While the relations between China and ASEAN has entered a new stage of comprehensive development, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector emerges as one of the key fields of China-ASEAN cooperation identified by both sides. Strengthening cooperation in this field is not only conducive to the development of ICT sector in all these countries, but also significant for promoting the development of China-ASEAN economic and trade relations.
China and ASEAN countries have increasingly realized that their level of communications is developing unevenly between different areas and between urban and rural areas within the country. The disparity impedes overall communications development in various countries, and restrains economic growth and social progress. Therefore, it is imperative to explore effective solutions for driving communications development in rural and remote areas and promoting universal service. While striving to build a harmonious society, the Chinese government has made some achievements in developing universal service and rural communications and established a Chinese model. Here we would like to share with you our experience.
I. China-ASEAN cooperation in universal service and development of rural communications
The cooperation between China and ASEAN in universal service attracted special attention during the first China-ASEAN ICT Week, held in May 2005 in China, when Chinese Vice Premier Huang Ju called for bringing China-ASEAN cooperation in ICT field to a new level by, building on existing cooperation programmes, giving priority to advancing cooperation in areas such as construction of ICT infrastructure, and communication development of rural and remote areas. Meanwhile, ICT ministers of China and ASEAN member countries adopted "Beijing Declaration on China-ASEAN ICT Cooperative Partnership for Common Development," which stressed the need for China and ASEAN member countries to strengthen exchanges and discussion, draw upon each other’s experience and practices in establishing compensation mechanism for universal service and narrowing down the digital divide, jointly develop and popularize applicable technology suitable for rural and remote areas in their ICT development.
Building on above basis, China and ASEAN jointly proposed "Plan of Action to Implement the Beijing Declaration" in 2006, which sets a detailed scope of China-ASEAN’s key programme areas and strategic actions and measures for collective cooperation in the ICT field for the following five years (2007-2012). "Universal service" is listed as Article II of the "Plan of Action," with three specific measures: First, to Cooperate and develop a universal service guide to specify the development goal and strategy of narrowing the digital divide; Second, to establish the China-ASEAN Telecom Universal Service Forum to share best practices and experiences on investment and compensation mechanism, technological means and management skills; Thrid, Communications in rural and remote areas. Currently implementation of these measures is well underway.
China and ASEAN member countries have many similarities in implementing universal service, such as geographic and economic conditions in rural areas. In communications infrastructure build-up for rural and remote areas, China and ASEAN have the same problem: how to address the huge investment, high cost and low cost-efficiency of communications construction in rural and remote areas by utilizing economic and practical communication technologies. Therefore, China and ASEAN propose in the "Plan of Action" (Paragraph 3.3, Article II) to develop pilot projects involving application of suitable technologies in rural areas, and promote solutions which are cost-effective, efficient and easy in maintenance. China has formulated a preliminary plan to build a pilot network in an ASEAN member country with the SCDMA wireless access system designed specially for rural communications, to share with ASEAN member countries our technology and experience. The plan has been submitted to concerned authorities for approval. The SCDMA system, which is easy to build and maintain, capable of delivering excellent coverage at low cost, has been widely deployed in Chinese rural areas and exported to Southeast Asian countries.
II. China's achievements and experiences in developing rural communications
The Chinese government attaches great importance to universal service, cutely aware that the foremost task required by narrowing digital divide is to strengthen communications construction in rural and remote areas. The development of communications is significant for vitalizing economy and improving people's living standards in remote rural areas. It has become a widely recognized consensus that the development of communications should precede economic growth. Therefore, the Chinese government and telecommunications administration decided to implement a nationwide rural communications development programme – "Village Connected" project.
In terms of the successful examples and experiences of implementing universal service worldwide, the most usual practice is to set up universal service fund. China has already embarked on establishing a universal service fund, but the process, which entails a variety of problems to be solved, will take a period of time. Currently, with universal service fund not yet in place in China, the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII), while still working on establishing a fund, is taking proactive measures to implement "Village Connected" project based on the actual conditions in China, and has set up a new model of rural communications with Chinese characteristics. First, MII assigns projects of delivering universal service nationwide to 6 basic telecom carriers according to administrative geographic divisions. The carriers raise fund on their own to fulfil universal service obligation in prescribed areas by completing the assigned projects. Second, MII seeks support of local governments, asking local authorities and grassroots organizations to provide preferential policies and favourable conditions to keep the project cost low and ensure smooth implementation. Third, we utilize a variety of applicable technologies. China employs the latest mainstream communication technologies in remote rural areas, such as fibre optical communications, GSM and CDMA. We also adapt these mainstream technologies to save investment. In addition, for some extremely remote villages, we choose to implement satellite communications technology. Notably, China has developed SCDMA wireless access communications system for rural area, Capable of delivering wide coverage, diverse terminals and broadband data service at a low cost per line, the system has been widely deployed and played an important role in the "Village Connected" project. It has been proven to be a low-cost, reliable and cost-effective system especially suitable for rural areas.
By the end of 2006, the six carriers have invested approximately RMB 20 billion in the "Village Connected" project, which commenced in early 2006, completed communication infrastructure for 68,000 administrative villages that previously had no telephone. With all the administrative villages in 24 out of all the 31 provinces nationwide now have telephone access, the percentage of administrative villages with telephone access has increased to 98.7%. The project enabled millions of households in remote rural areas to install telephone, and brought the benefit of modern communications to tens of millions of villagers across the country. The level of universal service in China's rural areas has been raised to a new level, significantly expediting poverty reduction as well as economic and social development.
III. Goals and strategies for the next stage
It is a long term task for China to expedite the communications development in rural and remote areas. The "Village Connected" project consists of four aspects. First, the Chinese government is striving to diffuse basic communication infrastructure and voice service, and provide telephone access to all the administrative villages by 2007. Second, we will increase the telephone density in rural areas by extending the communication networks to natural villages under administrative villages, allowing more villagers to access telecommunications services; Third, we will bring the rural communication to a higher level by building rural Internet and offer diverse data services, in order to connect all the villages to the Internet during the Eleventh Five-year Plan (2006-2010). Fourth, we will make an effort to promote informatization of the rural area, in order to provide an integrated network platform for information exchange and product transaction of peasants, to renovate traditional agriculture with modern high technology.
To achieve aforementioned goals and sustaining development of rural communications, the Chinese government, while continuing to bring into play and improve existing models, will adopt following strategies: 1) to provide a long-term guarantee system for the development of rural communications by establishing a government compensation system of universal service centering universal service fund; 2) to develop more communication technologies suitable for remote rural areas to provide reliable and inexpensive systems and terminals; 3) to set up an effective mechanism of communication facility maintenance and system operation guarantee, to keep the telecommunication network up and running and provide reliable services without interruption.
IV. Conclusion
China is a developing country with vast territory and substantial regional disparity. Promoting rural communications construction and universal service is of far-reaching significance for constructing a harmonious society, facilitating comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development of the society and economy, improving quality of citizens in rural and remote areas, developing local economy and raising people's quality of life. Meanwhile, China's successful experience can serve the fast-growing ASEAN countries, and provide a solid foundation and broad prospects for cooperation between the two sides. China would like to joint hands with ASEAN member countries to make modern communication technologies serve more people, to make the 21st century a new era when "everyone enjoys development," to make our contributions to elimination of poverty and building a fair and harmonious society.
Thank you very much!
Contact information of the author: 66022182, 13911799955, ytshen@mii.gov.cn
