6 million people, or 5 percent of Chinese homes, access the Internet from home. Only the U.S surpasses China in the number of home users." The number could increase much more since this statistic only represents the situation in China two years ago.
Education is always a focus being paid attention by every country and government, how to improve the quality of education; how to expedite the development of education; how to resolve the problems emerging during the process of education, etc. is what people are seeking answer for at all times. Some people have already engaged in the research on the deployment of modern technologies in instruction. The ex-president of United States of America, Clinton once stated in a whitepaper in 1997 that until 2000, every classroom and library in the United States of America will have access to Internet, every 12-years-old child could access the Internet. As we can see that deploying Internet to education has already been noticed and studied since years ago. At present, almost every university has set up its own Intranet with access to the Internet, and many journals and international conferences related with education technology are full of discussions about web-based education, virtual classroom and multimedia instruction etc.
China, a nation with tremendous population of computer and Internet users as proved above, participates in it as well. A large-scale nation wide survey conducted by professors Wang Qiong and Zhao Guodong in 2002 could tell us something of what is happening in China (Wang Qiong and Zhao Guodong are the professors of Education Technology Department of the Graduate School of Education, Peking University PKU). The aim of this survey is to investigate the status, development, and implementation of Information Technology at colleges and universities in China, and the report based on this survey offers a rich array of data about a wide range of information technology planning and policy issues affecting China's colleges and universities.