Economic Analysis Of China's ICT Industry Development And Its Impact On The Manufacturing Sector

Information Technology Revolution, which started from 80s last century, hasinfluenced the way people think and live, as well as the way business is operated,more completely than the former Industrial Revolutions. Information Technology isreallocating resources worldwide and reshaping the national competition landscape.This paper aims at measuring the nominal output of information andcommunications technology (ICT) development in China, from year 1993 to 2003,and gives out rough picture of three main sub-industries, including Electronic andInformation Equipment Manufacturing, Telecommunication and Computer &Software Service.Still, we investigate the contribution of ICT inputs to the traditionalmanufacturing industries, from a quantitative perspective. Results of the econometricestimation show that ICT inputs do contribute to the industry output, significantly.And it is also clear that the diffusion of ICT usage in the manufacturing industry is farfrom saturated. There is still much more room for further ICT inputs.However, we should be open to see the disparities during the ICT development,which are forming bottlenecks for further economic development: disparity betweenhardware and software;disparity between among eastern, western and middle zones;disparity between cities and remote areas. Policy issues in China's ICT developmentare also discussed in the final part.