Examine the contrasting rates, levels and patterns of adoption of an element of ICT in United Kingdo
ICT, refer as information communication technology, it is term include any types of communication technology including radio, television, phones, and internet. This article will be focusing on Internet part of ICT. The rates, level and patterns of adoption in United Kingdom and China. Recent days, we use internet more often, including this article, without internet, this can never be published on this blog. In the urban parts of the world, the use of internet may see as a necessity, work, phone calls, entertainments are all done by using internet. However in rural parts of the world internet are penetration rate are low compare to urban areas, mainly due to the lack of infrastructure, and most of people who lives in rural area they are likely to suffer from poverty.
China, one of the country now experiencing huge economic growth, increasingly becoming more important to the world economy. Internet use in China rapidly expand in the first decade of this century, the table below shows the significant expansion of internet users in China. In the year 2000, it has 1.7% of penetration rate, compare to year 2009 it has 28.7% of penetration rate. It's almost 30 times of penetration rate compare to the year 2000, the penetration rate keep increasing, while the total population in China still increasing.
In the year 2009, age group from 10 to 19 has the highest penetration rate, with 35.2% in Dec 2008, 33% in Jun 2009. From age 10 to 19, as the age increases, the internet penetration rate decreases. However, in both age from 10-19 and 20-29 shows the decrease in percentage, this may be due to the income inequality between rural and urban. Since mostly people who's able to afford access to internet are in middle to higher class income.
In terms of gender difference in penetration rate the graph below shows that percentage of rural internet users in different gender. From this graph it shows that male has higher percentage than female users in rural area.
"China is one of male dominance country"
From the graph shown below, proves that the statement to be true, in a male dominance country. Males tend to have access on different variety of things, including internet, in those country men tend to work and with high income compare to women. Which leads to men have better ability to pay for the infrastructure and access internet.
This graph also shows the slightly increase in female and slightly decrease in percentage from Jun 2009 compare to Dec 2008. One of the possible causes is that "Gender Equality" has been improved slightly.
United Kingdom on the other hand, it have about 70% of the total population are available to get access to the internet, compare to 28.7% in China in 2009. United Kingdom considered as one of the world developed country. UK also has significant difference in accessing internet in different age group. Excluding children (young dependence age), as the age increase, the penetration rate decreases. From age 25 to 49, they have almost 82% of total population. In rural parts of UK, such as Scotland and North east, with 62% and 66% penetration, which is lower than penetration rate from age 25 to 49.
In both of these countries, they both has the issue of "Digital divide", which is a term refer to when two groups of people having the gap on accessing to the digital and information technology. Digital divide, are experienced in both countries, between working age/younger generations and the population aged 50s or above. Even though these two countries has huge difference in penetration rate. Also, they share the trend that lower socio-economic status they are, they have less access to internet. In addition, government in both countries have developed policies to improve internet accessibility. The UK planned to set aside £300 million to provide every single school aged child with broadband internet access at home. Parents will be offered vouchers to buy computers and internet connection for the children in homes without a computer, in order to increase the internet penetration and reduce the digital divide between rich and poorer family. In China, a government-funded project to sell household electrical appliances in rural areas at lower prices, in order to contributed more internet accessibility in rural areas. The Chinese government is anxious about the gap of quality-of-life between rural and urban does not increase any further. These two different countries' different policies, are all trying to help rural area to increase in accessibility to the internet, and trying to smaller the gap between rural and urban area in terms of ICT, especially the internet.
To conclude, both China and UK has huge similarities, except the statistics shown. Back in 2009, China was one of the NICs experiencing the huge economic growth compare to UK. The digital divide between rural and urban, different age group, they tend to have the similar patterns. These two countries both experiencing the gap between rural and urban, people who lives in urban areas has better accessibility to the internet, while people who lives in rural areas are not available to get access to internet as easily can be done in urban areas. Policies introduced by both countries has one big thing in common, which is lowering the price, or providing supports economically or financially in order to get a better access to ICT. Now a days, internet has been used for almost everything, including finding a job, educations, shopping. People without getting access to the internet have the chances to be isolated by the society, which may leads to unemployment, and the repeating cycle of poorer people not having access to internet, not available to get a quality education, unemployed, never getting out of the poverty/still staying poor, causing the family you born determines rest of your life. By those policies, this problem may be solved, which may lead to economic growth as a country.