China has become the world's second most populous internet nation, with 20 million new users going online last year, according to research announced this week.

The total number of Chinese surfers reached almost 120 million last year, according to a report from US-based research and consulting firm eTForecasts.

Rapidly increasing internet adoption in Asia's highly-populous developing nations, notably China, India and Indonesia, has helped push the worldwide online population over one billion for the first time.

"Much of future internet user growth is coming from populous countries such as China, India, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia," said report author Dr. Egil Juliussen.

"These countries will also see strong growth of wireless web usage, and for many new internet users the cellphone will be their only internet access device. "

Chinese surfers are also more likely to be on broadband connections than their US counterparts. Reflecting the relatively recent introduction of the internet to China, shared broadband access is relatively more common than in the US.

Data from UK-based Point Topic puts the number of Chinese broadband lines at 35 million compared to almost 41 million in the US.