China’s digital divide deepens

After years of explosive telecommunications growth, China now has the world’s highest number of both fixed and mobile phone connections and the second largest number of internet users. However, while prosperous cities have density rates of over 70 phones per 100 citizens, tens of thousands of villages in remote and poor regions lack a single phone. Only belatedly are Chinese policymakers realising how the disparity reinforces economic divisions between wealthy coastal residents and the rest of China.

A report from the University of Hawaii traceshow China hasmanaged to advance so quickly up the ranks of the global communicationshierarchy and considers why the government is doing little to bridge theyawning gap in access.

Key connectivity facts are that:

• China now has 41phones per 100 citizens, up from 0.2 phones per 100 in 1980.
• By the beginning of 2004 China hadnearly 270 million mobile phone users, more than 260 million fixed lineconnections and about 80 million internet users.
• In rural areas, where 62 percent of China’s populationlives, 0.08 percent use the internet, while about 12 percent of urban residents– and thirty percent in Beijing – do so.
• Bymid-2001 China had some 90 million cabletelevision subscribers and an additional five million people gain access eachyear.
• The great majority of unconnected villages lie inmountainous or remote regions that are difficult to reach with fixed linesystems.

Since the years under the Communist government’s firstchairman, Mao, its inability to collect revenues has hampered extension of ruralphone services. As market mechanisms have became more important for regulating China’s economy,bureaucrats’ decisions on telecommunications policy have been made on the basisof profit and loss calculations. The abolition of a connection fee has made iteven less profitable to provide services in rural areas. The Ministry of Postsand Telecommunications lost around $150m on rural phone services in 2002.

In recent years civil servants and scholars havebegun publishing opinions on the role of telecommunications in rural and inlanddevelopment. The debate has highlighted the tension between bureaucraticinterests intent on maximising revenues and advocates of equitable access as anentitlement.

The government faces contradictory pressures,wanting to provide communications tools for economic and educational gainswhile fearful of how they may be used by those opposed to Communist Party rule.For the moment the publicised arrests of those posting ‘unacceptable’information, along with a significant police presence at many levels of Chinesesociety, result in self-censorship among those tempted to use the voice and datanetworks to challenge the one-party state.

Apart from some programmes of limited scope thegovernment is doing little to invest in spreading communications access toChinese people who are not yet connected. New technologies may offer cheaperoptions to connect poor communities. However:

• The fact that the average urban resident earns sixtimes more than a rural citizen makes internet user fees a major obstacle toexpanded access.
• Reduced broadband fees are likely to lead to 100million having fast internet connections by 2007, but few will be in ruralareas.
• The technical option of using cable TV lines forvoice communications is currently blocked by policymakers.

China’s disconnected lack political cloutand remain dependent on the will of bureaucrats who place the development oftheir own economic sector above those who lack the resources to accesstechnology. Saturation of urban markets may bring a slow but steady increase infixed line connections and internet access into cut-off areas. However, if itis not systematically addressed, the digital divide is set to remain for severaldecades.