Despite its strict censorship laws and recent political snafus, China is expected to claim half the world's online gaming market by 2012, according to a story in last week's Wall Street Journal [via Massively.com]. In just a little more than one year, China's total revenue from online gaming—MMOs or otherwise—will reach 41 billion yuan ($6 billion), reported by the Beijing-based data analysis firm, Cnzz.com. This may come as no surprise if you've been following the global market trends, but the Chinese government's seemingly oppositional stance regarding online gaming might have inferred the opposite. As we reported last month, the ongoing power struggle between two PRC agencies left Chinese gamers caught in the middle; World of Warcraft, for example, still isn't available in mainland China.

Nonetheless, online gaming—as a whole—is on the rise. "Two-thirds of China’s 338 million Web users are now online gamers," according to the WSJ's article. "The online-game industry, which currently accounts for more than half of the total Internet economy, will see strong annual growth at a rate of 20% future years, the report says." MMOs still account for the majority of China's online gaming market, but Web- and browser-based games follow closely in second place. The WSJ notes that despite the Chinese market's loss of WoW, other MMOs like Aion are beginning to fill that void. In fact, China is likely to pull ahead of the U.S. online gaming market by the end of this year, as the newspaper reported last spring.