Untitled - socium.ge

The Internet in China 103cially those with a high demand for information and entertainment. Theremarkable Internet boom within a limited social scope is a result of state-ledtelecom reform since 1993, characterized by the replacement of a nationalmonopoly with a structure of semi-privatized and privatized oligopolies(Mueller and Tan, 1997; Harwit, 1998; Yan and Pitt, 2002).The reform aimed at increasing market competition and enhancing the abilityof domestic telecom firms to face the challenge of China’s accession to theWorld Trade Organization (Horsley, 2001a, b). This strategy was useful indriving down prices and improving service quality, but telecom firms tendedto shy away from the most deprived regions and populations. Reportedly, theMinistry of Information Industry (MII) and the Ministry of Finance onlystarted to discuss the establishment of a Telecom Universal Service Fund, tobe collected from major telecom companies to address the equality issue inrural and inland areas, in the second half of 2002 (Liu, 2003). The implementationand effects of this new measure, especially on Internet diffusion, remainunclear.The 59.1 million Internet users in Mainland China at the end of 2002 isimpressive, but accounts for only 4.5 percent of China’s 1.3 billion population.The limited scope of dispersion is illustrated in table 4.1, which summarizesCNNIC user profiles since 1997 as compared to the average Chinese citizen,although the trend is also obvious that demographic gaps are narrowing atdifferent speeds. Disparities along all four basic dimensions – income, education,gender, and age – are stunning. As expected, Internet users tend to bewealthy, educated, young males. The most prominent disparity is in educationalattainment. Only 3.6 percent of the total population has gone to college,but the percentage of users with college education was still 57 percent inJanuary 2003 (down from a peak of 89 percent in January 2001), indicatingthe critical importance of literacy and technical know-how. The user populationis also predominantly young, with 72 percent being thirty or younger and28 percent being students, according to the CNNIC report of January 2003.This shows that the current user group greatly represents the future of China.At the same time, income discrepancy has gradually decreased since 2000,but still holds at a significant level with Internet users earning at least 60percent more than an average Chinese citizen. 14 The most noteworthy movementtoward equality is the narrowing down of gender discrepancy. 15 Yet,according to a study by Wei Bu (2003), although the gender gap is decreasing,women still tend to spend less time online, have a narrower scope of goals, andare more negative in evaluating the social impact of the Internet. Put anotherway, whereas more Chinese women have recently gained Internet access, theystill lag behind in terms of their “connectedness” to the new technology (Junget al., 2001).The uneven spatial distribution of Internet resources is also notable. While