one reason.........Censored to the Bone

I think it may depend on the province, and/or the provider. Where I am the speed seems to be fine.

I've been in 37 cities in 12 provinces and only in Taipei and Hong Kong did I get a decent speed from my bandwidth.  Quality is a word that should be removed from the Chinese dictionary since they still don't get it.

The GFW in action.

It's an infrastructure thing. Having faster internet speeds means, among other things, laying and maintaining a ton of fiber optic or cable internet lines. It's why relatively small countries like Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Latvia all have relatively high internet speeds while larger countries like China, the US, Russia, Brazil and Canada tend to have slower internet speeds. 

'Cause they don't want you to know...

you can get a faster connection in bigger cities and sure the net is slow when you compare it to other countries and what you are used to.

but it does all come down to infrastructure and the size of the country, can you imagine how much it would cost to upgrade things in a a big city, and im sure the internet companies dont want to fork out the money to upgrade it and since they dont have much competition why upgrade anything

like others said. infrastructure. 

although i know in beijing china unicom is offering some really good upgrade packages right now. i'm about to head over today and upgrade the speed of my internet, hopefully i'll be as pleased as i think i will be.

Hong Kong is not much better.  But Japan and Korea are amazing - really zippy - much better than back home in La Jolla.

China is certainly not wealthy. Their debt to GDP is suspected to be 160%, compared to 100% for the US. Internet speeds are slow because 1)the government controls internet access, and the country is still developing internet infrastructure

I rally don't think money is the reason.  I think the government here wants their citizens to use the internet as little as possible so they deliberately make it inconvenient, aggravating, and sloooow - especially for gmail/google users.  Before you call me a loon, use google to browse and then use Baidu or yahoo and see the huge difference - about 5.8 seconds for a simple search on Google and only 1.2 seconds on Baidu.

Since most corruption in China is uncovered by the internet, I can understand WHY they don't think it is important to improve on-line performance. They probably wish the internet never existed in the first place.

I really don't think money is the reason.  I think the government here wants their citizens to use the internet as little as possible so they deliberately make it inconvenient, aggravating, and sloooow - especially for gmail/google users.  Before you call me a loon, use google to browse and then use Baidu or yahoo and see the huge difference - about 5.8 seconds for a simple search on Google and only 1.2 seconds on Baidu.

Since most corruption in China is uncovered by the internet, I can understand WHY they don't think it is important to improve on-line performance. They probably wish the internet never existed in the first place.

Doesn't all hi-tech stuff suck in China?  It may look pretty on the outside but it never works right the first time or if it does, it doesn't work for very long.

Because (and this should pop-up as a reminder when you press the ask question button on here) China is still a developing country with much bigger fish to fry first.

3G network here is better than the UK.

DSL still sucks here.

Although this is slightly off-topic, my DSL and my cable Internet service were hacked or hijacked three times in one year...by my neighbors, no less, who someone were able to spoof the user name and password, change the password and then somehow interlope the connection to their flat.  It took China Mobile almost one month to try to figure it out. I agree with the comments above -- i don't find the Internet here fast though, and I don't find it slow -- I find it just middlin'.

Internet?  In China? Hahahahahahaha

It's a giant WAN with limited connection to the Internet.

Wealth? What wealth are you referring to? 

China's internet infrastructure is embarrassing. Also, take the crappy internet and regulate the poop out of it and you get an infuriatingly slow connection most of the time. 

I don't know which internet company you are using now.  If you are using the cheap ones,YES,freaking slow.We tried it before and changed to use China telecom.It's pretty fast. We enjoy it.

Here is the link of 15 internet service providers in China.

http://www.at0086.com/rank/en-us/20080129210041375.html

Take a look.

What I have found with my DSL is that the installation was terrible.  Data lines should never be spliced but the "professional" that installed my line cut it three times and taped it together before I told him to start over.  He complained a lot and basically had the opinion that I as the customer should be happy for whatever work he actually did.  The quality of the signal and the transmission speed will definitely be effected by shoddy workmanship throughout the system.

I can't get into websites like Youtube and now Shark Tank and other shows I watch on ABC are banned or restricted. I don't really think the connection is really slow. I use a mac so it must have something to do with your quality of computer you are using. I get free wireless all the time and it seems pretty zippy to me except for the gmail. account which is running really slow nowadays.

Give you a chart with top 10 countries based on internet speed test:

1. South Korea

2.Romania

3.Bulgaria

4.Lithuania

5.Latvia

6.Japan

7.Sweden

8.Ukraine

9.Denmark

10.Hong Kong

yeah, i'm in hong kong and lovin' it.  the speed difference is like night and day compared to the mainland.

It's still a developing country thought you would know that by now. 

Japan and South Korea already have fiber optic connections available. Even France is barely starting to install those, and China has a LOT to do before considering installing fiber optic cables...