The Ministry of Culture (MOC) announced on Monday a considerable easing of the approval process for cybercafés, heralding prospects for the industry's further development.

The restriction on the number of computers in one Internet café will be removed, and the minimum permissible area for a cybercafé has been reduced to 20 square meters, the MOC said on Monday.

Excessive government intervention, especially restrictions on the number of Internet cafés and a ban on opening individual cafés, has distorted the industry's development and caused a lack of competition, Chen Tong, director of the cultural market department under MOC, said on Monday.

Requirements for the number and locations of cybercafés will be waived, according to a circular issued by the MOC, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The four departments also issued a circular in November 2013 approving the opening of individual Internet café. Prior to this, only chain cybercafés with "standard" environments had been allowed.

"The measures are in line with the central government's efforts to further streamline administrative approvals," Pan Gongxia, an expert on Internet café industry, told the Global Times.

"As public places offering Internet access, Internet cafés have made critical contribution to immensely increasing China's Web users' population in such a short time, especially to popularizing the Internet among disadvantaged young people," Pan said.

China's Web user population, the world's largest, reached 632 million by the end of June, of which 178 million were rural residents, according to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center on July 21.

The country had 136,000 Internet cafés as of the end of 2012, a decline of 6.9 percent year on year due to a boom in household broadband and mobile Internet, Xinhua reported in April 2013.