MUMBAI: China is fast catching up with leader United States in the online population.

The Chinese government has now claimed that its internet user population had surpassed 100 million. The US online population stands at 135 million.

Speaking about the growth rate over the years, there were 94 million Chinese internet users at the end of 2004. China's population is about 1.3 billion people.

China's Communist government encourages the use of internet mainly for education and business. It has a very tough anti online pornography policy. The government kicked off a new campaign last week to tighten controls on web's public offerings. It has also threatened to shut down Web sites that fail to register with regulators.