The Advancement in Communication Technology in China

Nowadays, with development of communication technology, Chinese communicate with others become much easier than 20 years ago. Even in the remotest areas of China, email and instant messaging via internet and mobiles are commonly used. However, as for the telephone, it were very rare in China before 1978- in 1952, every 10,000 people could enjoy for one telephone on average in Shanxi. In 1978, every 1,000 people had 5. 7 telephones on average in that province.

50 years ago, people can only send their oral messages or letters back home with their friends or acquaintances. It is a quite slow way to spread information. ten years later, writing letters was the most popular form of communication in China, but only a few people can write letters, because most of Chinese are farmers who had never studied. In the next ten years, telegram and telephone were used by people, but there were few people having it or using them because they are expensive. ‘Seventy-five-year-old man, who worked in the postal bureau in north China's Shanxi province, recalled that in the 1950s, telegrams were available but rarely used by common people. At 3.5 cents per Chinese character, compared to only 8 cents for a letter's postage, the cost of telegrams was so high that they were reserved for important events only such as a wedding or death of a loved one. Therefore, people prefer to write letters. When sending a telegram instead of a letter, it was always a tough task to reduce expense by using the fewest possible words to send a complete and clear message. Twenty years ago, private telephones and beep pagers were gradually introduced to more Chinese citizens. However private telephones was expensive, used by trader, and beep pagers were not so convenient. Although this communicate device was not very useful, it still could satisfy the communication desires of the people. For these problems, we had solved them 10 years ago, because of the advent of mobile phones. Mobile phones has largely changed the way of people’s communicate. The mobile phone helped people send short message , which replaced the beepers. The first mobile phone came to China, in 1995, with the ability to allow a person to wirelessly send and receive calls. In recent years, people had made some communication applications, such as QQ and WeChat. We have more options to connect with others than 20 years ago. In addition, our communication technology has reached 5G.

In conclusion,