AbstractGovernment informatization, as a new feature of public administration, has gained intense attention in China. After years of development, there have been some achievements but at the same time, it is still rife with problems. This paper gives a comprehensive analysis on the background of government informatization in China, expounds on the trend of the e‐government in China by using the case of Shenzhen, and introduces the development of e‐government in some other cities. On top of that, we predict the trend for government informatization and propose that e‐government will be the future direction for China's public administration. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.