博主按：这是我的研究生和我2000年合写的“跨越信息鸿沟”英文稿。为什么场合或刊物而写的，已经记不清了。可能是投给一个信息伦理学国际会议。

Bridging Digital Divide: China’s Approach（2000）

Wu Yishan, Jia Xiaojie

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC)

Information technology has had immense impact on various fields and on almost all the corners of the earth. As Internet witnesses a breathtaking growth, grand visions about network applications have been described before our eyes, such as distance learning, where students may listen to the lectures in a remote classroom and even participate classroom discussion, and telemedicine, where a patient in remote villages may expect to get diagnosis from famous experts or receive body check by medical instruments at the other end of the network. It is easy to reach such a consensus that people in less developed regions are most anxious to share the benefits brought by IT. In fact, however, it is people in poor areas that have received least benefit from the rapid development of IT and network. That is, there is an unequal access to information opportunities.

To address this problem of unequal access to information and many other issues, UNESCO introduced Global Infostructure Program in June of 1999, emphasizing that free and universal access to information is a fundamental human right, as it allows people to freely participate in the cultural life of the global community, to enjoy the arts, and to share scientific advancements; free and universal access to information belonging to the public domain is essential for advancing education, science and culture as well as for fostering democracy and is instrumental to bridging the gap between the information rich and information poor. We should act according to the spirit advocated by UNESCO. However, the development of IT will not support the fundamental right of citizens to access information spontaneously. On the contrary, technology barriers and economic obstacles are accelerating polarization in the society, and even causing marginalization of some regions or human groups. In the age of knowledge economy, the primary reason for marginalization is information gap and knowledge gap.

General Causes for Unequal access to Information

Before the printing revolution, oral language was the main channel for communication, so a multilingual person would acquire more information than monolingual people.  The wide use of printed stuff added weight to the importance of literacy. In the mean time, unequal opportunities for education widened the economic gap between citizens, further exacerbating the social inequality and polarization.

Many people embraced Internet with open arms. An enticing slogan is that Internet allows any person to access needed information anywhere. In fact, however, it is not so simple. IT is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, rapid development of IT brings unprecedented chance for developing countries to realize leap-frog progress. On the other hand, the development also worsens unequal access to information. Expensive cost for building and using information infrastructure, as well as low educational levels, both prevent people in less developed region from accessing information badly needed by them for obtaining economic take-off.

In China, for instance, the early users of residential telephone or mobile telephone had to pay a very high installation fee or access fee, which means that only the richest people got to enjoy the modern communication technology. Only in recent years did residential and mobile phones enter relatively low-income households. According to a recent poll conducted by the China National Internet Information Center, the number one item in the dissatisfaction list is still “too low an access speed and too high a charge”. For most Chinese households with low to medium incomes, PCs, telephone traffic fee and Internet access fee are quite a cost burden.           

In comparison with traditional media, the biggest advantage of Internet is its instant access. Therefore those who access information through Internet get an edge in terms of timeliness over other people who rely only on traditional media. The latter may find the information before them meaningless because of the long duration in information search. The second advantage of Internet is its content richness, which leads to another unfairness—those who have access to Internet are more possible to find more, newer information, which helps them to become information rich and economically rich, while the people who do not have access to Internet may become further information poor and economically poor. The third reason for the unfairness is the current distribution of Internet contents. It can be seen easily that there are much more English contents than contents of other languages, and much more contents oriented towards white collar professionals than contents towards low-income families and farmers. As a result, non-English speaking people and low-income farmers or other workers would find Internet less valuable even if they afford somehow to access Internet.  

Digital Divide in China Today

China is a country with large population and vast span of land. Economic development of different regions is surprisingly unbalanced. Generally speaking, in terms of easiness of accessing information, urban areas are better than rural areas, coastal provinces better than inland provinces, economically developed regions better than less developed regions. The survey about geographical distribution of Internet users published by the China National Internet Information Center shows that, by July of 2000, Internet users of Beijing alone account for 18.72% of all users, while the total Internet users of the 4 metropolises directly under the Central government ( Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing) take as much as 34.14% of all users. The figure is all the more shocking when one notes that the total population of these 4 cities accounts for merely 5.39% of the Chinese population ( according to “China Statistical Yearbook, 1999”). As a contrast, Internet users in Qinghai Province, Ningxia Hui Nationality Autonomous Region, and Xinjiang Uygur Nationality Autonomous region, all in the West China, account for only 0.07%, 0.18% and 0.64% respectively. ^[1]  For most people in inland or remote provinces, accessing Internet is still a luxury.

In addition to the imbalance among provinces, there is unbalanced development even within the developed regions. For instance, information equipment availability in Beijing’s suburban districts and counties is rather poor. Based on the survey of the Beijing Education Commission, among the total 376 middle schools in 10 suburban districts and counties, only 250 have computers. Out of the total 1284 primary schools, only 280 are installed with at least one computer. ^[2] The condition in suburban Beijing is so awkward then one could imagine the case in schools of poor mountainous areas. Many pupils there have never seen a computer in their whole life, let alone computer skills and distant learning.

The gap in information access between different rural areas is also huge. For example, in Dazeshan Town, Pingdu City of Shandong Province, a rich town also known as “China’s  No. 1 Grapes Village”, as many as 198 PCs have been purchased in the whole town by August 2000, more than 3 PCs on average are in use in each of the 34 villages under this town.^[3]  But this is exception rather than the rule. Most Chinese farmers are still far from modern information technology.

The Principle of Ensuring Both Efficiency and Justice

Many factors have led to the unbalanced development among different regions of China, factors like natural endowments, social customs, historical heritage, geographical position, economic operation mechanism, etc. Nowadays, easiness of accessing information has becoming a new factor that influences the unbalanced economic development among regions.

Due to economic advantage, developed regions have much lower barriers in accessing information network than less developed regions. Rapidness and easiness in accessing information help form a virtuous circle, while poor regions find themselves trapped in a vicious circle. Unequal access to information is gradually making effect upon justice as well as efficiency in regional development. To get rid of such inequality, relying on the force of market is far from enough and the government should and must intervene effectively

Hu Angang, a Chinese development expert, argues that material poverty will have decreasing impact upon China’s society while knowledge poverty will have profound impact upon China in the 21^st century. By knowledge poverty he refers to the lack of the capacity to acquire, communicate and create knowledge. Knowledge poverty will be sure to produce new poverty-stricken population.^[4] We can see that getting rid of knowledge poverty is congruent with the promotion of universal access to information. Actions along this line will have special significance if China is to transfer herself from a nation burdened with huge population to a nation endowed with rich human resources.

In boosting universal access to information, the principle of ensuring both efficiency and justice should be followed.

Usually efficiency and justice are contradictory to each other. But in some cases, measures promoting justice would not injure efficiency. On the contrary, they would help improve efficiency. For instance, providing assistance to poor regions in their construction of local information infrastructure and helping their people learn how to access information by using new IT would, on one hand, ameliorate the problem of unequal access to information, and on the other hand, greatly increase local people’s incentive to get rich through information utilization. Such measures, as an instrument for poverty relief, would be more efficient than just sending food, materials and money to poor regions.

Promoting universal access to information would inevitably involve the issue of how to allocate information resources rationally. Allocation of information resources should follow the efficiency principle, i.e. whose information needs or what type of information needs should be met first so as to yield more efficiency or value. Allocation of information resources should also follow the principle of justice. What should be emphasized is that justice principle does not mean providing equal amount of information resources to every one. Rather, it means ensuring everyone’s equal right to access information.^[5] Here, efficiency and justice are not contrary to each other.

Measures to inject more information resources into poor regions often cause suspicion. The reason of suspicion is that because of the low education level among the people in poor areas, the utilization efficiency of information resources there would not be high. This argument goes that it is preferable to place the same information resources into developed areas so as to achieve better economic return. We would not claim that such argument is totally wrong. But let us suppose that we add books valued 10,000 yuan to some public libraries of the downtown Beijing. It is safe to judge that no one would notice such an addition of collection. If the same books are donated to schools in poor areas, however, many more rural kids are sure to benefit a lot from reading these books so rare to them.

Government Measures to Bridge the Information Gap

To bridge digital divide and promote universal access to information, three issues should be addressed in less developed regions. They are:

a.      building information infrastructure;

b.     allocation and exploitation of information resources;

c.      IT education and training of information acquiring skills.

These three facets constitute a whole and cannot be separated from each other. Information infrastructure is the physical base for universal access to information. Rational allocation and in-depth exploitation of information resources are guarantee for the universal access. Only those who are skilled in applying IT and acquiring information are possible to really enjoy equal right on information highway.

Lack of talents is the most pressing problem in less developed region. Due to the little education received, people there do not understand the significance of IT and do not have the awareness to seek and utilize information. The most effective measure for changing this situation seems to be providing appropriate information education to local people. An old Chinese saying goes like this: Teach a person to fish rather than give him a fish. In the same vein, helping local people master methods to acquire information should be more effective than simply providing material aid.

At present the Chinese government seems to have neither a decisive plan nor a profound awareness as to how to promote universal access of information. The soothing fact, however, is that the Chinese government always abides by the following principle : to give efficiency a priority place but also take justice into suitable account so as to realize universal richness. Government policies and measures formulated according to this principle could alleviate inequality in information access to certain extent.

Since some coastal provinces in the eastern China had made a great progress in improving local people’s standard of living, the Chinese government started to move its focus of attention to West of China and initiated an ambitious drive on west development. Now western provinces lag behind eastern ones not only in economic development, but also in informationalization. For instance, none of the top 10 provinces in terms of informationalization falls in the west, while 4 least developed provinces in terms of informationalization are in the west. Rapid increase of informationalization in West China is a necessary choice if West is to shorten its gap to provinces in the middle part of China.

In fact, information infrastructure building in West China has witnessed a high wave after the central government made the decision to develop West. In May 2000, the project of laying the first ever optical fiber cable in Qomolangma Region of Tibet was initiated. According to the stated plan given by a vice chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region, optical fiber cables are slated to reach all the prefectures and cities of Tibet by 2003, telephone lines reach every town by 2003, and optical fiber cables reach every county by 2005. By that time, Tibet’s telecommunication service will realize a historical frog leap in terms of network capacity, technology sophistication and service quality.^[6] 

In addition to the construction of information infrastructure, the central government has also initiated many other information support programs. For instance, China International Electronic Commerce Center under the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation just started an information support program oriented towards 10 provinces in West China in July. The program, called “ Information Service Project for China West”, is aimed to provide comprehensive e-commerce service to businesses of West. The China International Electronic Commerce Center has signed agreements with Guizhou, Yunnan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan and Shanxi respectively and will provide the following services:

--build “Business, Products and Investment Opportunities” database for western businesses free of charge and promote as many as 30,000 local brand products and 1000 inviting-investment projects in the center’s websites;

--provide free consulting, planning and technical support service to relevant provincial governments as to how to build and maintain a website titled “Investment Opportunities and Environments”, and link these websites to the website of “China Investment” free of charge. 

  These information services are valued 9 million yuan in total. ^[7]

In the past two years, the central government already allocated 1.6 billion yuan to support compulsory education in the western China. This year, additional 800 million yuan were set aside to further improve education in poor areas and ethnic minority areas. On top of this, Ministry of Education decided this year to allocate 80 million yuan of special funds to initiate a distant learning project in West China. “Cross-century Teachers’ Training Project”, another important project supported by the Ministry of Education, plans to provide training of computer application skills to all the students now studying in normal schools and all the school teachers within future two to three years.^[8]

Non-government Actions

Promoting universal access to information is a Herculean long-term task, demanding active support and participation from the whole society. At present there are quite a few non-government actions in this regard.

Based on Vice-Premier Li Lanqing’s suggestion that idle PCs owned by Beijing’s government agencies and businesses could be donated to Beijing’s suburban schools, in December 1999, the Beijing Informationalization Office, Beijing Daily, Beijing Education Commission and the Capital Civil Behavior Foundation jointly initiated a campaign on donating PCs to rural schools. So far some 1500 PCs have been collected. Many residents of Beijing volunteered to serve in the campaign. ^[9]

Another example is activities conducted by the Foundation for Underdeveloped Regions of China, which has poverty relief as its mission. This foundation produced video programs that promote local resource advantages or provide supply-and-demand information on farm produce and animals for 592 poorest Chinese counties and broadcast the programs through CCTV free of charge. In 1998, the foundation and the China Radio National co-sponsored an one-year radio program titled “ Hotline on Poverty Relief”, which provides free information on economic development, resource advantage and invitation of outside investment of poor regions. In 1999, the foundation had another attempt in borrowing mass media’s capacity by opening an one-year column on “Poverty Relief through News” in Beijing Evening Paper.^[10]

Recommendations

Digital divide exists not only between developed and developing countries, but also within each country. This divide exacerbates the gap between developing and developed parts by depriving people in less developed world of the equal right to access information. Fortunately, more and more national and local governments, as well as conscientious individuals, began to be concerned about this phenomenon. The Chinese government is no exception here, because bridging digital divide and promoting equality in information access in information access have to rely on forceful intervention by governments. To improve the effort to bridge digital divide, we would like to make the following recommendations.

Above all, the government should identify the causes leading to the inequality in information access and the regularity in the evolution of those causes. Based on the understanding of the regularity, targeted laws, regulations, policies and measures could be designed and implemented effectively. Effective intervention by governments should integrate multi-disciplinary expertise, including, among others, economics, sociology, and ethics. To facilitate the scholarly exchange between different fields, workshops like this one are very useful.

Second, in the context of China, we should combine the promotion of universal information access with poverty relief activities. It should be emphasized that promoting universal access to information is not a luxury that would be inappropriate to pursuit in China’s context. Rather, poverty relief through information assistance is an inevitable choice before us. To be concrete, information assistance could be deployed by injecting more information resources into poor regions and improving information network environment so as to upgrade scientific and cultural literacy of farmers in poor regions. Sufficient scientific and cultural literacy would enable farmers to be more receptive of new ideas,  more active in combating poverty through knowledge, more sensitive to practical scientific and technical information as well as market information, and more selective on investment decisions so that valuable, limited funds could achieve maximum returns.

Third, allocation of information resources should be rationalized to cater for information needs of those who most need information. To do so, we should above all understand the current geographical distribution of information resources. For instance, by combining the data on public libraries given by China Library Yearbook (1996) with the population statistics given by China Statistical Yearbook (1996), it is easy to find that provinces possessing least per capita library collection of books are not those minority nationality autonomous regions, but some most populous provinces like Anhui, Hebei, Guizhou, Shandong, and Sichuan. Therefore the future allocation of information resources should be tilted towards these provinces. ^[5]

In providing information assistance to alleviate poverty, we should also pay constant attention to the change in information needs. At primary stage of poverty relief, local people most welcome information on appropriate technology, on agro-products market and on opportunities for temporary jobs. As the local economy develops and the vision of local people expands, they begin to require various category of information, such as information on trade, finance, investment, tax, management, science and technology, etc. and they sometimes even need information on development strategy, macroscopic decisions, management consulting, project proposal and feasibility studies. Changes in information needs must be identified to make adjustments as to how to provide information aid to poor regions so as to make poverty relief effort more efficient.

Fourth, multi-leveled information education should be provided to cater for different demands. For instance, for leaders at grass-roots level, information awareness is most needed. The primary purpose of information education here is to enable them to realize the importance of information and understand the possible contribution of information use to economic growth so that they would be willing to build information network, exploit information resources and invest in information education actively. For general technical staff, however, IT education should be the first priority. While for majority of information users, it is enough to let them aware of the potential benefits of utilizing information network and learn various ways of searching information. 

Fifth, telecommunication service pricing reform should be accelerated, and irrational cost structure and rating approaches rectified. At present China’s telecommunication pricing policy seems to be a bit too arbitrary and lack fundamental legitimate basis. Due to the lack of transparent cost accounting and monitoring mechanism in telecommunication industry, the current telecommunication service pricing deviates from economic rationale seriously. Irrational rating dampened consumers’ demand for telecommunication service to some extent and in fact raised economic barrier that prevents citizens from equally accessing information. For instance, in 1998, the installation fee for rural telephone represents 56.6% of average annual net income of farmers for the whole China, but for Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang, the 5 north-western provinces or autonomous regions, the corresponding share were as high as 78.6%, 75.9%, 113.6%, 91.9%, and 59.8% respectively. ^[11]

Last, mobilizing all society to participate in the promotion of universal access to information is extremely important. The government should set up incentives policies to encourage businesses to join the effort to bridge digital divide. For instance, tax credits could be designed to reward enterprises who donate money or computers to poor regions.

References (all in Chinese)

1.            Survey on the Development of Internet in China, http://www.cnnic.net.cn

2.            survey on Computer Availability in Suburban Schools of Beijing, http://tech.sina.com.cn/news/it/2000-01-12/15357.shtml

3.            The First Demonstration Town on “ Network Information Helping Farmers to Get Rich” Was Introduced in Shandong Province, http://tech.sina.com.cn/internet/china/2000-09-08/36218.shtml

4.            Hu Angang, “Knowledge Poverty” Threatens China, Science and Technology Digest, Sep. 26, 2000

5.            Huo Guoqing, Analysis of Allocation Patterns of China’s Information Resources, Library and Information Work, 2000, No.5: 32-37

6.            Optical Fiber Cables Laid in Qomolangma Region, http://www.westdevelop.com/xinxi

7.            Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Supports E-commerce, http://westdevelop/com/xinxi and  http://woem.ec.com.cn/zhuanti.html

8.            Action Plan on Invigorating Education to Meet 21^st Century, http://moe.edu.cn/wenxian/21center.htm

9.            Methods on Donating Computers to Rural Areas, http://tech.sina.com.cn/news/it/2000-2-17/17680.shtml

10.         http://www.furc.org./xinxifupin.htm 

11.         Earth Science Department, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Some Recommendations about Accelerating Development of China’s North-western Region in the Early 21^st Century, Impact of Science on Society, 2000, No.2, 20-35