China (Chinese:
中国/中华; pinyin:
Zhōngguó/Zhōnghuá), officially the
People's Republic of China (
PRC), is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia
, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles).
Geography
Total area: 9,596,961 sq. km. (about 3.7 million sq. mi.).
Cities:
Capital--Beijing.
Other major cities--Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Harbin, Chengdu, and Dalian.
Terrain: Plains, deltas, and hills in east; mountains, high plateaus, deserts in west.
Climate: Tropical in south to subarctic in north.
People
Nationality:
Noun and adjective--Chinese (singular and plural).
Population (July 2011 est.): 1,336,718,015.
Population growth rate (2011 est.): 0.593%.
Health (2010 est.):
Infant mortality rate--16.06 deaths/1,000 live births.
Life expectancy--74.68 years (overall); 72.68 years for males, 76.94 years for females.
Ethnic groups (2000 census): Han Chinese 91.5%; Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uighur, Tujia, Yi, Mongol, Tibetan, Buyi, Dong, Yao, Korean, and other nationalities 8.5%.
Religions (2002 est.): Officially atheist; Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Christian, Muslim.
Language:
Official--Mandarin (Putonghua); there also are many local dialects.
Education:
Years compulsory--9.
Literacy--92.2%.
Total labor force (2010 est.): 780 million.
Labor force by occupation (2008 est.):
Primary (agriculture)--297.08 million, 38.1%;
secondary (industrial)--216.84 million, 27.8%;
tertiary (services)--266.03 million, 34.1%.
Government
Type: Communist party-led state.
Constitution: December 4, 1982; revised several times, most recently in 2004.
Independence: Unification under the Qin (Ch'in) Dynasty 221 BC; Qing (Ch'ing or Manchu) Dynasty replaced by a republic on February 12, 1912; People's Republic established October 1, 1949.
Branches:
Executive--president, vice president, State Council, premier.
Legislative--unicameral National People's Congress.
Judicial--Supreme People's Court, Local People's Courts, Special People's Courts.
Administrative divisions: 23 provinces (the P.R.C. considers Taiwan to be its 23rd province); 5 autonomous regions, including Tibet; 4 municipalities directly under the State Council.
Political parties: Chinese Communist Party, 76 million members; 8 minor parties under Communist Party supervision.
Economy
GDP (2010 est.): $5.88 trillion (exchange rate-based); $10.09 trillion (purchasing power parity).
Per capita GDP (2010): $7,600 (purchasing power parity).
GDP real growth rate (2010): 10.3%.
Natural resources: Coal, iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, uranium, hydropower potential (world's largest).
Agriculture:
Products--Among the world's largest producers of rice, wheat, potatoes, corn, peanuts, tea, millet, barley; commercial crops include cotton, other fibers, apples, oilseeds, pork and fish; produces variety of livestock products.
Industry:
Types--mining and ore processing, iron, steel, aluminum, and other metals, coal; machine building; armaments; textiles and apparel; petroleum; cement; chemicals; fertilizers; consumer products, including footwear, toys, and electronics; food processing; transportation equipment, including automobiles, rail cars and locomotives, ships, and aircraft; telecommunications equipment, commercial space launch vehicles, satellites.
Trade:
Exports (2010)--$1.506 trillion: electrical and other machinery, including data processing equipment, apparel, textiles, iron and steel, optical and medical equipment.
Main partners (2009)--U.S. 20.03%, Hong Kong 12.03%, Japan 8.32%, South Korea 4.55%, Germany 4.27%.
Imports (2010 est.)--$1.307 trillion: electrical and other machinery, oil and mineral fuels, optical and medical equipment, metal ores, plastics, organic chemicals.
Main partners (2009)--Japan 12.27%, Hong Kong 10.06%, South Korea 9.04%, U.S. 7.66%, Taiwan 6.84%, Germany 5.54%.
Currency: Renminbi.
PEOPLE
Ethnic Groups
The largest ethnic group is the Han Chinese, who constitute about 91.5% of the total population (2000 census). The remaining 8.5% are Zhuang (16 million), Manchu (10 million), Hui (9 million), Miao (8 million), Uighur (7 million), Yi (7 million), Mongol (5 million), Tibetan (5 million), Buyi (3 million), Korean (2 million), and other ethnic minorities.
Language
There are seven major Chinese dialects and many subdialects. Mandarin (or Putonghua), the predominant dialect, is spoken by over 70% of the population. It is taught in all schools and is the medium of government. About two-thirds of the Han ethnic group are native speakers of Mandarin; the rest, concentrated in southwest and southeast China, speak one of the six other major Chinese dialects. Non-Chinese languages spoken widely by ethnic minorities include Mongolian, Tibetan, Uighur and other Turkic languages (in Xinjiang), and Korean (in the northeast). Some autonomous regions and special administrative regions have their own official languages. For example, Mongolian has official status within the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China.
The Pinyin System of Romanization
On January 1, 1979, the Chinese Government officially adopted the pinyin system for spelling Chinese names and places in Roman letters. A system of Romanization invented by the Chinese, pinyin has long been widely used in China on street and commercial signs as well as in elementary Chinese textbooks as an aid in learning Chinese characters. Variations of pinyin also are used as the written forms of several minority languages.
Pinyin has now replaced other conventional spellings in China's English-language publications. The U.S. Government also has adopted the pinyin system for all names and places in China. For example, the capital of China is now spelled "Beijing" rather than "Peking."
Religion
A February 2007 survey conducted by East China Normal University and reported in state-run media concluded that 31.4% of Chinese citizens ages 16 and over are religious believers. While the Chinese constitution affirms “freedom of religious belief,” the Chinese Government places restrictions on religious practice, particularly on religious practice outside officially recognized organizations. The five state-sanctioned “patriotic religious associations” are Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Buddhism is most widely practiced; the state-approved Xinhua news agency estimates there are 100 million Buddhists in China. According to the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), there are more than 21 million Muslims in the country. Christians on the mainland number nearly 23 million, accounting for 1.8% of the population, according to The Blue Book of Religions (compiled by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of World Religions and released in August 2010). Other official figures indicate there are 5.3 million Catholics, though unofficial estimates are much higher. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2007 that 50 million to 70 million Christians practice in unregistered religious gatherings or “house” churches. There are no official statistics confirming the number of Taoists in China.
Although officially restricted from 1949 until the 1980s, Buddhism has regained popularity in China and has become the largest organized religion in the country. There continue to be strict government restrictions on Tibetan Buddhism.
Of China's 55 officially recognized minorities, 10 groups are predominately Muslim. According to government figures, there are 36,000 Islamic places of worship and more than 45,000 imams.
Only two Christian organizations--a “patriotic” Catholic association without official ties to Rome and the "Three-Self-Patriotic" Protestant church--are sanctioned by the Chinese Government. Unregistered “house” churches exist in many parts of the country. The extent to which local authorities have tried to control the activities of unregistered churches varies from region to region. However, the government suppresses the religious activities of "underground" Roman Catholic clergy who are not affiliated with the official patriotic Catholic association and have avowed loyalty to the Vatican, which the government accuses of interfering in the country's internal affairs. The government also severely restricts the activities of groups it designates as "evil cults," including several Christian groups and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Population Policy
With a population officially over 1.3 billion and an estimated population growth rate of 0.593% (2011 est.), China is very concerned about its population growth and has attempted with mixed results to implement a strict birth limitation policy. China's 2002 Population and Family Planning Law and policy permits one child per family, with allowance for a second child under certain circumstances, especially in rural areas, and with guidelines looser for ethnic minorities with small populations. Enforcement varies and relies largely on "social compensation fees" to discourage extra births. Official government policy prohibits the use of physical coercion to compel persons to submit to abortion or sterilization, but in some localities there are instances of local birth-planning officials using physical coercion to meet birth limitation targets. The government's goal is to stabilize the population in the first half of the 21st century, and 2009 projections from the U.S. Census Bureau were that the Chinese population would peak at around 1.4 billion by 2026.
