Why China’s digital divide, exposed by coronavirus crisis, is not going away any time soon
- Mainland China’s coronavirus outbreak exposed a huge digital divide, with some students from poorer regions lacking resources for online learning
- Access to the internet is not considered a daily necessity at China’s policy level, unlike in European countries such as Norway and Iceland
The coronavirus outbreak in mainland China highlighted the huge digital divide that exists between richer and poorer regions.
When schools shut and online learning was made compulsory, many students living in remote areas found they didn’t have sufficient internet access.
There were 1.6 billion mobile phone subscribers in China in 2019, with many people having more than one subscription, and optical fibre and 4G covered 98 per cent of the population, according to official data.
These figures fail to show the large regional disparity between the country’s rich and poor provinces, says Jack Chan Wing-kit, associate professor of the school of government at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.
“In poor areas, a family [often] has to share one mobile phone among all members,” says Chan, who has done extensive research on China’s social problems.
