Rural Informatization In China PDF Download

Governments, businesses and other interested parties have taken various steps to bridge the digital divide. Some countries, particularly those in the Asia-Pacific region, have made national plans. Initially, most of their efforts were devoted to increasing the level of connectivity in rural areas. With ubiquitous coverage gradually achieved, scholars have argued that the technology-centered approach was too simple and the focus should be shifted to a more comprehensive approach. “Informatization,” a policy of integrated telecommunications development, is regarded as one of the driving forces behind the Chinese government's “new socialist countryside” program. Various national and provincial programs have been initiated to connect the agricultural communities to the information highway. In only five years, nearly all rural villages have been connected to the telephone network, and thousands of websites have been set up to provide agricultural information to rural residents. Arguably, China is the first country in the world to combine connectivity and content into a single national program. China's agricultural informatization program has begun to attract international attention and a few studies have been published. However, most, if not all, of the existing studies are conducted at the national level, which largely neglects the fact that China's unique central-provincial-local institutional arrangement makes the provincial/local government not only the implementers of center-initiated projects but also the initiators of informatization programs specific to their territory. Indeed, China's agricultural informatization is largely a provincial/local endeavor. In addition, there is a significant difference between the English and Chinese literatures regarding the relative emphasis on connectivity and content. Now, the major Chinese telecommunications carriers have transformed themselves from traditional common carriers to integrated information services providers. Concurrently, the government began to build networks and distribute agricultural information to rural communities as a public service. The once separated connectivity and content are now often combined and offered together. The convergence of the “two Cs” has made it necessary to develop and implement a new analytical framework to study the recent development of China's agricultural informatization. This paper studies Sichuan province because its geographic and economic features make it an ideal site to study agricultural informatization. It is both geographically difficult and economically expensive to extend the information infrastructure to rural areas in Sichuan. However, surprisingly, the agricultural informatization service in Sichuan has gained some national applause. Moreover, Sichuan probably has the widest variety of agricultural informatization programs among all the provinces in China because of the relief efforts after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake by various entities. These sporadic programs provide alternative solutions. It is now imperative to critically revisit those programs to find out their status and identify the factors for both their successes and failures. This paper aims to complement the existing rural informatization research in China with a comprehensive provincial/local-level analysis, using an analytical framework that evaluates the performance and sustainability of major ongoing agricultural informatization programs in Sichuan province. This paper will identify the best practices and lessons Sichuan's experience offers for rural development in other countries.