Social Informationization

The contemporary advanced stage in the development of informatization, wherein all fields of social activities are being or already have achieved comprehensive informatization. This is manifested in the new technological revolution based on and marked by the widespread application of computer information processing technology and transmission means, which affects and transforms all areas of human social life, including daily life, continuously enriching people's material and spiritual life as well as bettering their quality of life.

Its main component parts include: The comprehensive penetration of information technology and network into society, the full application of information resources in all fields of the society, information has become a strategic resource and important wealth of social interaction and activities, and information technology has become the leading technology in promoting social progress.

The information technology revolution that emerged after World War II is the historical background of social informatization. In 1946, the first electronic computer was created in the United States, which opened the curtain of the information age of human society.In 1948, the American mathematician Claude Shannon published the “Mathematical Theory of Communication”, which established the mathematical model for the communication process for the first time and laid the foundation of modern information theory.

In the 1960s, the information industry appeared in western countries that had completed industrialization, such as the United States, Japan and Europe. In 1963, Japanese scholar Tadao Mei first put forward the concept of “informatization”, believing that “informatization is the general name of communication modernization, computerization and behavior rationalization”. In the late 1970s, the concepts of “information society” and “informationization” were widely used in western society. In 1980, American futurist Alvin Toffler published The Third Wave, which put forward the famous argument that human society is in transition from an industrial society to an information society. In the 1980s, information technology began to infiltrate into the tertiary industry in developed countries. After the end of the Cold War, the phenomenon of information industrialization and socialization rapidly spread to newly industrialized countries and regions, and began to infiltrate to developing countries. It is generally advocated that social informatization includes three levels.

The first is the informationization of production tools through automatic control and knowledge-intensive; the second is the informationization of social productive forces through the automatic control of the whole industrial sector and the whole national economy; the third is the informationization of social life through communication systems, consulting industries and other facilities. Informatization has two basic characteristics. One is networking.

Modern information network is called “information superhighway” because of its high speed and large capacity. Its typical representative is the Internet. The construction and use of modern information network has led to the industrialization of information. The other is intelligence, that is, a technical system that integrates the functions of information acquisition, information transmission, information processing, information regeneration, information utilization and so on. Social informatization is that computers, mobile phones, multimedia and Internet, which are developed on the basis of information industry, communication system and enterprise informatization, enter every corner of society, including families, causing comprehensive and profound changes in people's mode of production, way of work, way of learning, way of communication, way of life (including leisure and entertainment) and way of thinking.

The development of social informatization will not only further promote the scientific and technological revolution, but also further promote the process of economic globalization. Social informatization puts forward higher requirements for the life quality expectation among the members of society. Information productivity has become the most advanced productive forces of mankind so far, which inevitably requires advanced production relations and superstructure to adapt to it.

The historical trend of social informatization is both an opportunity and a challenge to China. The first China Informatization work Conference held in 1997 put forward the strategic task of “national informatization”. The Fifth Plenary session of the 15th CPC Central Committee raised informatization to the height of national strategy.

In 2002, the 16th CPC National Congress further made the strategic plan of using informatization to drive industrialization, industrialization to promote informatization, and taking a new road of industrialization.

The 18th CPC National Congress juxtaposed social informatization with world multipolarization, economic globalization and cultural diversity as one of the four “profound and complex changes” that are taking place in the world today. The 19th CPC National Congress also reaffirmed this statement.The Report to the 18th CPC National Congress determined that the path of the strategic adjustment of China's economic structure is to “adhere to the path of new industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics. We will promote the deep integration of informatization and industrialization, the benign interaction between industrialization and urbanization, the coordination between urbanization and agricultural modernization, and promote the simultaneous development of industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization."

In order to implement the informatization strategy put forward by the 18th CPC National Congress and strengthen the Party's leadership over social informatization, in February 2014, the CPC Central Committee established a leading Group on Network Security and Informatization, with General Secretary Xi Jinping as its own leader. Contemporary China’s informatization has stepped into the ranks of medium-level countries, and the integration of informatization and industrialization has achieved initial results.