The government of China is making tremendous efforts to narrow the
digital divide, Chinese officials said in Beijing Friday.
They made the remarks while marking on Friday the 34th World
Telecommunications Day, whose theme is "ICT for all: empowering
people to cross the digital divide."
The digital divide means the gap in information and
telecommunications services between the developed and developing
countries and between the rich and the poor, cities and the
countryside.
Zhang Chunjiang, vice-minister of the Information Industry, said
the total number of the phone users in China had reached 350
million, its telecommunications network topped the world in terms
of scale and millions of Chinese people were enjoying the benefits
of the rapid growth of the telecommunications sector.
However, the standard of telecommunications was uneven across the
country and it had lagged behind in the less-developed western
areas of China, Zhang noted.
Statistics show that the number of Internet surfers in Guangdong,
Beijing and Shanghai accounted for 10.4 percent, 9.8 percent and
9.2 percent respectively of the country's total, whereas that of
Tibet, Qinghai and Ningxia in west China was only 0.1 percent, 0.2
percent and 0.3 percent.
"In the new century, China, just like other developing countries,
is facing the task of narrowing the digital divide," he
stressed.
In
fact, in its effort to empower the information industry and
popularize telecommunications, China has made remarkable
achievements.
Statistics show that the rate of telephone usage in the country has
reached 26 percent and Internet surfers number 37.55 million.
According to Wang Xiujun, a ministry official in charge of
telecommunications administration, the service of popularizing
telecommunications has long been the policy of the Chinese
government.
Over the past two decades, various subsidies had been provided for
the telecommunications service offered in the relatively backward
western regions and rural areas, and the restructuring of telecom
sectors had also played a remarkable role in boosting usage, she
said.
Since 1980, she added, the telecommunications industry has
witnessed a rapid growth in China's eastern, middle and west areas.
Meanwhile, prices for the service has somewhat dropped and service
quality has kept improving.
Wang noted that the focus in future would be telephone access in
the relatively backward areas and Internet access in rural
schools.
The cost of phone calls in rural areas would continue to drop in
near future and a fund to boost phone usage would be set up as soon
as possible for that purpose, Wang said.
(Xinhua News
Agency May 17, 2002)