BEIJING, March 3 (Xinhua) -- China saw rapid growth in online education last year, with the number of users of such services rising 29.7 percent year on year to 201 million, accounting for 24.3 percent of total Internet users, according to a statistical report on Internet development.

Around 194 million people in China accessed online education via mobile phones, up 63.3 percent compared with 2017, said the China Internet Network Information Center report.

Wider use of smart devices and improved quality and accessibility of mobile Internet creates more opportunities for online education growth and makes learning via mobile devices much easier.

Online education is going further "mobile" in China where popular instant messaging applications like WeChat have become an important tool for mobile devices-based learning, the report notes.

With the help of live streaming, voice recognition and cloud storage technologies, online live classes are now able to create a satisfactory teaching environment with acceptable results and thus are widely used, which helps drive the sector's fast growth in China, the report said.