On The Demographic Features Of The Internet Users In China

The world economy comes forth the features of informationalization, networking, globalization and integration. Internet is rapidly developing and widely applied all over the world, which profoundly influence upon the economy and the society. Under these backgrounds, the studies on demographic features of China's Internet users such as their distribution, and sex construction, and the engendering mechanism and evolution law of these feature is very important. It helps not only provide China with a theoretical basis for developing Internet but also serve the development of China's economy and society as a whole. The study of the demographic features of China's Internet users is a brand-new comprehensive subject in which demography, economy, geography and sociology are combined with each other. Therefore, by drawing support from the theories and methods of the disciplines concerned, and making full use of computer and network technology, this thesis has studied the present condition, development tendency and shaping mechanism of the Internet users, with the development of Internet as its thread, and the demographic features of the Internet users as its core.The whole thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter 1. Introduction. The rapid development and wide application of the Internet have brought about profound influences upon the economy and the society. According to the survey of China Network Information Center (CNNIC), by the end of 2000, China's Internet users had amounted to 22,500,000 people, about 1.78% of its total population, and is increasing with a high speed. The overwhelming majority of the Internet users are from the special group with high quality, high income, high tech and relatively high social status. They are not only the important forces of the development of the economy and the society, but also the main factor that influences the development prospect of Internet. Therefore, at present, when the network technology is being gradually perfected and the trend of networking is sweeping across the whole world, it is, no doubt, of great significance both in theory and in reality to study the Internet users demographically. Although a great number of basic data have been accumulated for the researches of the Internet users by the surveys of such institution as CNNIC, the studies that have been made so far, for some reasons, are still in their beginning stage. What has been studied in this field is still basically about such problems as "What is it?" and "Where is it?" instead of such deeper-level problems as "why?" and "How?" Therefore, the subject selected itself is a creation, and, furthermore, most of the contents that are being under discussion here are almostoriginal.Chapter 2. The theoretical basis and the research approaches. As far as the research object, the Internet users, is concerned, this thesis is a marginal subject in which demography, economy, geography and sociology are overlapped with each other. Consequently, it takes as its principles and main theoretical basis the special law of the Internet economy-external economy, scope economy, joint economy and the gradual increase of the marginal return, and the geographical law—register difference law and the notion that population is an entirety with many stipulations and relations. We are making a profound and systematic study in the thesis by adopting such methods as the basic data collection, statistical figures and comprehensive studies, and make full use of network technology and statistic drawing soft-wares, such as Mapinfo, Excel, SPSS and so on.Chapter 3. The analysis on the research background. Since the middle of the 20th century, the world economy has taken on such new features as globalization, informationalization, networking and integration of the regional economy. And they require that China should take great effort to develop the Internet industry by encouraging the government, enterprises, collectives and privates to access the Internet and constructing electronic governments, enterprises and society. Seen from the whole world, despite the non-balance of the Internet development, with the overwhelming majority of Internet users from the developed countries represented by USA, there has been a rapid development of Internet in the other countries and areas. By March 2000, the Internet users in the world have totaled 304 million people, with an increasing speed conspicuously higher than that of any other communication ever complied. Moreover, the market shared by the developing countries is steadily increasing. Although the permeation rate of China's Internet users is at present only 1.78%, China has entered a high-speed developing stage, with the number of its Internet users amounting to 22.5 million people, and ranked in front in the world. From the content to the form and the internal to the external, the rapid progress and wide application of Internet have given great influences upon the development of China's economy and society. They also have brought about great changes in our ways of production, living and study as well as in our ideology. Such influences are most of them active, though some are negative. For example, the development of Internet has greatly strengthened the economic power of information, increased the occupation and invest rate of the information resources, so much so that it has optimized the factors of the productive forces, and enabled them to be configured rationally and effectively. It also has strengthened the factors of the economical growth and brought about a sustained, rapid and healthy development in the national economy. Just as what Toffler, a famous American prophet, ever predicted, Whoever possesses information and controls the network will surely be able to control the whole world. Thus, China, now with its economy and society development at a relatively low level, has to develop Internet with greater effort and bring it into full play in the occupation and exchange of the information resources.Chapter 4. The scale and distribution of China's Internet users. According to the survey ofCNNIC, by June 2000, the China' Internet users had amounted to 16.9 million. The thesis proves the reliability of this data. Though great differences exist between all kinds of predictions about the scale of China's Internet users made by different international IT research institutions, all these predictions show that China will surpass Japan in Internet users amount and rank first in Asian-Pacific Region within a relatively short period of time. The thesis, according to the 6 surveys released by CNNIC, predicts that, by the end of 2000 and the middle of 2001, China's Internet users will have amounted to 23-25 million and 30-35 million respectively. Corresponding to the space distribution of its economical and social development level, China's Internet users are also distributed in an extremely unbalanced way. And the general trend is that China's Internet users would progressively decrease in number from the southeastern coast to the northwest inland, from economically developed regions to backward ones. The thesis expounds this basic trend in the three aspects of the permeation rate, proportion and density of the Internet users from the three angles of the inter-provincial, inter-regional and inter-territorial differences in the distribution of the China's Internet users. The shaping mechanism of such a distribution pattern may be merged into 4 factors, i.e. economic development level, science, technology and education level and population quality, post and communication level and urbanization level. Through qualitative analysis and such quantitative researches as correlation analysis, regression analysis, factor analysis and path analysis, the thesis concludes that the principal reason that influences the space distribution of China's Internet users is the education level and population quality, especially the space difference in the number of the registered students. Then comes the post and communication development level. And the economy development level and the urbanization level take effect mainly through the above two factors.Chapter 5. The structural features of China's Internet users. Completely different from the situation of such countries as USA, in the aspect of age construction, not only the average age of China's Internet users is much lower than that of the world Internet users, but it is tending to decrease. Meanwhile, China's Internet users are more concentrated in age while those in such countries as USA are distributed in a relatively normal way. There are many reasons for shaping these features, including the age construction of the whole population, the financial situation of different age groups, education level and knowledge construction. In the aspect of sex construction, although the rate of the female Internet users is rapidly rising and amounted to 25% in June 2000, the "sex discrimination" is still rather conspicuous. This is mainly because of the differences in economic and social position, and psychology and physiology between male and female, and in the period of time in which Internet has developed. In the aspect of industry construction, there is no great difference between China and USA. In both countries, the overwhelming majority of Internet users are working in the third industry. Furthermore, Internet is expanding rapidly from IT industry and education and scientific research fields to all trades and professions of the national economy. What is different, however, is that among all the China's Internet users, the rate of the unemployed such as students are higher than that of USA,...