The Internet in India and China

Abstract

With our colleagues in the Mosaic group, we have done several studies of the state of the Internet in India and in China beginning in 1998. These studies were conducted using a six-dimension framework we have developed for characterizing the state of the Internet in a nation. In 1999, we published a comparison of the state of the Internet in China and India. At that time we found that China had a clear lead in each of our six dimensions. This paper updates the comparison. We compare China and India on our six dimensions and find that China continues to have a substantial lead. We also see that India has made significant strides since our 1999 comparison. After examining the six dimensions, we turn to determinants of the values of those dimensions. What has led to China's lead and the progress that both nations have made recently? We conclude that the following factors were important in shaping China's lead over India. (1)A lthough Indian universities undertook Internet experiments before those of China, China decided to make the Internet a priority and began building it in earnest before India. (2) Chinese economic reforms, which began in the late 1980s, provided both capital for and openness to the Internet. (3) The pre-Internet Chinese decision to invest in telecommunication infrastructure and information technology industries provided complementary infrastructure and human resources for the Internet. (4) The Chinese ability to execute by decree rather than consensus building followed by legislative and regulatory reform accelerated the diffusion of the Internet. (5) The Chinese were able to create competition among government-owned organizations without taking time for legislative change and the raising of private capital. (6) The Chinese were able to establish competitors to the incumbent telephone company relatively rapidly. Although these factors jump-started the Chinese Internet, and will continue to work in its favor, market forces and openness of access and content may serve India well in the long run. Furthermore, there are also great similarities between the two nations, and we hope they will learn from each other and lead other developing nations. (c) 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Information Technologies and International Development.

Examining China's triple-network convergence plan: Regulatory challenges and policy recommendations

“…Second, if so, could China control it (Kluver & Yang, 2005)? Similar to telecommunications, the strong determination of the government to make the internet a national priority, the Chinese ability to execute by administrative decree rather than consensus building followed by legislative and regulatory reform and the Chinese tendency to introduce internal competition were identified as the key factors to help China jump-start the internet (Press, Foster, & Goodman, 1999;Press, Foster, Wolcott, & McHenry, 2003).…”

Consumer health digital divide: A research agenda for studying inequality in online health information access and use

“…The stakeholders involved can be categorized as regions, countries and areas (Mendoza, 2001; Norris, 2001; Simpson, Daws & Pini, 2004); communities and organizations (Johnson, 1998; Rooney, 2002); and groups of people (Millward, 2003). The dimensions can be demographical (Brinson, 2002; Losh, 2004), economic (McLaren & Zappalà, 2002), political (Hung, 2004) and cultural (Press et al, 2002). As far as demographical factors are concerned, age, gender, income, race and education are the most important ones, with younger, richer, more educated white males being more likely to use the Internet (Hargittai, 2002; Miller, 2001).…”

Is There a Global Digital Divide for Digital Wireless Phone Technologies?

“…Prior research that has studied the link between the cost of Internet access and its diffusion in several countries (e.g., China, Chile, India, South Korea) found that lower computer costs combined with lower access costs make the Internet more affordable and facilitate its growth (Hawkins, 2005;Lee et al, 2003;Press et al, 2002). Additionally, the most recent large-scale survey of 57,000 households in 2003 by the United States Department of Commerce reported that one of the reasons that households have no Internet connection is its costs.…”