As the wide application of new Information and Communication Technologies(ICTs) shows, the world is moving fast towards an information age. Since China was first connected to the Internet in 1994, the development of I...
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As the wide application of new Information and Communication Technologies(ICTs) shows, the world is moving fast towards an information age. Since China was first connected to the Internet in 1994, the development of ICTs in China and around the world has been astonishingly fast, and yet there is a clear ′digital divide′ among different cities in China. Although Chinese geographers have paid attention to regional differences in the development of the information society, they usually employ a limited number of indicators, mainly focusing on the Internet. In fact, information society is a much broader concept, covering not only the Internet, but also mobile phones as well as user ability. In the light of these considerations, this study provides a comprehensive examination of the development of information society, and its spatial differences in China. First, based on a literature review, the paper identifies 29 preliminary indicators for measuring the development of information society, and employs principal components analysis and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to streamline them into 12 indicators to form an ICT Development Index(IDI). Second, by using the data from city statistical yearbooks and the China Internet Network Information Center, the paper calculates the IDI of 317 cities in 2000–2010, and measures the changing spatial differences in the development of information society in China. Lastly, the paper quantifies the relationship between the development of information society and economic growth. The empirical results show that the IDI of the western and central China has been increasing faster than that of the coastal region, indicating that the digital divide in China has been narrowing.
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