People’s Republic of China

Capital: Beijing

Language: Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, minority languages

Currency: yuan renminbi (CNY)

Religion: officially atheist; Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Muslim 1%-2%, Christian 3-4%

Area: 9,326,410 sq km. (3rd largest country in the world )

Geography: Eastern Asia, bordering the East China Sea, Korea Bay, Yellow Sea, and South China Sea, between North Korea and Vietnam;
mostly mountains, high plateaus, deserts in west; plains, deltas, and hills in east;
extremely diverse climate – tropical in south to subarctic in north

Border Countries: Afghanistan 76 km, Bhutan 470 km, Burma 2,185 km, Hong Kong 30 km, India 3,380 km, Kazakhstan 1,533 km, North Korea 1,416 km, Kyrgyzstan 858 km, Laos 423 km, Macau 0.34 km, Mongolia 4,677 km, Nepal 1,236 km, Pakistan 523 km, Russia (northeast) 3,605 km, Russia (northwest) 40 km, Tajikistan 414 km, Vietnam 1,281 km

Health:
Infant Mortality Rate:
Life Expectancy at Birth – overall: 72.22 years; female: 74.28 years; male: 70.33 years
Probability of not reaching 40: 7.9%
Maternal mortality: 0.55 per 1000
Probability of dying before age 5 – females: 4.4%

Population: 1,306,310,000 (largest in the world); Growth Rate: 7.52%

Ethnic Groups: Han Chinese 91.9%, Zhuang, Uygur, Hui, Yi, Tibetan, Miao, Manchu, Mongol, Buyi, Korean, and other nationalities 8.1%

Education: Literacy: 86%; School life expectancy: 6.4 years; Duration of Compulsory Education: 9 years

Government type: Communist; Status: Dictatorship

Executive Branch – Chief of State: Hu Jintao
Prime Minister: Premier WEN Jiabao

The president and vice president are elected by the National People’s Congress (NPC) for five-year terms; the premier is nominated by the president and confirmed by the NPC.

The legal origin of the government is German. The legislative branch is made up of the NPC, whose member are elected by municipal, regional, and provincial people’s congresses to serve five-year terms. The NPC appoints the judges to the Supreme People’s Court. The current constitution dates from 1982. Suffrage is 18.

Food: chopsticks are used exclusively, even for noodles and soup!; steamed rice is the staple food (eaten at every meal); meat – pork, chicken, dog, beef, fish; fruit – bananas, watermelon, mangoes; vegetables – eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, dumplings; soup is commonly eaten for breakfast; China has a great variety of food; you must go to the kitchen and point at what food you want – usually one meat dish and one vegetable dish; the food is often drowning in oil; usually flavorful, but not necessarily spicy

Economy: GDP per capita: $1,262.59 per person; population under $1/day: 18.8%; population under $2/day: 52.6%

In late 1978 the Chinese leadership began moving the economy from a sluggish, inefficient, Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented system. Whereas the system operates within a political framework of strict Communist control, the economic influence of non-state organizations and individual citizens has been steadily increasing. The authorities switched to a system of household and village responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, increased the authority of local officials and plant managers in industry, permitted a wide variety of small-scale enterprises in services and light manufacturing, and opened the economy to increased foreign trade and investment. The result has been a quadrupling of GDP since 1978.

The leadership, however, often has experienced – as a result of its hybrid system – the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy and lassitude) and of capitalism (growing income disparities and rising unemployment). China thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals. The government has struggled to (a) sustain adequate jobs growth for tens of millions of workers laid off from state-owned enterprises, migrants, and new entrants to the work force; (b) reduce corruption and other economic crimes; and (c) keep afloat the large state-owned enterprises, many of which had been shielded from competition by subsidies and had been losing the ability to pay full wages and pensions. Long-term threats to growth include a weakening in China’s population control program and the deterioration in the environment, notably air pollution,