My last two posts (here and here) focused on the role of new media and emerging information technology in the development of China’s civil society, and as a critical part of a future strategy to bring contemporary health care quality and practice to rural China. Now, almost as if by design, two stories appear that strengthen both of these possibilities.

The first story concerns the massive effort launched by China Mobile to bring cell phone technology to rural China. China Mobile (With 330 million subscribers as of June) is an taking wireless services to the rural areas such as Wuzhubi, a rural village of 250 families in Yunnan province. “Until last year only a handful of Wuzhubi’s residents owned a mobile phone. And little wonder: To pick up a signal, would-be callers had to hike to the top of a ridge several miles away. But all that changed in March, when China Mobile erected a transmission tower atop a nearby hill.” Now many residents have purchased phones, according to the press report.

“True, rural customers have far less to spend on mobile-phone services than their urban counterparts and aren’t much interested in music downloads, the latest ring tones, or games. But it turns out they use their phones for voice and text messaging more frequently than anyone imagined. To attract more rural customers, China Mobile has gradually lowered rates. . .”

The second report is from the Lenovo Group who said last Friday that it will sell a basic personal computer aimed at China’s vast but poor rural market priced as low as $199. Beijing-based Lenovo, which acquired IBM Corp.’s PC division in 2005, is the world’s third-largest PC manufacturer. The new Lenovo unit will include a processor and a keyboard and will use a buyer’s television set as a monitor. The company intends to set up a rural sales network of 5,000 dealers to reach farmers and other customers.

With the proliferation of these two technologies in rural China (home to two-thirds of China’s 1.3 billion people) over the next few years, many things become possible. Rural health care workers armed with laptops enabled by cellular technology can bring an entirely new dimension to the quality of care. Farming collectives overseeing rural health care delivery programs will have a mechanism to better communicate with each other, their clients and sources of specialty medical knowledge. This is only a glimpse of what could be in store.

One last note. Farmers have always been a critical part of China’s revolutionary political identity. By empowering them to enter into the China’s cyber civil society through the distribution of this technology, powerful forces may be unleashed. Let’s hope health care is near the top of the to-do list when these possibilities become a new reality for rural China.