Last week here we highlighted a report from a leading U.S. technology trade group that painted an alarming picture – alarming from a U.S. competitiveness standpoint – of China’s “15-Year Science and Technology Plan.” The group’s director said, “It looks remarkably like the blueprint the United States developed in 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik.”
He was, of course, invoking perhaps the single most vivid image of the evolution of U.S. technological might … and implicitly warning that China is prepped for replicating that feat at our nation’s economic expense.
However, what the report failed to mention – or at least summaries of it failed to highlight – is the fact that China currently has a digital divide between rich and poor that dwarfs the version long lamented in this country, according to another study issued by the World Bank and the Peking University Public Policy Institute.
The Epoch Times reports:
According to World Bank Report “China’s Information Revolution: Promoting Economic and Social Transformation” that Internet users in China pay more than 10 percent of their income while those in developed countries pay less than 1 percent. This is despite the fact that China has the world’s second largest Internet and broadband market.
According to “The 19th Report on the Development of the Internet in China,” published in January, on average, China’s Internet users pay 83.5 Yuan per month ($10.84). Converted at absolute currency value, Americans can buy the same amount of information at 1/13 of this price.
None of which is meant to pooh-pooh the competitive challenges posed by a developing economic powerhouse of more than 1.3 billion people. Just a data point to help put the 21st Century space race in perspective.
