Many in China, especially young people, gather at Internet cafes, mostly for recreation.

"Let me tell you something about these Internet cafes and their users," writes business consultant Paul Denlinger in the blog China Vortex. "The people who go there are young, single, low-income males. They do not bring their dates there. The places are smoky, dingy and poorly lit. They sell some basic food and beverages in the front, and also charge people a fee to sleep overnight on the dirty, bug-infested, stained futons which pass for couches. If you want a truly terrible experience, visit their bathrooms. ...

"The characters are sad characters; if they were living in England 150 years ago, Charles Dickens would be writing about them. From the Chinese perspective, although games and the Internet are highly addictive, Internet cafes serve a useful purpose. Otherwise these people would be on the street, unemployed. The Internet cafe today in China is what gin and beer was to England's working class in the mid-19th century when Karl Marx was writing Das Kapital about the evils of class exploitation." Denlinger, reached by e-mail, focuses on Internet startups.

Deborah Fallows, a senior research fellow with the Pew Internet and American Life Project, has spent the past 18 months in China and concurs with the "flophouse" description for many Internet cafes, but says the Internet is having its own sizable effect in China.

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