IT China Land is a government sponsored project aimed to host and perform a variety of world class IT events, research, education and marketing development, business include IT products, services and technologies exchange, exhibition and promotion, e-shopping, e-learning, networking, trade and show room, media and museum, etc. It is located inside China’s Olympic Park of Beijing, the capital of China, the center of government, culture and commerce ( 80% China’s IT giant located in Beijing). It integrates business with the long history of China and oriental cultures.

Establishing a Global Knowledge Network or Global K-Net is now providing the logical closure to globalization, networking, and informatization trends, the long-term goal being the evolution of a so-called “world brain.” Employing Bill Gates’ “digital nervous system” metaphor, a world brain requires an infrastructure in the same manner as an ordinary brain requires a network of neurons to function. The World Wide Web has become the de facto backbone of this infrastructure. However, the immense differences in bandwidth and interconnectivity among regions and countries within regions have so far prevented the formation of such a Global K-Net. Interventions should be made to effectively bridge this Digital Divide through the appropriate technology. This paper describes a super-project that establishes the infrastructure for Southeast Asian sub-regional knowledge networks.

At PTC 2001, Jussawalla and Taylor reported on the commencement of a research project supported (by a grant from The Ford Foundation to the East West Center) on impacts of investment in technology parks in five Asian economies and one U.S. state economy: China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan. The authors were co-principal investigators on the project. The study was intended to collect comparative baseline data, evaluate progress against initial goals, identify some “best practices,” and attempt to extract from these examples lessons for the global digital divide (e.g., principles and practices that might be transferable to LDCs in Africa, Latin America). With the assistance of national academic experts and government officials, the relevant data was collected. The authors propose to present a summary of the project and its findings, with an emphasis on interesting factual comparisons and lessons learned. They further propose to suggest some ways in which these findings may be relevant to addressing the Global Digital Divide (GDD).

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