The Internet has been extending fairly rapidly in China's rural
areas, with the number of rural net users reaching 37.41 million by
the end of June, approximately 5.1 percent of the total of rural
population.
Statistics from the National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC) show that at the same time urban netizens had reached 125
million, or 21.6 percent of urban population.
China's rural net users were 23.1 million at the end of 2006,
indicating that in six months 14.3 million farmers newly got access
to the Internet.
NDRC's report said the rapidly improving telecommunications
infrastructure in rural areas has obviously facilitated the
increase of net users. In its 11th Five-Year Program (2006-2010),
the Ministry of Information Industry vowed to extend phone service
to every village and enable every township to have access to
Internet.
The main force of rural net users are young farmers and migrant
workers, who can use computers to enjoy on-line music, games and
videos as skillfully as urban users. However, rural net users
rarely use the Internet for news, on-line shopping, on-line banking
and trading stocks.
In some rural areas, the Internet has been used for special
purposes featuring agricultural information and technologies and
price information of farm produce, among others.
Liu Manqiang, deputy director of the Information Research Center
under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that
"information communication can bring about huge added value, an
important goal of the country's information drive is to enable more
farmers to benefit from the development of information
industry."
(Xinhua News Agency October 6, 2007)