CHENGDU, March 27 (Xinhua) -- As of December 2023, China had recorded more than 1 billion online audiovisual users, with some 98.3 percent of its netizens using audiovisual services, according to a research report released on Wednesday.

The annual report on China's internet audiovisual service development was released in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, during the 11th China Internet Audio & Video Convention.

The report shows that in 2023 alone, the size of China's market for the online audiovisual industry, including short video, livestreaming, audio and other fields, exceeded 1 trillion yuan (about 141 billion U.S. dollars) for the first time, reaching a total of over 1.15 trillion yuan.

By December 2023, China had some 1.55 billion short-video accounts online, with more than 15 million professional livestreamers, according to the report.

Over the past two years, the newly added audiovisual users in China have been mainly from its rural areas. In 2022 and 2023, the country recorded 299 million and 320 million rural audiovisual users on the internet, respectively, both showing a higher year-on-year growth rate than that of the urban users in the same period, said Zhou Jie, deputy secretary-general of China Netcasting Services Association, during the conference.