internet - Reuters joins the blog-number game

Now news wire Reuters joins the efforts in trying to find out what is happening in the Chinese bloghosphere. While they offer a rather ignorant view on what is happening:

The growing stable of e-scribes, still small by global standards, has attracted homegrown firms and foreign giants like Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, esearch), Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) offering blogging Web pages to outspoken Chinese Internet users.

Not that many outspoken users, in my opinion. On the numbers they offer different perspectives I noted estimations between one and 15 million, Reuters first says there are 14.2 weblogs, then six. Whatever the real number is, the argumentation for the six million makes most sense:
Microsoft says over 1 million users in China have joined its "MSN Spaces" service so far, which is operated out of China and was launched in the country just three months ago.
That number is growing an average rate of 30 percent a month, said Sally Ip, MSN Asia's regional trade marketing manager.

Bokee, which was set up in 2002, claims the biggest share of China's blogging market with about 2 million registered users, and said it is adding 6,000-10,000 daily.

When you consider Bokee to be a weblog hosting service, that is.

Update: The less than coherent Reuters' article on blogging in China now also made it into the International Herald Tribune.