I’ll sift through my notes for more substantive observations later, but in the meantime, here are a few of the more surprising/noteworthy statistics that surfaced in the presentations:

80: Percentage of Chinese Internet users who think the Internet should be managed or controlled. (From survey cited by Deborah Fallows of Pew Internet Research)

85: Percentage of above who think government should do the controlling.

300 or so: The number of Chinese blogs in a sample of more than 500 that carried content critical of the government, corporations, social phenomena, etc. (From Ashley Esarey, assistant professor, Middlebury College).

Midnight to 4am: Time during which majority of politically critical blog posts in China are written. (A. Esarey)

43: Percentage of Americans who answered “yes” to the question “Do you think China will inevitably change with the Internet?” (From Zogby Poll, January 2007, cited by Lokman Tsui)

1: Hangzhou’s position in ranking of 30 major Chinese cities based on percentage of people who blog (from China Media Monitoring study cited by ESWN blogger Roland Soong.)

What to make of all this? It’s anyone’s guess. If there’s a singe line to summarize the findings presented at the conference, it’s this: China’s Internet is a schizophrenic and slippery–and, therefore, as unpredictable–as the country itself.

To get a fuller sense of the confusion, see the official CIRC blog (heroically compiled in real time by John from Global Voices and Dave from Mutant Palm) as well as coverage from Kai Pan at CN Reviews here and here.

[Image: CIRC 2008 group photo, courtesy of RConversation]