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'E-Guangzhou' developing
By Zheng Caixiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-08-25 01:58
Zhou Shaohua, 30, a local office worker, Tuesday morning spent less than half
an hour surfing the Internet at home and successfully applied for a birth permit
and completed all the procedures needed to deliver a child.
"I can now concentrate on having my baby," said Zhou.
Zhou found out last week that she was three month's pregnant.
Zhou's sister-in-law had to visit local neighbourhood committee more than 10
times in the space of a month before she was granted a birth permit two years
ago.
"The procedures for a birth permit were very complicated, and the
neighbourhood committees had not introduced online services," Zhou said.
Zhou is now just one of a growing number of people who are now using the
Internet to obtain this permit in the capital of South China's Guangdong
Province.
According to an official from the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Civil
Affairs, more than 70 per cent of the city's neigbourhood committees have been
equipped with computer systems that allowed local residents to apply for
different kinds of certificates, including birth permits, at home.
Neighbourhood committees are responsible for granting birth permits and other
family planning certificates on the Chinese mainland.
According to the scheme to build a "digital Guangzhou,''all neighbourhood
committees will be equipped with computer systems before the end of 2006, the
unnamed official told China Daily yesterday.
To this end, the Guangzhou municipal government has decided to invest more
than 1.6 billion yuan (US$193.24 million) to develop the city's information
industry in the following two years.
By the end of 2006, every staff member in township governments and
neighbourhood committees will have a computer in their office.
And more than 85 per cent of families in Guangzhou will have computers.
All the city's government departments, bureaux and organizations will open
online services to the residents.
In another development, Guangdong Province had registered more than 9.7
million Internet users by the end of June, the biggest number in the country.
Guangdong's Internet users represent more than 12 per cent of the country's
total, accounting for 12.1 per cent of the province's total population.
An official from the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Information Industry
yesterday predicted the number of Internet users in Guangdong would be more than
10 million by the end of the year.
"The Internet has become the fastest growing industry and the one with the
greatest growth potential in Guangdong," the official said.
About 60 per cent of the province's Internet users are business people, the
official added.
And most of them are university graduates under 35 years old.
About 30 per cent of Guangdong's Internet users are surfing for
entertainment, while the rest are using it for studies and other purposes.
Guangdong has registered more than 4.38 million computers which have been
connected with Internet, accounting for 14.1 per cent of the country's total.
A family is estimated to spend about 150 yuan (US$18.1) on Internet services
every month.
The official attributed the province's rapid growth in the Internet users to
the provincial government's great efforts to promote information industry and
try to construct e-government.
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