After months of resistance, Google, which had a 35 per cent of share of among the search engine portals in China gave in and renewed its license this year after agreeing to all rules and regulations.

State-run Peoples Daily itself launched a new search engine Goso.cn to rival both Google and the popular private Chinese search engine Baidu.