Roots of Tomorrow's Digital Divide: Documenting Computer Use and Internet Access in China's Elementary Schools Today

• Author: Yaojiang Shi,Qinghe Qu,Yihua Yang,Fang Lai,Scott Rozelle,Matthew Boswell,Xiao Hu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2013.12022.x
• Published date: 01 May 2013
• Date: 01 May 2013

61

China & World Economy / 61–79, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2013

©2013 The Authors

China & World Economy ©2013 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Roots of Tomorrow’s Digital Divide: Documenting

Computer Use and Internet Access in China’s

Elementary Schools Today

Yihua Yang,a Xiao Hu,b Qinghe Qu,b Fang Lai,c, d

Yaojiang Shi,e, * Matthew Boswell,c Scott Rozellec

Abstract

This paper explores China’s digital divide, with a focus on differences in access to computers,

learning software, and the Internet at school and at home among different groups of

elementary school children in China. The digital divide is examined in four different

dimensions: (i) between students in urban public schools and students in rural public

schools; (ii) between students in rural public schools and students in private migrant

schools; (iii) between migrant students in urban public schools and migrant students in

private migrant schools; and (iv) between students in Han-dominated rural areas and

students in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. Using data from a set of large-scale

surveys in schools in different parts of the country, we find a wide gap between computer and

Internet access of students in rural areas and those in urban public schools. The gap widens

further when comparing urban students to students from minority areas. The divide is also

large between urban and rural schools when examining the quality of computer instruction

and access to learning software. Migration does not appear to eliminate the digital divide,

unless migrant families are able to enroll their children in urban public schools. The digital

divide in elementary schools may have implications for future employment, education and

income inequality in China.

Key words: China ethnic minorities, digital divide, rural China, urban China

JEL codes: I24, J24, O33

aSchool of Philosophy and Society, Jilin University, Changchun, China.

bCenter for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research,

Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

cFreeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, USA.

dLICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven, Belgium.

eSchool of Economic Management, Northwest University of Xi’an, Xi’an, China.

*Corresponding author: Email: syj8882002@yahoo.com.cn.

The authors would like to acknowledge Quanta Computing, Dell Computers, ADOC 2.0, Adobe Systems,

Shidai Tianhua, Bowie Lee, the TAG Foundation and Mary Ann Milias St. Peters for their generous

support for REAP’s Technology and Human Capital theme area. The hard work of dozens of volunteers

from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Northwest University of Xi’an and Qinghai Minorities University

have made this paper possible.

62 Yihua Yang et al. / 61–79, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2013

©2013 The Authors

China & World Economy ©2013 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

I. Introduction

Over the past two decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has increased

connectivity and access to information resources all over the world. The opportunities that

this technology provides have prompted the development and proliferation of hardware,

software and affordable Internet connections (Bresnahan and Traitenberg, 1995). Through

increasing the productivity of individuals, ICT has become an important contributor to

economic growth (World Bank, 2006; OECD, 2009).

However, if ICT is only available to some groups of individuals in a society but not

others (henceforth, a phenomenon that we call the digital divide), the resulting disparity in

access to ICT is likely to lead to income inequality and poverty for those individuals

without access. Differences in access to health and educational services can lead to overall

inequality in a country (Attewell and Battle, 1999), and the same is true for differences in

access to employment (International Telecommunication Union, 2006). At the aggregate

level, it has been shown that there is a negative relationship between inequality and growth

(Benabou, 1996). It can be argued that the seriousness of the digital divide in a country has

important implications for its growth path.

Scholars have examined the nature of the digital divide in both developed and

developing countries around the world. In the USA, 80 percent of those earning over

US$75 000 have access to the Internet at home, whereas only 25 percent of the USA’s

poorest households can access the Internet at home (Dickard and Schneider, 2002). Similarly,

according to a Canadian Internet Use Survey, a digital divide exists between higher and

lower income households in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2008). The survey points out that

91 percent of people who earn more than US$91 000 per year regularly access the Internet,

compared to 47 percent of those with annual incomes of less than US$24 000. In India in

2008, the rate of access to the Internet of urban households was 10 times that of rural

households (Singh, 2010).

In the past decade, government officials and researchers have become interested in

documenting and measuring the digital divide in China. A mid-2000s study reported that

access to the Internet was more than three times as common in urban areas (27.4 percent of

urban households) than in rural areas (7.2 percent) (China National Bureau of Statistics,

2007). The same study found similarly large discrepancies in ICT access between rich and

poor households.

Judging the accuracy of these official statistics can be difficult. Reports rarely provide

details on the coverage of surveys, sampling frames are almost never specified and sources