After three decades of reform and opening, China has become increasingly involved in the transition towards global informationization. China's complex and intersecting processes of industrialization, globalization and social transformation have led to increasing labour differentiation as well as growing structural conflicts. Against such a complex background, China's responses to the opportunities and challenges this transition signifies have been and continue to be energetic. Compared to that in Western societies, China's informationization is a difficult and complicated process: industrialization, globalization and social transformation, the three great transitions with different logics and paths, are intertwined with one another in contemporary China and lead to increasing labour differentiations as well as growing structural conflicts, comprising the basic background to Chinese adoption of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). As China's informationization process accelerates, modern information technology plays an increasingly important role in peasants' everyday lives and production. The rapid growth of peasants' possession of ICTs now constitutes a significant part of information technology's permeation of the processes of social transformation. The relationship between modern information technology and society has also been a significant topic of sociological research.Footnote 1
Recent Research on the “Digital Divide” in China
Study of the relationship between ICTs and society is now an inter-disciplinary topic of research. Technological sociology has developed two perspectives to the study of new technologies: technology's social impact and the social impact on technology. This has spawned two further research foci: “technology-centred” research (technological determinism) and “society-centred” research (social determinism).
Examining ICTs such as cell phones, computers and the internet, the first research perspective focuses on ICTs' economic, political and social consequences. It employs the “digital divide” as its core concept, and on the one hand explores the content, type and dimensions of the digital divide, and on the other its trends, consequences and measurements. For instance, Harwit points out that while China has greatly improved its communication infrastructure in the last two decades and gradually narrowed its digital divide with developed countries (making it a successful model for other developing countries), it is facing a growing domestic digital divide between rural and urban areas as well as between the western and eastern sides of the country. Harwit suggests that the interactions among technology advancement, institutional demand, capacity and fair information access will define the future of China's domestic digital divide.Footnote 2 Gao Xiaowei 高小卫 examines the differences in access to and adoption of information between urban and rural residents and concludes that while urban China's participation in globalization is the external cause of the increasing urban–rural digital divide, the urban–rural dual structure remains the fundamental internal cause. Gao also predicts that the urban–rural digital divide will exacerbate the economic differences between urban and rural areas, further marginalize rural areas and create new urban–rural inequalities.Footnote 3 Murphy warns that because of the prevalent concepts of the urban–rural divide and the digital divide, the penetration of informationalism into rural China has been largely ignored by scholars. She therefore argues that informationalism's rapid penetration into rural China is an outcome of the combined forces of state policy, the inputs of information sectors and ongoing marketization.Footnote 4
On the other hand, the society-centred perspective creates its own core concept – “technology domestication” – to emphasize the expansion, acquisition and usage of ICTs. According to this perspective, technology domestication is an indispensable process for any technology to become a component of everyday life; there is no autonomous technical order that applies to all technology domestications, and scholars should observe how technology is shaped by and embedded in social forces. For instance, to understand the fast adoption of cell phones through the perspective of consumerism, Xiong Guorong 熊国荣 investigates the motivations and reasons for purchasing cell phones, phone usage, and the frequency of phone replacement. Xiong finds that consumerism does exist in most cell phone owners' behaviour, especially amongst migrant workers.Footnote 5 Studying the culture and mentality of cell phone consumption among migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta, Yang Shanhua 杨善华 discovers that as a new ICT product, the cell phone and its adoption represent the agency of Chinese migrant workers in the age of globalization. This “agency” is closely associated with migrant workers' unique working circumstances and living styles. During their consumption of the cell phone, “traditional” elements merge with “modern” ones to create a “cell phone culture.” According to Yang, this process might highlight how Chinese culture absorbs, merges with and dissolves foreign culture.Footnote 6 Hahn and Kibora examine cell phone usage in Burkina Faso, pointing out that a cell phone is not only a piece of communication equipment but a material object with a special social and economic embeddedness. The features and modes of cell phone usage match local demands and follow local norms.Footnote 7
As the largest developing country, China provides a gigantic space and an enormous market for the advancement and adoption of ICTs. Most studies on ICTs and rural China, as indicated above, still employ the framework of the urban–rural dual structure. Although this structure has been changing, slowly and over a long period, it still remains one of the defining features of Chinese society. According to Sun Liping 孙立平, the influential Chinese sociologist, the current urban–rural dual structure has developed into two new forms: government-centred and market-driven dual structures.Footnote 8 Sun argues that the coexistence and reciprocal effects of these two forms are significantly reshaping Chinese peasants' everyday lives and work, making peasant migration almost a daily routine. Massive migration has not only changed the forms and modes of peasants' lives, work and social interactions, but has also changed their social perceptions and cultural understanding, and these changes are characterized, in part at least, by their acquisition and use of ICT products and services.
Apart from labour migration, rural China has also witnessed other structural changes during the three decades of reform. No longer characterized by the highly homogenous communities of the pre-reform period, rural China's current social structure has been diversified into four basic types: traditional villages, industrialized villages, commercial villages and villages in the cities. The digital divide therefore exists not only between urban and rural areas but also among different types of villages. The diversification of rural China leads to diversified rural demands for ICTs, which will therefore generate different impacts on peasants' economic activities and social lives.
Following a “society-technology mutual construction” perspective, this research addresses the following questions: how does peasants' ICT usage illustrate the changing patterns of social differentiation in rural China? And how do the changes of the rural social structure shape the patterns of peasants' ICT usage? What are the basic characteristics of peasants' informational needs in contemporary China?
Data and Method
Equipped with the agenda of practice sociology, this research employs qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews and ethnographically-based observations, to compare ICT usage in five Chinese villages. The villages are selected from Shaanxi province (Village A), Henan province (Village B), Jiangsu province (Village C), Hebei province (Village D) and Beijing (Village E) respectively. Village A represents the traditional villages in less-developed western China; Village B represents the traditional villages in central China; Village C represents the industrialized villages labelled as the “Sunan model”; Village D represents commercial villages; and Village E represents “villages in the city” in Chinese metropolitan areas.
Each village was exclusively assigned one research team who interviewed peasants in their homes and also observed their activities in their workplaces. The ICT products referred to in this research mainly consist of four categories: television sets, fixed phones, cell phones and personal computers. While the first two constitute “traditional” ICT products associated with the “industrial age,” cell phones and personal computers are new ICT products of the information age.
Fieldwork took place in three periods: July to August 2008, October to November 2008 and January to March 2009. Five teams conducted a total of 132 in-depth interviews. In the industrialized Village C, the team carried out an area sampling in two stages, taking a spatial cluster as the sampling element at the first stage. After choosing the first stratification units of the area according to PPS, the team took out certain individuals under the simple random principle. In all, 135 questionnaires were provided, yielding 130 valid responses, so the valid proportion was 96 per cent. Since the structure of the sample basically matched the population according the results of evaluation, the sample is representative for this village.
Four Types of Villages and their ICT Usage
Chinese villages can currently be categorized into four basic types: traditional villages where traditional agriculture and migrant workers' earnings remain the main income source; industrialized villages where township and village enterprises, private enterprises and corporate enterprises dominate the local economy; commercial villages where family factories produce and sell products; and villages in the city with high concentrations of migrant workers, where living conditions are appalling as native residents become rich from renting tiny apartments to migrant peasants. It must be remembered that some villages might display mixed features from two or more of the four basic types.
Traditional villageFootnote 9
Village A is located on the Loess Plateau in the northern part of Shaanxi province. Most of its total area of 7.8 square kilometres is mountainous. The village has 2,439 mu (163 hectares) of farmland, of which 1,300 mu are reforested. The total population is 1,153 with 289 households, and there are more than 700 adult labourers. Village A belongs to a national poverty county. The annual income per capita in 2007 was between 2,300 and 2,400 yuan. It is a typical traditional village where “farming for food” and “part-time working for cash” still prevail, only supplemented by a few small businesses such as poultry and goat farming, transportation and running tiny inns. Local crops include millet, black soybean and potato, and are cultivated mainly for food with only a little for commercial sale. Most adult males periodically migrate to other parts of the province as well as to Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang to work on construction sites. Income from migrant workers varies with age and type of work. Some villagers can make 20,000 yuan a year, while others earn only 10,000 yuan. Migrant workers obviously bring in most cash income.
Fiber optic cable was connected to Village A for first time in 1999 and a dozen households paid 1,200 yuan to install fixed phones. Three village cadres enjoyed a 300 yuan reduction. One year later, when the installation fee decreased to 800 yuan, a few more households installed fixed phones. After the third batch of installation, the fiber optic cable reached its full capacity. Village A has around 30 fixed phones at present. The monthly fee is 20 yuan and the average monthly charge is 30 yuan. China Telecom then introduced wireless fixed phones to Village A. Users have to install an antenna on the top of their cave-house to transfer the signal. The installation fee was originally 500 yuan but then reduced to 200 yuan. Three dozen households installed the wireless fixed phone. However, because of the weak signal and expensive rates, most households later disconnected their wireless fixed phones.
Cell phones have become increasingly popular in the last two years and almost every household now has at least one. Cell phone usage among the elderly is also common. If their adult children or siblings work outside the village, the older villagers tend to have a cell phone (maybe a used one) for easier communication. While China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom built their own base stations within Village A, most villagers choose the service from China Mobile for its better signal. Both China Mobile and China Unicom provide an up-to-the-minute agricultural information service (nongxin tong 农信通), but this is not popular as it is not free of charge. Two small convenience stores in Village A also sell services for China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile. Although they both have places for an “agricultural information service” and an “agricultural information station,” they do not provide any related service.
Apart from elderly widows without children, every family has at least one television set and many have two. When young couples get married, they always buy their own television so that they can watch TV by themselves, even when they still live with their parents. Village A does not have cable TV. A project for TV coverage in every village (cuncuntong gongcheng 村村通工程), using an officially certificated antenna, could only receive signals from one or two channels. Consequently, most households installed a bowl (wanzi 碗子), an illegal satellite dish, with an installation fee of 200 yuan, which can receive signals from 40 or 50 channels.
Villagers use neither personal computers nor the internet. The security office of the villagers' committee has a used computer from the township police station, but no one in Village A knows how to use it. The village Party branch secretary's comment was that “we will use it in the future to draw tables and it will be connected to the internet too.” Another computer belongs to a young man who had been a migrant worker but returned to the village because of illness. He bought the computer with an ADSL access to the internet to fill the time he found he had on his hands. However, he soon moved to the county seat and locked the computer in his almost abandoned cave-house.
Industrialized village
Village C is a typical industrialized village located in southern Jiangsu province in the booming Yangtze Delta region. With a total area of 1.64 square kilometres, Village C has 977 households, 3,150 residents, seven villager groups and more than 1,000 migrant workers. It has net assets of roughly 200 million yuan. More than 95 per cent of villagers work in village-owned enterprises and annual income per capita in 2007 is close to 20,000 yuan. Textiles, sports goods and metal processing constitute the backbone of the village economy. Service industries are also growing rapidly. With no land for villagers' personal needs (ziliu di自留地), they do not farm at all and buy their food from the market. Village C is almost fully urbanized in infrastructure, with running water, electricity, natural gas and the internet. Understandably, this village was honoured with multiple national and provincial awards for its astonishing economic achievement and successful community building, including National Township Enterprise, Civilized Village in Jiangsu Province and Industrial Star Village in Wuxi 无锡City.Footnote 10
Village cadres and rural entrepreneurs were among the first group of users of the first generation of cell phones in China back in the early 1990s. Now, however, cell phones are so popular that almost every student in grade school has one for instant communication with their parents. However, only a few of the elderly villagers have them.
Every family has at least one fixed phone. Villagers in general feel that the monthly fee is inexpensive. Compared to cell phones, fixed phones have several advantages, including higher reliability and being easier for the elderly to use. Moreover, many families need a fixed phone to have access to the internet.
In Village C, each family has at least two television sets and watching television separately has become increasingly popular among family members. TV signals were digitalized in 2007. The most viewed programmes include CCTV's evening news (xinwen lianbo 新闻联播), the weather forecast, comedy and drama. Watching the news every day has become a habit for many villagers. It is also an important way for them to keep up with state policies and market information.
Almost half the households in Village C have personal computers. Most families without computers could actually afford one, but parents are concerned about the negative impact of computers on their children. Computers are mainly used for entertainment, such as playing music, browsing online and downloading films. Villagers seldom use them for study or work. Students learn how to use computers in school, but most adults over 40 years old are not eager to study using a computer.
Commercial village
Village D is a typical commercial village located in Hebei province. It has 400 households, 1,800 villagers and more than 2,000 migrant workers. Making suitcases and bags is the main industry in the village, with more than 95 per cent of households in related occupations and businesses. More than half the family factories hire migrant workers. Villagers also farm, with each adult villager having 1 mu (.07 hectare) of land. A few families also raise poultry and cattle. The annual net income per capita is between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan. Village D's collective revenue, 35,000 yuan per year, mainly comes from renting land for personal needs. Villagers' daily entertainment includes watching television and playing mah-jong.
Cell phones are popular in Village D, especially among adult males who mainly use them for business and do not care too much about their entertainment functions and stylish appearance. In contrast, young migrant workers pay more attention to their phones' entertainment functions.
Fixed phones still play an important role in daily life. First, not everyone has a cell phone, so fixed phones are indispensable for family communication. Second, villagers prefer fixed phones over cell phones in doing business not only because they have a clearer and more reliable signal, but because they also represent the possibility of longer-lasting and more stable working relations which could attract more business in the long run. Third, villagers depend on fax for the timely transfer of the latest design drafts, a vital step in the suitcase and bag-making business. Fixed phones also provide access to the internet.
Every family owns at least one television set. Although many villagers are too busy to watch TV, the set is still a family necessity. Villagers care about state policy and television news offers the best way to follow policy updates. The second most popular programmes are reality shows related to law and order. Many families have installed satellite dishes with a fee of 150 yuan.
Personal computers are still new to most villagers in Village D, and many worry about their negative influence over school children. While some villagers realize the potential of e-commerce, they are constrained by their lack of knowledge about computers and the internet.
Village in the city
Located in the north-eastern area of Beijing, Village E has 1,400 households, 1,400 villagers with agricultural household registration (nongye hukou 农业户口) and 2,400 residents with non-agricultural household registration (feinongye hukou 非农业户口). A large portion of Village E's land has been developed into commercial housing projects. Villagers who lost their land therefore changed their status from villagers with agricultural household registration to urban residents with non-agricultural household registration. According to data collected in January 2009, Village E also has 10,000 migrant workers, 6,000 with a temporary residence permit (zanzhu zheng 暂住证) and 4,000 without. Because of the huge population of migrant workers, building and renting tiny one-room apartments has become the most important income source for many villagers. Almost every household has built apartments exclusively for the purpose of renting them out. Some have even built more than 60 such tiny rooms. The rent for a room for accommodation is around 120 yuan and the rent for a room for business varies from 300 to 600 yuan per month, depending on its size and location. In contrast with the other three types of villages, villages in cities have a highly diversified population. The ICT usage in village E is therefore more diversified than elsewhere.
Cell phones play a crucial role in the daily life of migrant workers in Village E, constituting the most important means for them to contact their families, friends and colleagues. Cell phones are also the most important entertainment apparatus for many migrant workers, especially the younger ones. The brands and prices of cell phone vary dramatically. Native villagers and well-off business owners prefer reliability over functionality, usually choosing established brands such as Nokia, Motorola, LG and Dopod. Migrant workers, on the other hand, favour two types of cell phone: either the flamboyant “bandit cell phone” (shanzhai ji 山寨机)Footnote 11 with multi-entertainment functions that costs around 1,000 yuan, or the low-end products from Nokia and Motorola that only cost between 200 and 300 yuan.
Every native family has a fixed phone with a monthly charge between 30 and 100 yuan. Families installing ADSL enjoy some discount on their fixed phone charge. Among the migrant population, only those business owners who have permanent factory floors, warehouses and offices have installed fixed phones, which not only strengthen the credibility of their business but also provide broadband access to the internet. At one time, the village had a number of overcrowded phone bars where customers could use traditional fixed phones for long-distance calls. The rate for most phone bars was 0.15 yuan per minute for domestic long-distance calls, although a few phone bars charged 0.2 yuan per minute. However, many phone bars are now out of business and the remaining ones have cut the number of phone lines.
Village E has installed cable TV for every native household with an installation fee of 400 yuan. Because of the ageing infrastructure, signals from cable TV keep deteriorating, and many villagers are now wondering whether to choose digital cable TV or buy a satellite dish. Migrant business owners always buy satellite dishes to watch the news, especially economic news. Young migrant workers rent a television set, either individually or in groups of friends when they can afford it. Seldom caring about news, they mainly watch dramas and sport to kill time. Migrant worker couples buy a small television set but they do not have much time to watch it.
Personal computers are quite common among native villagers. If a family can afford one, it usually has one. The monthly rate for ADSL is 130 yuan and above, but there are various discount plans that are combined with fixed phone rates. Computer users are more likely to be the younger generation, while old generations are inclined to believe that the main functions of computers are browsing and gaming. Older people are not generally interested in computers, complicating parents' attempts to control younger family members' usage of them. Migrant business owners usually have computers, some even up to five. According to them, indispensable computer functions include email, sending and receiving blueprints, and checking information. For some, the computer facilitates their self-expression and communication with their home towns. Many migrant business owners master various types of software in order to collect and manage information, and for them the computer is a vital ICT product.
Informational Stratification within a “Cleavage Society”
According to Sun Liping, China has become a cleavage society since the 1990s.Footnote 12 This can be identified in three ways. First, structurally, some social groups are isolated from mainstream society, and integration among social classes and groups is hardly sufficient. Second, in regional terms, there is a cleavage between urban and rural areas. Third, cleavage also spreads into culture and the various dimension of daily life. In short, the nature of a cleavage society is that different developmental stages exist simultaneously, without enough integration between them.
Our study of the digital divide in rural areas clearly reveals the existence of this cleavage in China. The adoption of ICTs emerges not only as an important representation of the growing social differentiation in rural China, but also as an important mechanism reproducing the divisions in cleavage society. Data from the four types of villages demonstrate that the digital divide exists between traditional, industrialized, commercial villages and villages in the city, and also within each village, especially among villagers with different social statuses. More specifically, three factors contribute to the emerging digital divide within villages.
Occupational difference
Occupational differentiation directly leads to differences in income and wealth. Based on occupation, some scholars categorize the rural population into eight strata.Footnote 13 These are distributed differently across the four types of village, causing differentiation both among and within villages. A summary of these eight occupations produces two main dimensions for the analysis of the difference in peasants' adoption of ICTs.
The first could be summarized as “being a farmer” (zhongdi 种地) and “being a migrant worker” (dagong 打工). This dimension mainly exists in traditional villages, with peasants in the former category still making a living from farming in their home villages, while those in the latter do not do anything related to farming. In the traditional Village A, “farming peasants” are mainly the middle-aged and elderly as well as females. Migrant workers, on the other hand, are predominantly young adults. “Being a farmer” and “being a migrant worker” represent the fundamental ways of living for the two groups. In traditional villages, farming is not for cash but for food. Peasants cannot pull themselves out of poverty by planting crops on their small pieces of land. Migrant workers, on the other hand, are driven by the urge to improve their living standards. However, an examination of young migrant workers' income and wealth in Village A shows that such work does not significantly improve their economic situation. Both farmers and migrant workers thus sustain and reproduce, albeit involuntarily, the cleavage between urban and rural areas.
Based on such living conditions, what differences might exist between farmers and migrant workers within the villages? The fieldwork data indeed show a striking difference. While farmers often obtain used cell phones from their adult children, migrant workers, especially the younger ones, often replace their cell phones every year, despite their relatively low incomes. Farmers use only a few cell phone functions, such as receiving and making calls to communicate with their migrant worker children. As indicated above, younger migrant workers like more entertainment functions and a flamboyant appearance. On the one hand, these differences indicate younger migrant workers' attempts to differentiate themselves from their rural parents. On the other, they also demonstrate younger migrant workers' desire to live the mainstream life by copying their urban counterparts' lifestyles. They are socially as well as culturally rootless in cities. The cell phone thus becomes an indispensable apparatus for most young migrant workers to satisfy, although often in illusory ways, their social, cultural and emotional demands.
The second main dimension of differentiation could be described as that of the “busy individual” (mangren 忙人) and the “idle individual” (xianren 闲人), and applies mainly to the industrialized village. The former term refers to full-time employees and the latter to housewives. Industrialization has greatly raised villagers' living standards and has almost fully urbanized their village. With the generous welfare provided by village-owned enterprises, villagers now resemble workers of the work-unitFootnote 14 system that once dominated urban China. This economic structure facilitates differentiation between busy and idle individuals. Village-owned enterprises are still labour intensive and villagers working in them are often too exhausted from their long and demanding shifts to have the energy to play with their cell phones after work. For them, the phone is just a convenient means to make calls and to send short messages. Compared to these busy workers, female housekeepers in Village C enjoy considerable free time. Relying on their husbands' income and village welfare, they have both the time and inclination to play with their cell phones. They are usually particularly interested in the phone's entertainment functions and frequently replace their phones for the newest style. They also order various services, such as mobile newspapers (shouji bao 手机报). In short, the difference in choosing and using cell phones between busy and idle individuals illustrates not only the close relationship between consumption and mode of production, but also the impact of industrialization on these villagers.
Insider–outsider difference
In both the industrialized village and the village in the city, there is a conspicuous division between native villagers and migrant workers. In the industrialized village, even when working in the same village-owned enterprise, native villagers often occupy skilled and managerial positions with more welfare benefits, while migrant workers usually take labour-intensive positions with long shifts and lower incomes. In the village in the city, native villagers not only collect handsome profits from their rental businesses but also receive various dividends from the village. In contrast, most migrant workers work longer and harder but for considerably lower returns.
The different living conditions of insiders and outsiders dictate their different adoption of ICTs. Native families usually have three or even four of the four main ICT products. Migrant workers, on the other hand, only have cell phones. Insiders' and outsiders' usage of ICTs also differs. Native villagers make local calls to their families, friends and colleagues. Migrant workers make many more long-distance calls to their home towns. Native villagers watch television in their home, whether with their family or not. Most migrant workers either have no television to watch or have to rent a set, sometimes with friends. Browsing the internet is the same story. Native villagers may have internet access in their homes, while migrant workers have to go to internet bars to log in to chat rooms, watch films and download music.
Native villagers and migrant workers therefore differ significantly in their ownership and usage of ICT products. More importantly, while products such as cell phones and the internet dramatically facilitate interpersonal communication, they do not narrow the existing divide between native villagers and migrant workers. The two groups lack sufficient social interaction despite the fact that they are living in the same village. Migrant workers seldom assimilate successfully into the village they are working and living in. In short, while the adoption of ICTs may satisfy diversified demands from different social groups, it also fails to bridge previously segregated groups of peasants.
Social status differences
In very general terms, social status indicates a social member's position within a society and the rights and duties associated with this position; it is related to respect, prestige, property, power and authority. In its broad definition, social status differences also include occupational and associational differences. This research uses three dimensions – power, status and age – to measure the impact of social status on peasants' adoption of ICTs. According to the data collected from the five villages, all three dimensions create significant peasant differentiation.
Power – village cadres and ordinary villagers
Village cadres include the main figures in the village Party branch and the villagers' committee. Although village cadres are not formal officials within the state bureaucracy, as the managers of village affairs they still control most village resources and enjoy substantial privileges and benefits. With such power, village cadres often deliberately accentuate their higher status in everyday life. For example, the Party branch secretary of traditional Village A uses his cell phone in ways that are radically different from ordinary peasants, and his cell phone is so important to him that he never leaves it at home: “Nobody answers the fixed phone in my home. The villagers' committee does not have a fixed phone. The cell phone is very convenient. I use my cell phone to contact township and county officials” (A20080928-5).
The following dialogue indicates that the difference between ordinary villagers and cadres exists not only in the price of their cell phones but also in the plans they choose.
Interviewer: What is the model of your cell phone?
Interviewee: A Motorola V70 made in China. Reliable, ultra-slim, brought from a Motorola store in the city. It has GPS. It can take pictures. And it has a true colour display.
Interviewer: Do you like gaming?
Interviewee: No. I use it only for making phone calls.
Interviewer: How about the short message service?
Interviewee: It has the function, but I do not like sending short messages.
Interviewer: What plan do you choose?
Interviewee: Homeland plan (jiayuan ka 家园卡).Making one call in the village costs 6 cents, while in the city it is 25 cents. [Ordinary villagers] often choose the Base station plan (jizhan tong 基站通) and the Homeland plan. We village cadres choose the additional V net plan (v wang v网). With only 1 yuan per month, we can call one another whenever we want for free. All village cadres choose V net. Three of us originally used China Unicom but now we have all switched to V net. (A20080928-5)
While for most ordinary villagers, the cell phone is just an advanced communication apparatus, for village cadres it has greater significance. The Party branch secretary bought an expensive and stylish cell phone with multi-functions, but he only uses a few of its functions. This striking contrast indicates that the he uses his cell phone as a symbol of his special social status in his village. Moreover, the different choices ordinary villagers and village cadres make in the plans they choose reinforce the cadres' political status.
Status – employers (laoban 老板) and employees (gugong 雇工)
Complicated power relations exist between employers and employees. Employers are dominant in production activity and employees are subordinate. Their different statuses strongly influence their conception and usage of ICTs.
One advantage over being an employee is freedom. You can turn your cell phone off if you do not feel well. If someone really needs to reach you, he will call later. Moreover, if you are in a bad mood, your mind is not clear. Even if you are talking to someone over the cell phone, you might not convey your meaning correctly. Turning the cell phone off is a kind of balance. When you are thinking something important, a phone call might interrupt you. (E20081125-9)
For us, the cell phone is an indispensable platform for work. My cell phone connects to Alibaba (a leading Chinese business-to-business website). My monthly spending on the cell phone varies, sometimes up to 1,000 yuan. Two of us have three cell phones and the phone with most business calls are left in the office. That business phone is a shared phone, while each of us has his own private phone. When you want to stay alone, you leave the business phone in the office. (E20090307-30)
Migrant workers' views were rather different from those of the above employers:
Originally the monthly charge was between 13 to 15 yuan. Now plans are more expensive, almost 18 yuan per month. You are not in a restaurant, so why do you need a combo [in Chinese, cell phone plan and restaurant combo use the same word]? The sales person even tried to explain this to me, but she wasn't clear and I could not follow. Maybe they just change the name. If they used the term “monthly fee,” everybody would understand. But no one understands what a plan is. It is unreasonable. Plans entrap us. We just cannot understand. (D20090319-14)
When someone finds he has only one or two yuan left in his SIM card, he makes a long distance call and doesn't hang up. When China Mobile finally shuts his SIM card down, he has already spent 50 or 60 yuan. Right now you have to register your ID to buy a new SIM card. One girl bought a new SIM card but she instantly owed the service provider 30 yuan because the SIM card she had bought with her ID in Henan province already had had an outstanding balance. When the girl bought another SIM card, she used someone else's s ID. All migrant workers do the same thing. Some try to cheat China Mobile. (D200919-13)
From the above transcripts, it is clear that employers and employees have different interests in using their cell phones. Employers emphasize the freedom and privacy they offer, and develop a special strategy, such as “turning phone off” and “strictly distinguishing between business phone and private phone,” in their individualized cell phone usage. But for ordinary migrant workers, one of the most important questions is where their credit goes. Although they are not familiar with certain specialized modern terms such as “plan,” they develop effective strategies, including “using more credit than one has” (dabao ji 打爆机) and frequently changing SIM cards (pinfan huanhao 频繁换号), to maximize the returns from their purchased services, even not entirely legally. These different focuses and strategies demonstrate the divide between the two groups concerning their ideas about and adoption of ICTs.
Age – the old and the young
As an important variable in examining ICT adoption, age differentiates individuals' attitudes to and capacities to learn new things. Relatively speaking, as a new ICT product, the cell phone has penetrated rural China surprisingly rapidly and widely. In all the five villages, the older villagers now use cell phones, even though it is mainly for simple purposes such as receiving and making calls. But their children demand much more. Older villagers want their cell phone to be nai (耐, durable), haoyong (好用, reliable and easy to use), with a good signal and dianban hao (电板好, lasting battery). Young villagers emphasize more the style and taste of their cell phones, and are constantly on the lookout for something new. It is quite common for many young villagers to give their used cell phones to their parents. In Village A, most elderly villagers' cell phones come directly from their children as tuicao (退槽, retired) ones. Therefore, a converse intergenerational transfer emerges in cell phone usage and replacement.
Older villagers seldom touch a computer but some younger villagers cannot live without one. Two factors contribute to this intergenerational difference: different knowledge of and ability on the computer, and different conceptions about and understanding of the internet. Older villagers had never heard of computers and the internet when they were young enough to learn new things quickly. Now, they have neither the energy nor the incentive (their work and life do not require a computer) to learn how to use a computer. Furthermore, many older villagers feel that computers and the internet are dangerous and could seduce their children to do something bad. The elderly in the traditional, industrialized and commercial villages show the same concerns, although they also admit (perhaps reluctantly) that computers and the internet represent the future and their children should learn how to use them. This reflects a paradoxical conception on the part of the middle-aged and elderly in rural China about the penetration of modern ICTs into traditional communities. Many young migrant workers also have a paradoxical approach to computers and ICTs. Having first come into contact with computers and the internet during their migration to urban areas they are, on the one hand, eager to be assimilated into urban life by studying how to use computers, the symbol of advanced technology. However, on the other hand, because of their limited education and resources, these younger migrant workers quickly turn computers from a potential work platform into an individual entertainment centre just for killing time.
Older and younger villagers also differ in their usage of television. The data from our fieldwork show that watching television is an important activity amongst the elderly in the villages and it is a companion for the lonely elderly whose children are migrant workers. In the industrialized village, watching television or films together actually provides the village a public sphere. The elderly gather in the senior centre to watch revolutionary movies (hongse dianying 红色电影) together, or in the case of national events, such as the Sichuan earthquake or the Beijing Olympic Games, they watch television and discuss the events. But younger migrant workers seldom watch television because computers and the internet have almost completely replaced television's functions for them.
The different conceptions and usages of cell phones, television, computers and the internet between the elderly and the young indicate a conspicuous intergenerational divide in the patterns of ICT usage and replacement.
Conclusion and Discussion
We have examined the stratified differentiation of ICT adoption in rural China through three dimensions: occupation, village membership and social status. Economic inequality resulting from occupational differentiation leads to the differentiation in cell phone usage. Differentiation resulting from village membership demonstrates that while ICTs might satisfy individuals' demands, they also reinforce the existing segregation between the insiders and outsiders in the same village. Social status, such as power, status and age, also generates social differences in the conception and usage of ICTs.
Such stratified differentiation illustrates that on the one hand, ICT adoption and diffusion indeed energize rural China by providing easy access to information and bringing in modern and diversified means of communications. However, on the other hand, it also generates the Matthew Effect in peasants' differentiation: ICT adoption both represents growing peasant differentiation and accelerates its further growth. Different social positions lead to differences in acquisition, usage, demand and conception of ICT products and services. Advantaged social groups enjoy more services and information while marginalized social groups find it harder to obtain useful information. Enthusiastically promoting informationization in the rural areas, the New Countryside Project (xinnongcun jianshe 新农村建设) not only constantly raises the living standards of some groups of peasants, but also creates more uncertainties for other groups. In an information society where divides between urban and rural areas and among rural villages exist simultaneously, the adoption and usage of the same technologies among different social groups fail to bridge the existing divides and facilitate social integration. With the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker, the growing social differentiation is classically embodied in Chinese peasants' adoption of ICTs.
As is known to all, according to Fei Xiaotong 费孝通, traditional rural communities were “societies without strangers.”Footnote 15 When personal communications mostly depended on face-to-face interactions, each village had its own public space as the “information centre” where villagers could share information directly. Yelling was the best way of communicating over a short distance. Since the reform, with the waves of industrialization, globalization and informationization, personal communication in rural China has been transformed. Despite the continued existence of the urban–rural dual structure and the emergence of an intra-rural digital divide, peasants' demands for information and ICT usage are changing quickly. Through our analysis of peasants' adoption of information technology, we can identify the basic trends and characteristics of peasants' informational needs in contemporary China. In general, these needs demonstrate two simultaneously opposite and mutually complementary trends of gradual diversification and potential convergence, which in turn have the following four basic dimensions.
Similarity and dissimilarity
Similarity and dissimilarity exist simultaneously in peasants' informational needs across the four types of village. To some extent, dissimilarity represents diversity and similarity implies coherence. According to our data, the adoption of ICTs, such as cell phones, fixed phones, television sets and personal computers, greatly boosts peasants' demands for information. Peasants' informational needs relate to the supply of agricultural materials, the processing of agricultural and supplementary products, technology, marketing, weather, employment, state agricultural policies and so on. These diversified informational needs, however, signify that peasants share a coherent conception of modern ICTs. Specifically, data from the five villages show four basic features of peasants' demands for one specific ICT product, the cell phone. It should be practical, straightforward, cheap and durable. These four basic features also represent their main requirements in choosing ICT products in general, similarly shaped by their daily work, life styles, and cultural habits.
Simplicity and complexity
Peasants' informational needs might be quite simple but simultaneously complex; simplicity and complexity coexist in the informational needs of peasants. It is usually assumed that the information acquired and applied by peasants is much simpler than that of urban residents. However, this is incorrect. While modernity increases the risks and uncertainties of urban life, rural life also faces possibly even greater risks of information asymmetry. Peasants therefore face similar challenges to those of urban residents in their acquisition and application of information. While we see that peasants in traditional Village A have to obtain concrete micro-level information, such as which crops to cultivate each year, peasants in industrialized Village C also have to update their abstract macro-level information about issues such as state policy and international market changes. Due to the urban–rural dual structure and the fact that the city is the centre for the production and distribution of information, peasants experience a dual-level disadvantage in handling both simple and complex information. While they have to face the unbalanced dissemination of information within their villages, they also have to deal with distortions in information resulting from the urban–rural dual structure. In this sense, the difficulties and risks for peasants in successfully obtaining and applying information are comparable to those of urban residents. Far from being simple, peasants' needs for ICTs are both complex and fraught with uncertainties.
Instrumentality and mentality
Instrumentality and mentality coexist in peasants' informational needs. Instrumental or “hard” needs mean that peasants adopt ICTs to fulfil their production and transaction goals. Mental or “soft” needs imply that peasants adopt ICTs to facilitate their social interaction, maintain emotional bonds and realize cultural expression. This research demonstrates that instrumental needs, such as using ICTs in agricultural production, product sales, raw material purchases, business negotiations and enterprise management, exist in all the four types of village. Mental needs are more complicated and may be discussed under two subcategories: native villagers in the industrialized village and the village in the city have strong mental needs for entertainment, while villagers staying in traditional villages and migrant workers in the industrialized village and village in the city have strong needs to maintain ties with their families. Mental and social needs in the adoption of ICTs clearly depend on peasants' living conditions.
Closeness and openness
Closeness and openness also coexist in peasants' informational needs. Closeness emphasizes the rustic and unrefined side (tu 土) of peasants' informational needs, in other words being closed-minded towards changes and new ideas, while openness highlights their urban and stylish side (yang 洋), or being open-minded to new ideas. Traditional peasants are widely stereotyped as being rustic because of their dependence on the land. The reform introduced fundamental changes to their livelihoods and lifestyles, and, with their growing market awareness, peasants exhibit an increasing eagerness for more refined and sophisticated modes and standards of work and life. Our data show representations of both tu and yang in all the four types of village. Obviously, traditional villagers represent tu and migrant workers represent yang, respectively. But if we examine these phenomena more thoroughly, tu emerges as a wise strategy for self-protection on the part of peasants facing incomprehensible and untrustworthy modern ICTs, while yang illustrates peasants' desire to demonstrate personality and style. Both are essential components of peasants' delicate and diversified nature.
Based on our observation of different types of village, we can summarize the features of ICT adoption in rural China as follows: traditional means of communication coexist with modernized means of communication; different types of village develop different information demands and ICT adoption; the digital divide therefore exists not only between urban and rural areas, but also among rural areas and peasants; and the ongoing social transformation is the foremost cause of these differentiations. Furthermore, three main factors – the institutional arrangements of the urban–rural dual structure, the transformation of rural China's economic structure and the massive scale of peasant migration – are the most significant contributory factors to the differentiated ICT usage in rural China.
Moreover, the divide formed in the process of owning and using ICTs demonstrates a “mutually reproductive” effect. The earlier people own these ICTs the deeper the ICTs will penetrate their lives, and the deeper they penetrate their lives, the stronger the demand for them will develop. When entering and penetrating a specific community, ICTs are redefined and reconstructed by local culture and economic activities. As a result, each type of village forms its own characteristics in the adoption of ICTs. For example, the traditional model pays more attention to information about seeds, fertilizers, agricultural technology, agricultural markets, job markets for migrant workers and state policies. The industrial model leans more towards information about purchasing raw materials, product manufacturing and selling, sustaining business partners, and enterprise management, The commercial model emphasizes information about purchasing raw materials, producing and selling products, and building business networks. The village in the city model focuses on information about renting, rent collecting and migrant workers' job seeking.
Through these four basic models, we can also see that new ICTs have greatly reorganized the peasants' communication modes and lifestyles. With the different degrees of development of ICTs in rural communities, each type of village displays its own distinctive features. In the traditional village, the peasants become accustomed to keeping in touch with their relatives in the city by cell phone. In the industrialized village, digital leisure and entertainment is an integral part of the peasants' daily life. In the commercial village, cell phones play a more important role in maintaining and extending the peasants' business network. In the village in the city, cell phones and television sets construct a communicative platform for the insiders and the outsiders. The above analysis undoubtedly provides a good picture of the interaction between ICTs and social structure. It reveals that technology and society are not completely separate from or opposed to each other, but are instead mutually integrated. This is the insight that sociology gives us.
