E-Government in China: A Content Analysis of National and Provincial Web Sites

Abstract

The Chinese government has actively encouraged and invested in the growth of the Internet to capture the technology's vast commercial potential, while exerting state control. Even before the country was fully connected to the global “network of networks,” China began to implement programs that would facilitate e-government. Despite some valuable examinations of e-government in China, no studies were found that systematically explored the content of both national and provincial Chinese government Web sites. This study fills that gap in the literature by analyzing the content of the opening pages of 177 government Web sites. The study found that broad e-governance, e-knowledge, and e-service functions were implemented at sites of national, costal, and inland government units. Generally, national and costal sites were more sophisticated, but inland sites seemed designed to meet the specific needs of government, citizens, and businesses in inland areas. The coding form and method designed for analyzing these sites holds promise for future researchers and the findings suggest that China may have begun to achieve its goals of facilitating government functions via the Internet.