The Readiness for and Current Status of E-Government in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT E-government is important for China's economic and social development. A measurement is developed and applied to assess the readiness of local Chinese governments for e-government. E-government development status of local Chinese governments is assessed through evaluation of their websites. Relationships between e-government readiness and the actual progress on e-government are discussed. INTRODUCTION On December 31, 2005, the number of Chinese Internet users reached a new height of 111 million, a number that is the second largest in the world, only behind that of the United States (CNNIC, 2006). With such a large Internet population, e-businesses are booming in China. Since early 1980s, China had embarked on a journey of modernization through market-oriented reform and opening to the outside world. The reform and opening have achieved amazing progresses for the country, both in quantity (GDP) and structure (the increasingly larger proportion of private sector in the nation's economy). Contrasting with the great economic achievements, however, China's political structure and system have not seen a fundamental change. The poor transparency of decision-making and operations, and the weak rule of law have contributed to prominent problems, such as corruption, waste of pubic funds and resources, and an alarming disparity among social classes and among different regions in the country (Kurtenbach, 2005; XinhuaNet, 2006). Improving transparency, strengthening rule of law, and increasing the participation of Chinese citizens in the political process and general affairs of the society have become critical to the country's healthy development in the future decades into an open, stable, and responsible member of the world community. The Internet, with its openness for information flow and information sharing, is seen as a strong vehicle for people to exchange ideas and to interact. Leveraging the Internet for operations and for the interaction between governments and citizens--electronic government or e-government, are believed to have the benefits of cost effectiveness in and public operations, ..., with better and continuous contacts with citizens, and greater transparency and accountability in public decisions, powerful ways to fight corruption, the ability to stimulate the emergence of local e-cultures, and the strengthening of democracy. (The Center for Democracy & Technology, 2002). The Chinese government, influenced by the industrial world, and to some degree pushed by its own people, in particularly, those elites in science and technology, also has initiatives toward e-government (Li, et al, 2004), which is a desirable trend that should be encouraged and facilitated by those in the outside world. While China has reached a large Internet population of well over 111 million, the Chinese Net population is only about 8.5% of the country's total population of 1.3 billion; while China has become the fourth largest economy in the world (AFP, 2006), its per capita GDP is still ranked after 100 (CIA, 2006). While the Chinese had changed greatly after more than twenty years of reform and opening, it still is fairly non-transparent, controlling, and being steered by transient wills of powerful officials rather than by rationally designed policies, and operating in changeable ways rather than following laws and procedures. There are many complicated issues and challenges facing e-government adoption in China. What, then, is the readiness of China for the adoption of e-government? What would be the appropriate measure of readiness related to e-government in China? What is the status of China's e-government implementation? The current study attempts to answer these questions. The few research papers found related to e-government in China (some remotely relevant) either were primitive survey on general issues from very limited samples in the country's most developed regions (Ma, et al. …