Facts About China

Geography: Mountains, high plateaus, and deserts in the west; plains, deltas, and hills in the east. The highest mountain in China is the highest mountain in the world: Mount Qomolangma. The mountain towers above all others at 29,035 feet or 8,848 m.

Population: China is the world’s most populous country with 1.28453 billion at the end of 2002, one-fifth of the world’s total. This figure does not include the Chinese living in the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, and Taiwan Province.

Population density: The population density is 134 people per sq km, roughly four times greater than that of the U.S.

Population ethnicity: 91.6 percent of Chinese people are Han. The non-Han population includes 55 ethnic minorities, of which the major groups are the Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uygur, Yi, Tujia, Mongolian, and Tibetan.

Population distribution: Most of the population of China lives in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Pearl River valleys, and the Northeast Plain. In 2000 a “go-west” campaign was launched by the government to help its relatively backward western and central areas catch up with more affluent eastern China.

Religions: The number of religious worshippers in China is estimated at well over 100 million, most of whom follow Buddhism. Other major religions are Taoism, Islam and Christianity in both its Catholic and Protestant forms.

Languages: Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, and Hakka dialects, as well as minority languages. In 1958, the First National People’s Congress approved, at its Fifth Session, the adoption of the Pinyin (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet) for spelling Chinese names and places in Roman letters, but the Pinyin system was not popularly used until the late 1970s. Pinyin is now widely seen in China, and it replaces earlier Romanisation spelling systems

Health: China provides wide access to primary health care and child immunizations. Average life expectancy was 71.8 years in 2002, having risen from 35 years on the eve of Liberation in 1949.

Economy: China’s economy has boomed since 1978, as a result of sweeping economic reforms. GNP grew from $128 billion in 1980 to $745 billion in 1998. China’s economy continues to grow rapidly, with a GDP real growth rate of 8 percent in 2002, and an annual industrial production growth rate of 11.6 percent between 1979 and 2000.

The Constitution: After the founding of the PRC, four Constitutions have been formulated successively in 1954, 1975, 1978 and 1982. The first Constitution was adopted by the First Session of the First National People’s Congress, the chief legislative branch, on September 20, 1954.

The present Constitution was promulgated in 1982 and amended several times thereafter, in 1988, 1993 and 1999.

Political parties: The Communist Party of China (CPC) is the country’s sole political party in power. Hu Jintao became general secretary of the CPC at its 16th National Congress in November 2002. Founded in July 1921, the CPC today has more than 66 million members and over 3.5 million basic organizations. Besides the CPC, there are eight political parties.

Administrative divisions: China is made up of 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities directly under the Central Government, and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.

The 23 provinces are Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang; the five autonomous regions are Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Tibet; the four municipalities are Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Tianjin.

Currency: Renminbi (RMB)/yuan

Military: The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Second Artillery Force. Jiang Zemin is chairman of the Central Military Commission of China, the country’s top military organ and commander of its armed forces.

(source: www.china-window.com)