Is China's e-governance sustainable? Testing Solow IT productivity paradox in China's context

• By using the slacks-based measures, this article measures the regional efficiency and productivity in China.
• This paper examines whether the Solow paradox applies in China or not.
• ICT may contribute to the widening discrepancy of productivity in part.
• ICT has a negative impact on the regional productivity in China.
• For the east region, the negative impact can be basically ignored, while the central and the west region are negatively affected.

The role of technology in economic development and productivity change has always been an important issue, and it is also a debated topic that whether the ICT (information and communication technology) succeeded in promoting the productivity or not, thus proposing a famous notion of “Solow paradox”. If the ICT could drive the productivity, we could state that the e-governance management of Chinese government is sustainable. By using the SBM and super SBM method, this article measures the regional efficiency and productivity in China, and then conducts an empirical investigation to examine whether the Solow paradox applies in China or not. We found that in recent two decades, the regional disparity of productivity has been widening accompanied with the bigger wealth gap between the east and the central, west regions. ICT may contribute to the widen discrepancy of productivity in part, and the west region has outperformed the central region in both catch up effect and frontier shift, which means that the productivity gap between central and west region has been narrowed. The empirical results also show that the ICT has a negative impact on the regional productivity in China, while for the east region, the negative impact can be basically ignored, while the central and the west region are negatively affected. This result may indicate that with a higher development level, the current period negative impact of ICT on productivity will be lessened and maybe converted to positive impact in the future.