Twitter estimates that it has about 10 million active users from China, even though the site has been blocked in the country since 2009.

According to TechCrunch, Twitter's China-based active users was pegged at 35.5 million. However, an anonymous source has revealed that Twitter has only about 10 million active Chinese users. This is only an estimate as Twitter cannot provide the accurate total.

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The exact tally is difficult to obtain since Chinese users are making a detour of the country's censors by using an Internet connection outside the mainland. This means that a Chinese Twitter user will appear as if he or she is accessing the site from other locations such as the United States, where the VPN is sent through.

Although the Chinese user base only accounts for a tiny fraction of Twitter's 310 million users, this does not imply that the company is not making money in the country. Chinese firms, as well as state-run media outlets, are still allocating a budget for advertisement and content distribution on the platform to reach a global market, Fortune noted.

"There are growing pockets of ordinary people who want to circumvent censorship so they can access whatever information they choose," Charles Smith, one of the pseudonymous founders of anti-censorship group Great Fire, told TechCrunch in an email.

Currently, the United States account for a lion share of Twitter users at 65 million, while the remaining 245 million are scattered overseas.

TagsTwitter, Internet censorship, china, VPN