Digital Equity in Practice: Exploring the Gaps Between Chinas National Policies and School-Level Realities

As China accelerates its digital transformation in the education sector, the digital divide remains a significant challenge to achieving educational equity. This paper explores the manifestations of digital inequality (defined as differences in access to devices, network connectivity, digital skills, and teaching applications) in policies and practices. Through a discourse analysis of China's policies (2018 - 2025) and a case study of a rural junior high school in Jiangsu Province, this paper examines how national strategies envision digital equity and how these visions are (or are not) translated into actual conditions at the school level. This paper's results reveal the persistent gap between the national-led infrastructure planning and the actual experiences of resource-poor schools. Although policy narratives emphasize access and platform construction, they often overlook underlying challenges, such as insufficient teacher training, integrating teaching, and providing family digital support. School cases indicate that although rural and mobile students have nominal digital access, they still face disadvantages in digital participation and outcomes. This paper contends that narrowing the digital divide cannot simply rely on providing technology. Only when teaching is culture-adaptive, when the community can participate, and when teachers are trained, can a sustainable situation be achieved. The author argue that these research findings are relevant to current debates on fairness and inclusiveness in digital education and call for more localized and context-sensitive policy measures in China.