A Study On The Causes And Effects Of The Digital Divide Between Provinces In China:1997-2007

"To stimulate industrialization by information technologies" is the strategic choice of China’s economic development and the way to moderniztion. Informatization means information technology permeate every aspect of economic and social to replace the original production and revolutionize the way people’s communication and knowledge acquisition. However, the diffusion of information technology is in a serious imbalance in developed countries and regions and between developing countries and less developed areas, causing so called the digital divide. Lacks of information technology means not only the backwardness of production and development method but also the greater obstacle in eliminate regional differences. Therefore, this paper selects China’s regional digital divide as the research object, relates information technology and economic development to explore the situation and reason of China’s regional digital divide. The paper has both theoretical and practical significance.In this paper, the basic theories and methods based on development economics, management, network economics, econometrics, and information technology itself as well are used. Take full advantage of theoretical and empirical literature on information technology in economic development and the digital divide, form a analytic framework, make a emperical study on China’s regional digital divide by using more than10years’panel data.Firstly, base on endogenous growth and development theories and literatures, propose a comprehensive interpretative framework on information technology and economic development to illustrate the potential role of information technology, and only through a combination of human capital to achieve organizational level to the organization from the production of a series of innovation to achieve output efficiency, at the individual level, access to information and knowledge in learning to get more capacity. Organizational efficiency and personal abilities ultimately form the accumulation of of the entire social progress. Digital Divide is viewed as access, use and application layers which respond with three types of commodity, tool and element in economical analysis.Secondly, a large number of the digital divide literature are reviewed followed by an encapsuled indicator to prepresent the digitalization level and area digital divide index, statistic and both static and dynamic panel data analysis are carried out in different technological manners to the China’s area digital divide. The conclusions are as follow:The31provinces can be divided into5groups by cluster analysis. In the years of1997-2007, the transformations of popularity levels show of "S" curves which in different stages. Shanghai and Beijing slowdown while the coastal areas growth fast and inland are in the beginning. The digital divide evaluated by benchmark and population weighting shows the ascend trend while new technologies presence.Economic development levels, investment in education and income levels were showing a significant correlation with the penetration, but the educational and income effect of developed areas is more obvious. The telecommunication industrial reform and population mobility improved the telephone popularization level. The internet applications showed a consuming type. The rate of change of coastal areas was similar with inland. With the twoway relations between economic development and ICT popularization, and the strong relation between the education, income and digital level as well, regard as the disparity between the developed and developing areas, the digital divide between the provinces in China would exist obviously for a long time.Finally, propose to pay more attentions to the ICT for development mode change, market mechanism innovation, accelerating application training and development to fit the new technologies, improve social participation and other aspects of information technology to upgrade informatization, get forward to the balanced areas development and sustainable and harmony social economy development.