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DevelopmentstatusofruralinformatizationinBeijingChina.pdf
December, 2011 Int J Agric & Biol Eng Open Access at http://www.ijabe.org Vol. 4 No.4 59
Development status of rural informatization in Beijing, China
Yu Ying 1 , Qin Xiangyang
1 , Zhang Lidong
2
(1. National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Beijing 100097, China;
2. Beijing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, Beijing 100027, China)
Abstract: The development status of rural informatization in Beijing was analyzed from three aspects, which include
infrastructure building, resource platform and service system construction, and the information technology application in rural
areas. The infrastructure building in Beijing had certain scale, and the network coverage in rural counties and the rate of
network into villages almost reached 100%. The construction of resource platform and service systems was diversified and it
provided various types of services for farmers’lives. However, the information platforms and sites were dispersive and
needed to be integrated and shared. The typical '211 information platform is one system platform which integrated source and
market the two things, which means the first ‘2’. It used fund which means the ‘1’, and technology which means the other
‘1’as support, and government departments and all kinds of producers could do some information activities through this
platform. It had strong inquiry, analysis and synthesis functions for decision-making services through integrated and shared
municipal organizations and counties' agricultural resources. On the aspect of information technology application,
informatization has enhanced the technology level of Beijing urban modern agriculture and sustainable development capacity.
The application of public service, e-government and e-commerce facilitated farmers’lives, improved the development of
government management and rural economy. In the future, the rural informatization still needs to strengthen the integration
and sharing of agriculture-related resources, reduce the public service informatization gap between rural and urban areas, and
improve farmers' informatization awareness.
Keywords: rural areas, informatization, internet, rural development, information technology, Beijing, current status
DOI: 10.3965/j.issn.1934-6344.2011.04.059-065
Citation: Yu Y, Qin X, Zhang L. Development status of rural informatization in Beijing, China. Int J Agric & Biol Eng,
2011; 4(4): 59－65.
1 Introduction
Rural informatization is the process of using modern
technology to improve agricultural production capacity,
Received date: 2011-02-23 Accepted date: 2011-12-01
Biographies: Yu Ying, Master, Study on rural informatization,
National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology
in Agriculture, Shuguang Huayuan Middle Road 11#, Haidian
district, Beijing 100097, P.R. China. Phone: (8610)5150-3595;
Email: [email protected]; Zhang Lidong, Beijing
Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology,
Kaifu building, Gongti North Road No.6, Chaoyang district,
Beijing 100027, P.R. China. Phone: (8610)8397-8763; Email:
Corresponding author: Qin Xiangyang, PhD, Study on rural
informatization, National Engineering Research Center for
Information Technology in Agriculture, Shuguang Huayuan
Middle Road 11#, Haidian district, Beijing 100097, P.R. China.
Phone: (8610)5150-3531; Email: [email protected].
rural management level, and farmers’quality of life in
rural areas. Currently, developed countries have all
enhanced their rural informatization process.
According to the statistics of U.S. Department of
Agriculture in 2009, digital subscriber line (DSL) was the
most common method of accessing the Internet, up from
27 percent in 2007 to 36 percent of U.S. farmers using it.
Satellite and wireless were each reported as the primary
Internet access methods on 13 percent of those U.S. farms
with Internet access. Cable was reported as the primary
access method on 11 percent of the farms. In 2009, 81
percent of U.S. farms with sales and government
payments of $250 000 or more had access to a computer,
79 percent owned or leased a computer, 69 percent were
using a computer for their farm business, and 76 percent
had Internet access. In Japan, about 34% households
had PC, of which 12.2% had access to the internet [1-2]
.
In 2009, Internet users in China added 86 million and
60 December, 2011 Int J Agric & Biol Eng Open Access at http://www.ijabe.org Vol. 4 No.4
reached 384 million people; the internet penetration rate
is higher than the world average [3]
, but compared to Japan
and the United States, rural information technology in
China is growing fast but the level is still low. At the
end of December 2009, the scale of China rural internet
users reached 106.81 million, with an annual growth rate
of 26.3% (Figure 1). It is the first time that the scale of
rural internet users exceeded one hundred million. From
the perspective of urban and rural Internet penetration,
Internet penetration rate in urban areas was 44.6%, while
it was only 15% in rural areas. There exist big
differences in Internet developing levels between urban
and rural areas [4,5]
(Figure 2).
Figure 1 Comparative numbers of urban and countryside
internet users
Figure 2 Comparative rates of the Internet penetration on
urban and countryside
Rural informatization is an important issue for the
building of new socialist countryside. Currently,
Beijing is in a strong development phase of urban modern
agriculture, and rural informatization is an important
support [6]
. Under the new situation, the establishment of
rural informatization is very important to build new
countryside and cultivate new farmers [7-8]
.
The present study introduced various aspects of
information technology in Beijing in recent years, while
mainly related to infrastructure construction, resource
platform and service system building and the application
of information technology. The existing problems in
current and some proposals were analyzed.
In New Zealand rural areas, farmers are increasingly
purchasing and using on-farm computers to provide
decision support information and assist in meeting their
tax and other contracts management. While the farmers
purchase on Internet, they clearly believe the investment
is justified, although there is not enough data to support
this conclusion [9]
. Gloya [10]
found that in the USA, the
producers are unsure on how the Internet can best be used
to create value in their farm businesses. Furthermore, in
India Raju [11]
concluded that organizational linkages and
networking capacities are to be strengthened for ‘digital
unity’ to provide multiple opportunities to the rural
communities to exploit local resources for their self-
development. For China, the issue of rural communicat-
ion development has been conventionally examined under
labels such as universal service, digital, divide, broadband
deployment, and e-government, which generally fall into
two seemingly distinct categories— access and
applications. In China, these concepts are currently
incorporated into a single program, if not a single
term— ‘Village Informatization Program’(‘VIP’) [12-13]
.
2 Current status
In Beijing, the total land area is 16 410.54 square
kilometers, 62% of which is mountainous areas. In
2006, the government divided the 18 districts (counties)
to four different function regions: the region of capital
central function, the region of urban expanding function,
and the region of new urban development and the region
of ecological preservation. In the 18 districts (counties),
there are 13 districts (counties) retained agricultural
registered households, which used to be called suburb
region. The resident population in rural area is 5.016
million, including 656 600 farmers. The city’s per
capita net income of rural residents is expected to be
12 000 RMB.
2.1 Infrastructure building
According to the latest data from Beijing Municipal
Commission of Rural Affairs, by the end of 2009, the
December, 2011 Development status of rural informatization in Beijing, China Vol. 4 No.4 61
radio (phone) coverage of the 13 suburban counties was
up to 100%; for the cable TV coverage, except for
Yanqing, Changping, Miyun, the other 10 districts had
achieved 100%; for network coverage, except for
Chaoyang area, the other 12 rural counties reached 100%;
for the rate of network into villages, except for Shunyi
district, the other suburban counties were 100%.
By the end of December 2009 in Beijing, every
hundred rural households had 58 home computers, 212
mobile phones, 138 color TV sets, 105 refrigerators,
98 air conditioners, 50 DVD players, 42 cameras, 101
units of washing machines. Compared with the data at
the end of the tenth five-year period in 2005, the growing
rate were 61.1%, 52.5%, 7.0%, 5%, 55.5%, 2%, 13.5%
and 4.1%, respectively. The entertainment type of
information products has greatly enhanced, indicating the
rural living standards have improved significantly. In
addition, the use of household appliances could also
promote and train the rural residents to use
informatization products.
Table 1 Annual average possession of durable consumer goods per 100 rural households (2001-2009)
Year Mobile phone
(unit) Air conditioner
(unit) VCD/DVD
(unit) Color TV set
(unit) Home computer
(unit) Camera (unit)
Washing machine (unit)
Refrigerator (unit)
2001 30 27 27 112 12 29 91 86
2002 52 35 30 116 16 32 94 91
2003 77 39 34 116 22 32 94 94
2004 102 47 39 119 27 35 96 96
2005 139 63 49 129 36 37 97 100
2006 161 72 50 131 41 38 97 100
2007 182 78 47 134 46 37 99 104
2008 201 89 49 137 52 39 101 104
2009 212 98 50 138 58 42 101 105
2.2 Resource platform and service system
Recently, 10 681 various types of information service
sites had been built in Beijing suburban counties,
including 4 233 distance education sites for rural party
members and cadres, 452 distance education sites for
agricultural technology, 824 rural ‘digital home’sites,
3 118 rural cultural information resources sharing sites,
1 504 ‘love in agricultural information’sites, and so on.
1) Agricultural resources management decision-
making system: ‘221 information platform’. With the
joint efforts of various departments, 15 municipal
building and sharing organizations and 13 counties
agricultural resources, including 105 categories and 490
items of data, had been integrated, covering the soil,
weather, water landscape and other natural resource
conditions, and population, labor, economic development
and other socio-economic conditions, and technological
resources, market supply and demand, monetary policy
and other information. Database capacity is more than
20GB, which is equivalent to 200 thousand books of
information. The platform contained agriculture
facilities, agricultural products supply and demand,
agricultural finance and 138 other topics. It had 240
information layers, including soil information, and market
distribution and so on. And it had more than 100
non-graphical data layers, including rural economy and so
on. The platform had strong inquiry, analysis and
synthesis functions for decision-making services.
2) Government departments can take advantage of the
Intranet to analyze agricultural resources and market
demand, and provide a scientific basis for management
decisions on industrial layout, structural adjustment, and
emergency protection; the farmers, businesses and the
public can check the website for the information about
planting, breeding adapt evaluation, new varieties, new
technology, new product that adapt local areas, and also
about market prices, rural tourism and agriculture-related
support policies.
3) Beijing new village science and technology
hotline‘12396’: since it was opened in early August to the
end of November in 2009, log hits had reached 246 000
people, nearly 2 800 people per day; provided 3 859
automated answering services through phone, video and
internet to the users; provided 245 consulting services by
experts; the average daily volume was more than 30
people.
62 December, 2011 Int J Agric & Biol Eng Open Access at http://www.ijabe.org Vol. 4 No.4
4) Beijing agricultural service hotline ‘12316’: It had
been the important channel for receiving complaints for
counterfeit and inferior agricultural resources, and for
protecting the legitimate rights and interests of farmers.
It collaborated with law enforcement departments to
combat illegal behaviors harming farmers’interest, and a
total of 271 agriculture complaint cases were received in
one year. On this basis, the 12316 hotline actively
promoted agricultural science and technology, market,
government regulations and other information services
into villages and households, and helped farmers on
scientific breeding and, increasing profit, and it had
received all kinds of advice calls nearly 40 000 annually.
5) Beijing mobile rural power system: Until the end
of 2009, 13 rural counties installed 222 sets of
information machines and 3 810 sets of agricultural
information machines, and had sent 10 370 000 practical
messages and served 38 million users. Nearly ten
million messages had been published which involved in
agricultural production and rural major weather warning
etc. Timely release, accuracy, and pertinence of
information were improved and good service effects were
achieved.
6) Love agricultural station: By the end of 2009, it
had grown to 1 504 sites, including 504 love agricultural
information sites and 1 000 secondary agricultural
information service points. Twelve large-scale
demonstration sites and 12 industry points were built,
which provided the following functions: ‘farmer
enriching information distribution service’; ‘help farmers
for distance education service’; ‘e-payment service for
farmers’; and ‘digital cultural services for farmers.’
7) Digital home: The public information services had
been built in rural grass-roots areas, and the aim was to
provide information service, skills training, and learning
and entertainment platform to meet the information needs
of rural residents. Rural digital home mainly provided
information inquiries, information dissemination,
information consulting, skills training, culture and
entertainment, and other information services through
Internet. At the end of 2009, there were 824 rural digital
home sites in 13 suburban counties.
8) ’Three-one’integrated service platform: ‘The three
telecommunication’means: telephone, computer and TV,
‘the three-one’means: establish the local area network
with appropriate equipment and system software to
collect, conduct and release agriculture-related
information, build and improve local personalized
databases. So far, the municipal agriculture bureau and
the ten suburban districts and counties have established
‘three-one’agricultural information service platforms.
9) Township information service stations: These
stations were built according to the requirements of
agriculture ministry ‘six-one’standard (i.e.: one dedicated
room, one set of special equipment (such as multimedia
computers and printers, etc), one telephone network line,
1-2 full-time or part-time people, one information team,
and one set of management and service system). In
recent years, the rural outskirts of Beijing has built 6 346
various kinds of grass-roots information service sites.
10) Cultural information sharing grass-roots service
stations: The cultural information resources sharing
project is the use of modern information technology for
digital processing and integration of Chinese culture and
information resources, and the use of nationwide network
management and service system for realizing cultural
information resources sharing. At the end of 2009, the
network service point of rural grass-roots cultural
information resources sharing project had completed
3 118 accesses.
11) Modern distance education system for Party
members and cadres in rural areas: Currently, 4 233
modern distance education terminal sites had been built in
Beijing, which formed four levels of distance education
transmission systems that covered city, district (county),
township (town), and village. It has made important
contributions on transferring central policy, sharing
culture and education resources, and strengthening the
integration of various resources.
12) Farmers distance education sites: Until December
2009, modern distance education projects had been
established at 667 terminal sites. In Beijing, there were
452 sites in rural areas, covering 13 suburban counties.
The distance education had extended to key villages,
demonstration gardens, and businesses, and reached more
than 20 provinces and regions outside Beijing.
2.3 Information technology application
The unprecedented development of modern
December, 2011 Development status of rural informatization in Beijing, China Vol. 4 No.4 63
information technology and the Internet, agricultural
expert systems, model systems, intelligent information
systems, intelligent control technology, Internet of things
(IOT) in electronic trading of agricultural products are the
current mainstream technology on promoting the
development of rural informatization. The application
form is divided into for four categories: for agriculture,
for the public service, for government and for market.
A. For agriculture
1) Precision agriculture technology: It has played an
important role in field crop management, soil testing and
fertilizer, and facilities of agriculture in Beijing area. It
has enhanced the technology content of Beijing urban
modern agriculture and sustainable development capacity.
In addition, high-tech agricultural equipment has been
effectively applied.
2) The intelligent control technology of agricultural
facilities: There are 500 sets of information automatic
acquisition systems and greenhouse production
management and intelligent control systems in Beijing
suburbs. The significant function of the technology is
reducing cost, increasing production and efficiency,
which significantly improved the level of facilities for
agricultural production and technology.
3) 3S technologies: 3S was three integrated
information technologies including Remote Sensing (RS),
Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic
Information System (GIS). 3S technology is widely
used in the agricultural divisions, resource distribution,
land monitoring, and it is useful for the city to provide the
scientific basis for agricultural production.
4) Digital water-saving technology: By automatic
irrigation control system and water management systems
and other digital water-saving technologies, agricultural
water saving effect is remarkable. Currently, the
demonstration regions using automatic irrigation control
systems have reached 4 550 acres in Beijing suburbs.
Application of water and fertilizer integrated water-using
technology and automatic control systems can annually
save an average of 160 cubic meters of water, 18.4 kg of
fertilizer, 70 Yuan of electricity, and 90 Yuan of labor
costs for every acre of farmland.
5) Crop pest and disease early warning information
system: Crop pest and disease comprehensive digital
forecasting were realized, and the timely and accurate
delivery of pest and disease data was guaranteed and
reliable for forecasting trends of Beijing crop pests and
diseases and for their prevention and control.
6) Epidemic prevention and quarantine of livestock
production information system: The livestock production
information system combined 58 livestock-related
organizations which distributed in 18 suburbs counties.
They transfer data by Internet, and provide thirty
thousands of data records each month. The livestock
production management system provides a
comprehensive management platform for the city and
animal disease prevention and control, effectively
improving the level of livestock management and
decision-making.
B. For the public service
1) Medical treatment: Beijing new rural cooperative
medical management information system framework
(Figure 3) includes a municipal comprehensive
application service management platform, a district
management platform and a web content release.
Figure 3 Beijing new rural cooperative medical management
information system framework
2) Community security: Rural community security
systems such as video monitoring, home alarm systems,
and access patrol systems, have been installed mainly at
road intersections and key facilities. The security
system that mainly contains the video monitoring system
at intersections has been established in rural villages
(communities) that currently have relatively high levels
of information technology. Wuxiongsi village of Shunyi
District has built a wireless monitoring network, which
has achieved the monitoring of intersections, streets and
important locations (remote control via the network)
(Figure 4).
64 December, 2011 Int J Agric & Biol Eng Open Access at http://www.ijabe.org Vol. 4 No.4
Figure 4 Wuxiongsi village monitoring room and the monitor
heads which distributed in the important positions of the village
C. For government
211 information platform: Government departments
can use the Intranet to analyze the agricultural resources
and market demand, and provide the scientific support for
industrial planning and layout, industrial restructuring,
and emergency management. Farmers, businesses and
the public can check the website for information about
planting, breeding evaluation, new varieties, new
technologies, new products that adapt to local areas, and
also for market prices, rural tourism and agriculture-
related support policies.
Rural and village-level government website: By the
end of 2009, there were 127 townships built independent
domain websites among the whole 12 districts and 183
townships. The village which used touch-screen
computers to make village affairs public had reached 400,
involving 166 counties and 13 districts.
D. For market
Beijing agricultural market information resources:
The market information system included wholesale
market information for agricultural products from local
areas and other provinces, and the international
agricultural product prices, quantity information of
coming into the market and other agricultural market
information. Especially, in the construction of
agricultural product wholesale market information
resources, the city collected more than 20 wholesale
markets of agricultural products of vegetables daily,
which contained market data for 900 varieties in five
categories, such as fruit, meat, eggs, aquatic products,
grain and other farm products. Currently, the annual
information collection amounted to more than 1 200
million items, which is 120 times of items to the market
in 1990.
Rural enterprises and farmers’ cooperative
organizations applied e-business to the aspect of company
production, circulation and management, which not only
reduced costs and increased output, but also obtained
good economic and social benefits, especially in tourism.
For example, Ping Gu District has built ‘Diao Wo folk
custom travel network’, and it made Diao Wo village
famous. During the golden week of the National Day’s
holiday in 2009, the number of tourists reached 180
thousand, and tourism revenue was 2.2 million Yuan, of
which the customers’ spending through the network
interactions achieved 1.0 million Yuan, which was 45.5%
of the total tourism revenue. E-business has a strong
impetus to the development of the folk tourism industry.
3 Existing problems and suggestions
Although the information in rural areas of Beijing has
achieved great development in recent years, IT still
cannot meet the growing information needs of farmers.
Agriculture-related resources need further integration and
sharing; the level of urban-rural integration and public
service informatization need improving; and the
informatization awareness of farmers should be
strengthened.
1) Rural informatization construction has not met the
farmers’needs
Currently, the infrastructure of Beijing rural
informatization has a certain scale, but the utilization and
application level is still not high enough. The main
problems are the low rate of household computer
ownership and the high charge of Internet access. The
application level of information infrastructure needs to be
improved. Rural information service systems and
channels are lack of simplicity and popularity. They do
not match farmers’generally low education level and
technology proficiency of accepting the information and
cannot meet the actual needs of the farmers, thus resulting
in poor applications for various systems, and leading to a
significant urban-rural information gap, and limiting the
process of integration of urban and rural economic and
social development.
December, 2011 Development status of rural informatization in Beijing, China Vol. 4 No.4 65
2) Integration and sharing of agriculture-related
resources
All agriculture-related organizations have built their
own websites; however, different departments and
organizations are lack of communication and
coordination, which has caused the waste of resources
and is not conducive to the use of resources. In addition,
the farmers are unable to receive the information which
they need from the relative centralized network platform.
Therefore, it is important to use the ‘221 information
platform’ to fully integrate agro-resources from both
internal and external networks.
3) Public service information gaps between urban and
rural areas are obvious
Information construction in rural areas has achieved
some success, but it has not yet formed a complete,
practical, widely used public service information system
in rural areas. The grass-roots e-government and
information technology facilities such as online offices
are still not complete. There is difficulty in collecting
basic information and uploading and extending
information is still slow. Primary information resources
cannot be shared or exchanged, resulting in duplication of
resources or information islands and other issues.
Community management has not yet reached to the level
of digital informatization, especially for rural
communities, government, finance, education, culture,
tourism, employment, health and other public affairs
management and services, and there are still obvious gaps
between urban and rural residents.
4) Awareness of information technology in rural areas
needs significant improvment
Into the 12th five-year period, farmers’quality of life
and informatization level are significantly affecting the
economic and social development of rural areas.
Although there are strong guidance from the government
and extensive participation of social forces, the farmers’
generally low education level makes it difficult for the
information infrastructure to be fully applied. The rapid
development of rural enterprises and cooperative
organizations put forward higher requirements for
farmers, and the equipment informatization, e-commerce
and enterprise management informatization also require
farmers to improve their own skills to adapt to the
development of enterprises. Therefore, on-site and
effective training to farmers and distance education
resources still need to be carried out vigorously.
Modern information technology needs to be used to bring
up the new generation of farmers that have skills,
techniques and business management knowledge.
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