Beijing, March 23 (IANS): The total number of websites in China reached 3.51 million by the end of last year, a huge growth since China's first website two decades ago.

The websites, with 4.61 million domain names, were owned and operated by 2.82 million founders, 70 percent of which were organisations and 30 percent individuals, Xinhua quoted a report released by Internet Society of China.

Over 16,000 websites provided professional information for education, medicine and news. After years of advance, China's homegrown search engine Baidu.com and e-commerce platform Taobao.com were capable of competing their global peers.

China's first website connected with the global network was built by researchers at the Institute of High Energy Physics under Chinese Academy of Science in 1994. The site, along with high-tech articles, contained a column "Tour in China" introducing China's culture, news and economy to the world.

There were over 618 million online at the end of 2013 in China, nearly half of the nation's total population.