Abstract:
Major restructuring of all Information Technology and Telecommunications
businesses in China grows rapidly over the past 1O years.
China government realizes the important role of Information Technology
in the national economy and makes lots of effort and investment
in the IT industry. However, the current situation and results show the
fact that there are still many big barriers in this field. These barriers are
not only involved with the national policy, but also with the social and
physical infrastructure of IT. The paper is designed to find all these
barriers we could find currently in China that prevent healthy and quick
diffusion of information technology. Firstly, the paper is trying to give
an analysis of barriers of IT diffusion in the policy issue. especially the
monopoly of China telecom in the IT industry. Secondly, the paper is
taking two perspective views towards the IT barriers. according to
Kling's terminology. physical infrastructure and social infrastructure.
In the case of physical infrastructure, the paper mainly discussed issues
of outdated mainframes, the fallibility of circuitry and system, current
Internet Service and the import of information products. In the case of
social infrastructure. the paper searches the barriers in intellectual
property, immature of the market, education level, insufficient investment
on the development of IT, and imbalance of the development
between urban and rural Areas. Finally, the paper makes some specific
recommendations relevant to the barriers discussed in the first two parts.
