The Internet Society of China, a non-governmental organization made up of people from the country's vast Internet industry, said there were 3.5 million websites in China as of the end of 2013.

The 3.5 million websites were being accessed by over 618 million Chinese people who went online last year, said the society. The total number of China's netizens as of December 2013 was almost half of the country's entire population.

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According to the Internet Society of China, the 3.5 million websites operate 4.6 million different domain names. The websites were owned and managed by 2.8 million founders and webmasters.

"Of the total number of websites as of last year, 70 percent were owned by institutions or organizations while the other 30 percent were owned by individuals," said the report released by the society, which is supported by the Ministry of Information Industry, the State Council Information Office, and the Ministry of Education.

Only less than 20,000 of the total websites provided expert information on health, education, and professional news, the report said. Most of the sites were e-commerce sites, personal sites, and corporate websites.

Of the 618 million Internet users in China, some 460 million used their mobile phones and gadgets to access the net, the China Internet Network Information Center said.

The number of mobile web users in the country went up almost 200 percent last year from 2009, when smartphones and gadgets were not introduced yet.

Experts said the number of mobile web users could surpass those who are accessing the Internet through desktop computers in the next few years as China is bent on introducing the latest Internet technology, including 4G connections.

China's first website, created by the Institute of High Energy Physics in 1994, featured a column that introduce Chinese culture and provided news to visitors.