Under the initiation of the UN Millennium Summit, the UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan announced the establishment of the UN
Information and Communication Technology Task Force in November
2001 with the aim of bridging the digital divide. In June 2002, the
56th UN General Assembly convened a special meeting to discuss the
issue of bridging the digital divide. In this meeting, it was
decided to hold a world summit in 2003 to further appeal
energetically on a higher level for the effective action to bridge
the digital divide. It has become the shared understanding of all
the countries that the efforts UN has been making to promote the
balanced development of the information community by bridging the
digital divide are as important and profound as the sustainable
development strategy, which can be compared with the 2002
Environment and Development Meeting.
Since the 1980s, all the countries, especially the developed
countries, have developed information technology with full efforts,
which has largely promoted their economic growth. The development,
spread and application of the information industry, especially the
wide use of Internet in the past decade, has not only given impetus
to the development of the information industry, but also cheered up
the traditional industries like manufacturing and service
industries with new competitive energy. At present, there truly
appears a quite optimistic and exciting prospect in the process of
building e-Community of the developed countries and some developing
countries. E-Government has raised the work efficiency of the
governments; e-Business has shortened the gap between enterprises
and clients and among enterprises, increased the enterprise's
efficiency and also promoted its quick reaction ability in the
market; the finance informatization has not only offered great
convenience to users, but greatly fastened the fund circulation as
well; the development of broad-band communications and satellite
communication technologies have made telemedicine and distant
learning possible. Under the promotion of IT, e-Community is
changing human's working and living ways.
Therefore, it was considered that the application of IT would help
the developing countries and backward regions obtain a big-leap
forward, if IT could really narrow the gap between the backward
regions and the outside world, if the Internet could really make
everyone have an equal chance of obtaining the information and
knowledge, if telemedicine and distant education could really
provide the backward regions with the opportunity of rapid, cheap
first-rate service and high quality education, and if
However, while IT has brought huge economic profits and social
progress to the developed countries, recent fact has shown that the
gap is being rapidly enlarged on the IT application between the
developed countries and a large number of developing countries.
This gap is called the Digital divide, which is even much wider
than that between the rich and the poor of the world. The per
capita GDP of the high-income countries (covering about 18 percent
of the global population) is as 100 times as that of the
lowest-income countries (covering about 20 percent of the global
population), and according to the measure of informatization index
(such as per capita ownership of computer, per capita on-line use),
the former is over 500 times higher than the latter. At present,
the quantity of computers the USA processes has reached the total
number of the other countries in the world; 95 percent of Internet
users in the world are from less than 5 percent of the world
population; in the city of New York alone, the number of network
host computers is more than the total of Latin America and the
Caribbean, and that of one country, Finland, also surpasses the
total of the African Continent. Figure-1 shows the distribution of
Internet users from different regions in the world and Figure-2
demonstrates the IT application gap between different countries
based on their income levels.
The digital divide exists not only among different countries, but
among different regions of a country, between cities and rural
areas, and among people of different age as well (for example, more
than 85 percent Internet users in China are youngsters below 35).
Considering the increasing role played by informatization in
promoting social development, the world opinion generally believes
that the huge digital divide or wide informatization gap will
further expand the gap between the rich and the poor. That means
that all the efforts the whole world has made in recent years would
be vanished. In such a society with growing keen competition, it
has become an issue of the rights for development and survival to
have the chance of obtaining information, in addition to that of
democratic rights.
The formation of the digital divide has its in-depth social and
economic background. In addition to the gap between the rich and
the poor and the difference of education, other important reasons
for the widening the digital divide include the core technologies
in the field of IT, which are mainly controlled by a small number
of developed countries and multinational corporations, and the
double barriers of technology and price. Many developing countries
are worried about the situation that the monopolization of the
information technology by a few multinational corporations is
increasingly widening the digital divide, which makes their
position marginalizing in the global social and economic
development. The widening of the digital divide resulted in the
larger gap and the disparity between the rich and the poor, which
seriously threatens the stability and security of developing
countries and the whole human society. Numerous developing
countries intensively appeal to the UN for its leverage to help
them master and use IT, so as to bridge the digital divide. Also,
some insightful people from developed countries feel the threat to
the global security and stability brought by such a disparity while
some large enterprises have predicted there would be more market
opportunity through the action of bridging the digital divide. All
above have formed objectively a win-win prospect of the enterprises
and the public service. As a result, the initiative of IT for
development and bridging the digital divide has won a wide response
from all the countries and all social circles.
I. The Present Overview of the World Digital Divide
Searching in the world Internet, we can easily find a great number
of special websites and articles regarding the digital divide. Many
international organizations such as World Bank and its subordinate
infoDev, UNDP, UNESCO, OECD and so on have all organized
large-scaled surveys and discussions regarding the digital divide
in recent years. This year, the World Economy Forum published "The
Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002"[1]. This report
delivered 65 quantifiable variable statistics focusing on 75 main
countries or regions in the world, and a comprehensive index --
Networked Readiness Index, the result of the weighted average of
those data. Among those 65 variables, 20 are called Hard Variable
with directly quantifiable data, 45 Soft Variables with
quantifiable data after sample investigation by questionnaire.
These variables include not only the present statistical data on
the application of information and communication technology of
different countries, but also an potential index accessing to
informatization society, which is measured on the basis of the
economic growth, education, government's attention, and the
information infrastructures situation of an country. Though there
exists a few indexes with certain prejudice, the report is really
the most comprehensive and complete statistical report measuring
the informatization of all countries so far. In this report, there
forms a line according to the above variables or indexes for the
world's 75 main countries and regions, including HKSAR and Taiwan,
representing 80 percent of the world population and 90 percent of
the total output. Table-1 is the informatization index from the
weighted average of 65 variables standardizing from 1 to 7 and the
line of 75 countries and regions. (To the statistics of total data
and line, please go to [1])
Though there still exists many problems for discussion, like
whether the choosing of those 65 variables is suitable, whether
those variables fully display the characteristics and the prior
developing orientation of the developing countries, whether the
part of investigation by questionnaire reflects the situation of
countries comprehensively and objectively, etc., these statistics
have at least led us to the following conclusions::
1.
Developed countries are totally far ahead of developing countries
on all the indexes. In some hard variables, such as Internet users
per hundred people and mobile phone owners per hundred people, the
highest country reach several hundred and even several thousand
times more than the lowest one.
2.
Some newly industrialized countries and regions have an outstanding
performance in the field of informatization and are striding ahead.
For example, Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Taiwan (China) and South
Korea rank respectively at the 8th, 13th, 15th and 20th, which
surpass Germany (17th), Japan (21st), France (24th) and Italy
(25th). Some developing countries also perform well, such as Czech
(28th) and Brazil (38th). Among the developing countries in Asia,
Malaysia (36th) and Thailand (43rd) are relatively prior.
3.
Because the populations of different countries vary greatly, and
many indexes are measured with per capita, it may be easier for
some small developing countries to get a relatively greater growth
on informatization index in a short term. By comparing China with
India, the Chinese people can get a clear idea of China's overall
level of informatization. Though India's per capita GDP is only
half of that of China, owing to its focus on information technology
in recent years, its e-Community has expanded rapidly. In general
rank, India (54th) is ahead of China (64th). Owing to the great
efforts China has made in developing infrastructures in recent
years, people's living standard is rising fast and the government
is also attaching importance to information technology, which makes
China surpass India in some sub-indexes as follows: per capita
fixed telephones (China 54th to India 69th), per capita mobile
phones (China 56th to India 73rd), spread speed of mobile phones
(China 24th to India 72nd), waiting time of phone installation
(China 27th to India 42nd), per capita Internet users (China 60th
to India 73rd), per capita computers (China 60th to India 73rd),
Internet fee index (price/per capita GDP) (China 51st to India
63rd), working efficiency of governments (China 46th to India
56th), waiting time needed for the registration of opening
corporation (China 19th to India 70th), women's attendance in the
economy life (China 39th to India 46th), the popularity of Internet
in school (China 39th to India 46th) and the popular education of
the whole people (China 54th to India 65th); while in some other
indexes China is behind India: the strength of eliminating software
piracy (India 42nd to China 66th), professional IT services (India
11th to China 51st), the suitability between national and
international software products in one's own country (India 26th to
China 66th), the competitive power of national software
corporations on the domestic market (India 4th to China 50th), the
competitive degree of national communication corporations in
assuring their service quality (India 41st to China 57th), the
framework of laws to support the development of IT corporations
(India 24th to China 45th), the input of staff's IT training (India
34th to China 61st), the quality of IT training and education
(India 9th to China 63rd), B2C e-Business (India 38th to China
49th), B2B e-Business (India 40th to China 55th), national risk
capital input to e-Business (India 12th to China 39th) and
government's on-line service (India 32nd to China 40th). From
above, it is obvious that in some indexes of IT such as
professional IT services and IT training, India is even ahead of
some developed countries. India has also built up a quite solid
base and has potential in some aspects of IT application such as
e-Government and e-Business. Furthermore, what should be especially
mentioned is that both of the two governments highly stress
informatization, making them both rank the 13th.
II. China's Informatization Development and Digital
Divide
Great achievements have been gained in China's information
construction in recent years. The effect of informatization on
national economy and social life is gradually increasing while IT
industry including its relating industries has achieved a growing
proportion and gained a noticeable position in national economy.
The ratio of added IT value in GDP was raised from 2.45 percent in
1993 to 4.66 percent in 1998, while the contribution rate of the
newly added value to the year's added GDP from 4.22 percent in 1993
to 11.00 percent in 1998. In the year of 1999, the contribution
rate of China's IT industry reached over 10 percent, which was one
percentage point of the 7 percent GDP growth rate. And, the export
value of IT products reached one fifth of the total export value of
China. In the recent decade, the annual speed increase of IT
industry is over 32 percent, which is nearly 18 percentage point
higher than that of the whole industries of the corresponding
period. The application of information technology, such as the
appearance of gold tax, gold custom and gold card remarks the
large-scaled use of China's information technology; the application
of enterprise information technology such as CAD and CIMS has made
great progress; e-Government, e-Business, distance education and
telemedicine have further advanced. In 2002, China's e-Business
trade volume would be up to 800 million yuan RMB, and with such an
astonishing speed, it is predicted to reach 20 billion yuan
RMB.
Owing to the rapid growth of China's information infrastructure
since the 1990s, there are all kinds of ways for communication,
such as optical fiber, digital microwave, satellite,
programme-controlled exchange, mobile communications, data and
multimedia, covering throughout the city and countryside and
linking China with all over the world. In recent two decades,
China's total phone users have been raised from 2.03 million in
1979 to 375 million in 2002. The scales of the fixed and mobile
networks both ranked 2nd of the world. The national phone
popularity rate reaches 30.2 per hundred people, among which, the
fixed popularity rate 15.65 lines per hundred people and the mobile
phone 13.86 sets per hundred people. (Data resource is from
National Communication Industry Development of the first half of
2002 of Ministry of Information Industry.) The Internet users
are over 45.8 million, 74 times more than that of 1997. China's
total bandwidth of internet international line has reached
10576.5M, 416 times wider than that of 1997 (See The 10th
China's Internet Statistics Report from CNNIC in July
2002).
While seeing the great achievements of our informatization
construction, it should not be ignored that our development is
still far behind the step of the world IT and its application
development. There exists an extremely unbalanced development of
China's informatization especially the information gap between
different regions, city and countryside, and different ethnic
groups. Take 100 as the average of the whole, the Internet
popularity rate of the East, the Middle and the West is 197:45:32,
the per capita telecommunication service 182:71:49, the phone users
are respectively 195 million, 110 million and 70 million, holding a
percentage of 52 percent, 29.3 percent and 18.7 percent
respectively. There is considerable and enlarging disparity in
information for city and countryside. The city penetration rate in
1990 was 1.78 percent while that of the countryside was 0.17
percent, the former being only 1.61 percentage points higher than
the latter. But by 1998, the former was up to 19.19 percent while
the latter was only 3.92 percent, the former was 15.27 percentage
points higher, a gap obviously wider than that in people's income.
At present, there is only 0.3 percent of network users are farmers,
that is to say, the city popularity rate is 740 times of that of
the countryside. Majority rural population especially those in the
Middle and West regions is marginalized in the revolutions of
information and network, which caused a new situation of
poor-knowledge and poor-information population in this new century.
That will largely threaten agriculture modernization and rural
industry structure readjustment. The following figure displays the
regional, educational and age difference of China's Internet users,
whose data comes from The 10th China's Internet Statistics
Report written by the State Statistics Bureau and the CNNIC in
July 2002.
III. Bridging the Digital Divide and Promoting Social
Sustainable and Balanced Development
Facts indicate that despite the governments have made major efforts
to bridge the digital divide and the informatization steps of some
newly rising developing countries and regions are quickening, these
changes are still far behind the trend of enlarging digital divide.
If we can say that the poverty of many regions just demonstrates
the present situation, whether the digital divide could be bridged
effectively and rapidly will decide the prospect of the future
several decades and the sustainable development of the whole
society.
Like sustainable development strategy, bridging the digital divide
is also a comprehensive programme relating all aspects of the
society and a hard long-term objective for China's social
development. It needs an overall support and attendance from all
the social community.
1. Strengthening the coordination among government departments
making governments at all levels play a energetic leading and
supporting role in the process of bridging the digital
divide
In
2003, the United Nations will convene a Special World Summit to
discuss the issue of bridging the digital divide, hoping that
leaders throughout the world especially of the developing countries
would attach full importance to the seriousness and urgency of this
issue. China should study its present digital divide situation and
make a macro plan for bridging the digital divide. All local
governments, especially the leaders, should raise their attention
on bridging the digital divide, make a plan for action, expand the
budget to support the local informatization construction, and
attract enterprises, scientific research institutes, schools and
intermediate agencies to participate in the action of bridging the
digital divide. Leaders, especially those in the Middle and West
regions, should go through trainings so as to promote social
progress and informatization through e-Government, distant
education and so on.
2. Maximizing the role of enterprises in bridging the digital
divide
Enterprises are going to play an important role in bridging the
digital divide and more foreseeing entrepreneurs should take part
in actions right now. Many large IT enterprises have joined the
international organizations in major activities aiming at bridging
the digital divide. Leaders of those enterprises all take it as a
glorious public service, which can also create huge market for IT
products. It will lead to win-win results for both the enterprises
and the people. Many Chinese IT enterprises haven't yet realized
there is a big market in the Middle and West regions and the
country's rural areas, where information service and products as
well as contents suitable to those regions are badly needed.
3. Energetically popularizing ICT basic knowledge
education
Popular education is the important base of bridging the digital
divide. It is required to popularize the computer teaching in
middle and primary schools, list ICT basic knowledge courses as
required ones for basic education of middle and primary schools. By
doing so, the new generation will have the basic knowledge about
computer and its operation skills and will not become digital
illiterate in the time of informatization. It is also required to
combine this action with other programs of aiding the poor areas
such as Hope Project, Chinese Volunteers Action and that of
doctorate teams going to the Countryside to help with teaching
problems.
In
areas short of talented personnel, it is required to energetically
train the existing teachers and make full use of the information
and communication base of rural middle schools and major village
primary schools to conduct a massive training course for students
and teachers on IT basic knowledge and relevanted skills to farmers
in the surrounding areas. Furthermore, modern IT tools like
satellite and radio accesses should also be fully used to provide
wide training on basic computer skills and the distant education in
rural areas and remote regions.
4. Developing information resource and realizing the information
sharing
Information resource is the core of informatization. Even the best
information network cannot work without information resource. Our
present information resource supply is far beyond satisfying social
demand of information, but a large quantity of non-networked
information resource is harmful to information sharing. Based on
this situation, it is required that the information content should
benefit the users in raising their economic income and living
standard with the basic principle of "benefiting the users", making
the public become aware of the benefits of using the modern
information and communication technology.
To
develop information resource and realize information sharing, the
first step is to develop the information resource from governments
and to promote the e-Government. Our government departments and the
subordinate public agencies have accumulated a large amount of
public information, most of which is not open to the outsiders.
On-line project of e-Government should be a pivot in promoting
public information sharing in a large range. It should establish
professional informant in all departments and public agencies
should be responsible for the on-line information sharing. Public
information shared on-line should be in accordance with the
law.
Large amount of useful information from universities and
polytechnics and research institutes should be on line. The
agricultural information network and national business supply and
demand information network should be energetically extended and
constructed, so as to benefit everyone at every level of the
network.
5. Building market competitive environment and strengthening
information infrastructure construction
There should be further emancipation of mind to realize the
different operation modes of ownership for telecommunication
suppliers and promote the formulated and sound development of the
market competitive environment. It is needed to further lower the
telephone initial installation fees, telephone-using costs and
network-using fees, strengthen government support for
telecommunication infrastructures in the Middle and West regions
and the rural areas and raise the popularity rate of phone in
backward areas, gradually realizing the community network
popularity in the Middle and West regions and the broad rural
areas. The stepping up the building of e-Government, e-Business and
relative laws and regulations will help guarantee the connectivity
access to public service institutions, such as governments from the
Middle and West regions, agricultural scientific popularity
stations, saving banks and post and telecommunication offices. The
development of broadband should be strengthened with major efforts
in large and medium-sized cities and small cities or towns with
certain conditions, so that users can have high-speed access to the
network for information from units or communities such as the local
governments, public sectors, schools and private sectors.
6. Developing ICT products especially for poor areas
Having controlled the core technology in the fields of information
and communication, the developed countries and big multinational
corporations are firmly holding the actual right to formulate the
relating standards and regulations, while having really seized the
initiative of ICT development with the backing of strong priority
of economy and talented people. On the contrary, owing to low
development, backward technology and shortage of talented people,
the developing countries are usually in a passive and disadvantage
position in the course of economic globalization. Therefore, the
developing countries should greatly develop cheap and convenient
information products tallying with their own economic acceptance
ability based on their specific development situation.
7. Actively developing international cooperation under the
framework of the United Nations
In
November 2001, UN ICT Task Force was established by the UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan with the intention to bridge the
digital divide according to the related resolution of ECOSOC and
the spirit of Millennium Declaration. The ICT Task Force aims to
integrate and coordinate the work under the framework of the United
Nations and to establish cooperative partnership with the UN
system, governments of member countries, private sectors, financing
organizations, fund donators and project participation countries.
The ICT Task Force also focuses on spreading IT services all over
the world through arousing global power to bridge the digital
divide and offer digital opportunities for developing countries.
The Task Force, with over 30 members representing developed and
developing countries, business circles and NGOs, has made
short-term and medium-term plan regarding the following six
aspects: government participation, international ICT policy-making,
human resource development, low-cost technology, products research
and global resource mobilization. [2] Furthermore, it has made a
decision to set up five regional network centres in Asia, Latin
America and the Caribbean, East Europe, the Arab states and Africa,
which will be in charge of coordinating the united action of
bridging the digital divide in respective regions.
As
the representative of China, I joined UN ICT Task Force and
together with other Asian countries, attended the Inauguration of
UN ICT Task Force Asia Regional Network as the implementation of
the UN resolutions in June 2002 in Shanghai. Participants of this
meeting included senior officials from central and local government
officers of Asia countries, entrepreneurs, scholars and
representatives of international organizations from over 10 Asian
countries and Pacific Island countries such as Japan, Mongolia,
Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Fiji. UN ICT Task
Force Asia Regional Network was formally launched at this meeting,
and the website www.unict-asia.org was also opened to the public.
Following is the structure and the main framework of the Asia
Regional Network the meeting had initially identified:
1.All stakeholders in Asia, such as governments, private sectors,
international organizations, academia, civil societies and NGOs are
invited to be the member of the regional network;
2.The Asia Regional Network will offer services to Asian countries
for their programme of "ICT for development". It will organize
High-level Regional Policy Forum, assist Asian countries identify
their strategy and priority on ICT for Development and coordinate
the cooperation on the issues among all countries; it will
establish a new cooperative partnership among all stakeholders; it
will help Asian countries enhance their ability building, develop
human resource and entrepreneurship; it will promote the sharing of
knowledge, information and data, advancing ICT transition and
protection of intellectual property rights; it will also develop
case study and spread the best pattern of development to improve
the link of Internet and to lower its cost, and, research how to
make use of ICT for poverty eradication. The network will achieve
the above objectives through all kinds of substantial cooperation
projects.;
3.The Asia Regional Network will establish a Steering Committee.
Members include the stakeholders of officials from governments of
Asia countries, well-known entrepreneurs, senior experts,
international organizations, civil societies and NGOs.
4.The Asia Regional Network will be jointly coordinated by China,
India and ESCAP. China will be responsible for the coordination
with the governments; India will be in charge of the liaison with
the private sector and scientific research institutions; and ESCAP
will play a role in coordinating with relevant international
organizations.
5.The Asia Regional Network will depend on the Regional
Cooperation
Office for City Informatization as its Secretariat, which is
responsible to run the website and coordinate and organize the
cooperation projects.
The establishment of the Asia Regional Network is of positive
significance for further promoting the policy dialogue, technology
exchange and human training on relative aspects in Asia of UN ICT
TF. Meanwhile, the establishment of UN ICT TF Secretariat in
Shanghai will play an active role for China's full use of national
and international resources through UN ICT TF in strengthening the
international cooperation and exchange on ICT, introducing and
learning from the advanced technology and experience of developed
countries.
The action of bridging the digital divide initiated and being
organized by the United Sates will play a positive role in arousing
and organizing all governments, entrepreneurs and NGOs the world
over to get committed to the task of bridging the digital divide
and in accelerating the process of social informatization for
developing countries. As a whole, China should get itself totally
devoted to the action of bridging the digital divide under the
framework of the United Nations.
Notes:
[1] Geoffrey S. Kirkman, Peter K. Cornelius, Jeffrey D. Sachs,
Klaus Schwab, The Global Information Technology Report
2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World, New York, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2002
[2] UN ICT Task Force Plan of Action, see UN ICT Task Force
website：http://www.unicttaskforce.org
(china.org.cn August 7, 2002)