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Travel to China — Unbiased reviews and
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| People's Republic of China National name: Zhonghua Renmin
Gongheguo President: Hu Jintao
(2003) Prime Minister: Wen Jiabao
(2003)
Current government officials
Land area: 3,600,927 sq mi (9,326,411 sq
km); total area: 3,705,407 sq mi (9,596,960 sq km)1 Population (2008
est.): 1,330,044,605 (growth rate: 0.6%); birth rate: 13.7/1000;
infant mortality rate: 21.1.1/1000; life expectancy: 73.1; density per
sq mi: 142
Capital (2003 est.):
Beijing, 10,849,000 (metro. area), 8,689,000
(city proper) Largest cities:
Shanghai, 12,665,000 (metro. area), 10,996,500 (city proper); Tianjin
(Tientsin), 9,346,000 (metro. area), 4,333,900 (city proper); Wuhan,
3,959,700; Shenyang (Mukden), 3,574,100; Guangzhou, 3,473,800;
Haerbin, 2,904,900; Xian, 2,642,100; Chungking (Chongquing) 2,370,100;
Chengdu, 2,011,000; Hong Kong (Xianggang), 1,361,200 Monetary unit: Yuan/Renminbi
Languages:
Standard Chinese (Mandarin/Putonghua), Yue
(Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan
(Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, minority
languages
Ethnicity/race:
Han Chinese 91.9%, Zhuang, Uygur, Hui, Yi,
Tibetan, Miao, Manchu, Mongol, Buyi, Korean, and other nationalities
8.1%
National Holiday:
Anniversary of the Founding of the People's
Republic of China, October 1
Religions:
Officially atheist; Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist,
Christian 3%–4%, Muslim 1%–2% (2002 est.) Literacy rate: 86% (2003 est.) Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2006 est.):
$10.17 trillion; per capita $7,700. Real growth rate: 10.7%
(official data). Inflation: 1.5%. Unemployment: 4.2%
official registered unemployment in urban areas in 2004; substantial
unemployment and underemployment in rural areas; an official Chinese
journal estimated overall unemployment (including rural areas) for
2003 at 20% (2004). Arable land: 15%. Agriculture: rice,
wheat, potatoes, corn, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, apples, cotton,
oilseed; pork; fish. Labor force: 798 million (2006);
agriculture 45%, industry 24%, services 31% (2006 est.).
Industries: 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. 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).
Exports: $974 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.): machinery and
equipment, plastics, optical and medical equipment, iron and steel.
Imports: $777.9 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.): machinery and
equipment, oil and mineral fuels, plastics, optical and medical
equipment, organic chemicals, iron and steel. Major trading
partners: U.S., Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Taiwan
(2004). Communications: Telephones:
main lines in use: 350.43 million (2005); mobile cellular: 437.48
million (2006). Radio broadcast stations: AM 369, FM 259,
shortwave 45 (1998). Television broadcast stations: 3,240 (of
which 209 are operated by China Central Television, 31 are provincial
TV stations and nearly 3,000 are local city stations) (1997).
Internet hosts: 232,780 (2006). Internet users: 123
million (2006). Transportation:
Railways: total: 71,898 (2002). Highways: total: 1,870,661
km; paved: 1,515,797 km (with at least 34,288 km of expressways) ;
unpaved: 354,864 km (2004). Waterways: 123,964 km (2003).
Ports and harbors: Dalian, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Qingdao,
Qinhuangdao, Shanghai. Airports: 486 (2006 est.). International disputes: in 2005, China and
India initiate drafting principles to resolve all aspects of their
extensive boundary and territorial disputes together with a security
and foreign policy dialogue to consolidate discussions related to the
boundary, regional nuclear proliferation, and other matters; recent
talks and confidence-building measures have begun to defuse tensions
over Kashmir, site of the world's largest and most militarized
territorial dispute with portions under the de facto administration of
China (Aksai Chin), India (Jammu and Kashmir), and Pakistan (Azad
Kashmir and Northern Areas); India does not recognize Pakistan's
ceding historic Kashmir lands to China in 1964; about 90,000 ethnic
Tibetan exiles reside primarily in India as well as Nepal and Bhutan;
China asserts sovereignty over the Spratly Islands together with
Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, and possibly Brunei; the 2002
"Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea" has
eased tensions in the Spratlys but is not the legally binding "code of
conduct" sought by some parties; in March 2005, the national oil
companies of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam signed a joint accord
on marine seismic activities in the Spratly Islands; China occupies
some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; China
and Taiwan have become more vocal in rejecting both Japan's claims to
the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's
unilaterally declared exclusive economic zone in the East China Sea,
the site of intensive hydrocarbon prospecting; certain islands in the
Yalu and Tumen rivers are in an uncontested dispute with North Korea
and a section of boundary around Mount Paektu is considered
indefinite; China seeks to stem illegal migration of tens of thousands
of North Koreans; in 2004, China and Russia divided up the islands in
the Amur, Ussuri, and Argun Rivers, ending a century-old border
dispute; demarcation of the China-Vietnam boundary proceeds slowly and
although the maritime boundary delimitation and fisheries agreements
were ratified in June 2004, implementation has been delayed;
environmentalists in Burma and Thailand remain concerned about China's
construction of hydroelectric dams upstream on the Nujiang/Salween
River in Yunnan Province. 1.
Including Manchuria and Tibet.
Major sources and definitions
Provinces and Regions of China
Hong Kong
Macao
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Geography
The greater part of the country is mountainous.
Its principal ranges are the Tien Shan, the Kunlun chain, and the
Trans-Himalaya. In the southwest is Tibet, which China annexed in 1950.
The Gobi Desert lies to the north. China proper consists of three great
river systems: the Yellow River (Huang He), 2,109 mi (5,464 km) long; the
Yangtze River (Chang Jiang), the third-longest river in the world at 2,432
mi (6,300 km); and the Pearl River (Zhu Jiang), 848 mi (2,197 km)
long.
Government
Communist state.
History
The earliest recorded human settlements in what
is today called China were discovered in the Huang He basin and date from
about 5000 B.C. During the Shang dynasty
(1500–1000 B.C.), the precursor of modern
China's ideographic writing system developed, allowing the emerging feudal
states of the era to achieve an advanced stage of civilization, rivaling
in sophistication any society found at the time in Europe, the Middle
East, or the Americas. It was following this initial flourishing of
civilization, in a period known as the Chou dynasty (1122–249 B.C.), that Lao-tse, Confucius, Mo Ti, and Mencius
laid the foundation of Chinese philosophical thought.
The feudal states, often at war with one
another, were first united under Emperor Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, during whose
reign (246–210 B.C.) work was begun on
the Great Wall of China, a monumental bulwark against invasion from the
West. Although the Great Wall symbolized China's desire to protect itself
from the outside world, under the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), the civilization conducted
extensive commercial trading with the West.
In the T'ang dynasty (618–907)—often
called the golden age of Chinese history—painting, sculpture, and
poetry flourished, and woodblock printing, which enabled the mass
production of books, made its earliest known appearance. The Mings, last
of the native rulers (1368–1644), overthrew the Mongol, or Yuan,
dynasty (1271–1368) established by Kublai Khan. The Mings in turn
were overthrown in 1644 by invaders from the north, the Manchus.
China remained largely isolated from the rest of
the world's civilizations, closely restricting foreign activities. By the
end of the 18th century only Canton (location of modern-day Hong Kong) and
the Portuguese port of Macao were open to European merchants. But with the
first Anglo-Chinese War in 1839–1842, a long period of instability
and concessions to Western colonial powers began. Following the war,
several ports were opened up for trading, and Hong Kong was ceded to
Britain. Treaties signed after further hostilities (1856–1860)
weakened Chinese sovereignty and gave foreigners immunity from Chinese
jurisdiction. European powers took advantage of the disastrous
Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 to gain further trading concessions
from China. Peking's response, the Boxer Rebellion (1900), was suppressed
by an international force.
The death of Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi in 1908 and
the accession of the infant emperor Hsüan T'ung (Pu-Yi) were followed
by a nationwide rebellion led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who overthrew the
Manchus and became the first president of the Provisional Chinese Republic
in 1911. Dr. Sun resigned in favor of Yuan Shih-k'ai, who suppressed the
Republicans in a bid to consolidate his power. Yuan's death in June 1916
was followed by years of civil war between rival militarists and Dr. Sun's
Republicans. Nationalist forces, led by General Chiang Kai-shek and with
the advice of Communist experts, soon occupied most of China, setting up
the Kuomintang regime in 1928. Internal strife continued, however, and
Chiang eventually broke with the Communists.
On Sept. 18, 1931, Japan launched an invasion of
Manchuria, capturing the province. Tokyo set up a puppet state dubbed
Manchukuo and installed the last Manchu emperor, Henry Pu-Yi (Hsüan
T'ung), as its nominal leader. Japanese troops moved to seize China's
northern provinces in July 1937 but were resisted by Chiang, who had been
able to use the Japanese invasion to unite most of China behind him.
Within two years, however, Japan had seized most of the nation's eastern
ports and railways. The Kuomintang government retreated first to Hankow
and then to Chungking, while the Japanese set up a puppet government at
Nanking, headed by Wang Jingwei.
Japan's surrender to the Western Allies in 1945
touched off civil war between the Kuomintang forces under Chiang and
Communists led by Mao Zedong, who had been battling since the 1930s for
control of China. Despite U.S. aid, the Kuomintang were overcome by the
Soviet-supported Communists, and Chiang and his followers were forced to
flee the mainland, establishing a government-in-exile on the island of
Formosa (Taiwan). The Mao regime proclaimed the People's Republic of China
on Oct. 1, 1949, with Beijing as the new capital and Zhou Enlai as
premier.
After the Korean War began in June 1950, China
led the Communist bloc in supporting North Korea, and on Nov. 26, 1950,
the Mao regime sent troops to assist the North in its efforts to capture
the South.
In an attempt to restructure China's primarily
agrarian economy, Mao undertook the “Great Leap Forward”
campaign in 1958, a disastrous program that aimed to combine the
establishment of rural communes with a crash program of village
industrialization. The Great Leap forced the abandonment of farming
activities, leading to widespread famine in which more than 20 million
people died of malnutrition.
In 1959, a failed uprising against China's
invasion and occupation of Tibet forced Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual
leader, the Dalai Lama, and 100,000 of his followers to flee to India. The
invasion of Tibet and a perceived rivalry for the leadership of the world
Communist movement caused a serious souring of relations between China and
the USSR, former allies. In 1965 Tibet was formally made an autonomous
region of China. China's harsh religious and cultural persecution of
Tibetans, which continues to this day, has spawned growing international
protest.
The failure of the Great Leap Forward touched
off a power struggle within the Chinese Communist Party between Mao and
his supporters and a reformist faction including future premier Deng
Xiaoping. Mao moved to Shanghai, and from that base he and his supporters
waged what they called the Cultural Revolution. Beginning in the spring of
1966, Mao ordered the closing of schools and the formation of
ideologically pure Red Guard units, dominated by youths and students. The
Red Guards campaigned against “old ideas, old culture, old habits,
and old customs.” Millions died as a series of violent purges were
carried out. By early 1967, the Cultural Revolution had succeeded in
bolstering Mao's position as China's paramount leader.
Anxious to exploit the Sino-Soviet rift, the
Nixon administration made a dramatic announcement in July 1971 that
National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had secretly visited Beijing and
reached an agreement whereby Nixon would visit China. The movement toward
reconciliation, which signaled the end of the U.S. containment policy
toward China, provided momentum for China's admission to the UN. Despite
U.S. opposition to expelling Taiwan (Nationalist China), the world body
overwhelmingly voted to oust Taiwan in favor of Beijing's Communist
government.
President Nixon went to Beijing for a week early
in 1972, meeting Mao as well as Zhou. The summit ended with a historic
communiqué on Feb. 28, in which both nations promised to work
toward improved relations. Full diplomatic relations were barred by China
as long as the U.S. continued to recognize the legitimacy of Nationalist
China.
Following Zhou's death on Jan. 8, 1976, his
successor, Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, was supplanted within a month by
Hua Guofeng, former minister of public security. Hua became permanent
premier in April. In Oct. he was named successor to Mao as chairman of the
Communist Party. But Mao's death on Sept. 10 unleashed the bitter
intraparty rivalries that had been suppressed since the Cultural
Revolution. Old opponents of Mao launched a campaign against his widow,
Jiang Qing, and three of her “radical” colleagues. The
so-called Gang of Four was denounced for having undermined the party, the
government, and the economy. They were tried and convicted in 1981.
Meanwhile, in 1977, Deng Xiaoping was reinstated as deputy premier, chief
of staff of the army, and member of the Central Committee of the
Politburo.
Beijing and Washington announced full diplomatic
relations on Jan. 1, 1979, and the Carter administration abrogated the
Taiwan defense treaty. Deputy Premier Deng sealed the agreement with a
visit to the U.S. that coincided with the opening of embassies in both
capitals on March 1. On Deng's return from the U.S., Chinese troops
invaded and briefly occupied an area along Vietnam's northern border. The
action was seen as a response to Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and ouster
of the Khmer Rouge government, which China had supported.
In 1981, Deng protégé Hu Yaobang
replaced Hua Guofeng as party chairman. Deng became chairman of the
Central Committee's military commission, giving him control over the army.
The body's 215 members concluded the session with a statement holding Mao
Zedong responsible for the “grave blunder” of the Cultural
Revolution.
Under Deng Xiaoping's leadership, meanwhile,
China's Communist ideology went through a massive reinterpretation, and
sweeping economic changes were set in motion in the early 1980s. The
Chinese scrapped the personality cult that idolized Mao Zedong, muted
Mao's old call for class struggle and exportation of the Communist
revolution, and imported Western technology and management techniques to
replace the Marxist tenets that had slowed modernization.
The removal of Hu Yaobang as party chairman in
Jan. 1987 signaled a hard-line resurgence within the party. Hu—who
had become a hero to many reform-minded Chinese—was replaced by
former premier Zhao Ziyang. With the death of Hu in April 1989, the
ideological struggle spilled into the streets of the capital, as student
demonstrators occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square in May, calling for
democratic reforms. Less than a month later, the demonstrations were
crushed in a bloody crackdown as troops and tanks moved into the square
and fired on protesters, killing several hundred.
In annual sessions of the rubber-stamp National
People's Congress in 1992 and 1993, the government called for accelerating
the drive for economic reform, but the sessions were widely seen as an
effort to maintain China's moves toward a market economy while retaining
political authoritarianism. At the session in 1993, Communist Party leader
Jiang Zemin was elected president, while hard-liner Li Peng was reelected
to another five-year term as prime minister. Since 1993, the Chinese
economy has continued to grow rapidly.
Deng Xiaoping's death in Feb. 1997 left a
younger generation in charge of managing the enormous country. In 1998,
Prime Minister Zhu Rongji introduced a sweeping program to privatize
state-run businesses and further liberalize the nation's economy, a move
lauded by Western economists.
On July 1, 1997, when Britain's lease on the New
Territories expired, Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty, and in
1999, the Portuguese colony of Macao also was returned to Chinese
rule.
In Aug. 1999, China rounded up thousands of
members of the Falun Gong sect, a highly popular religious movement. The
government considers the apolitical spiritual group threatening because
its numbers exceeded the membership of the Chinese Communist Party. China
severely restricts its citizens' civil, religious, and political rights.
The use of torture has been widely documented, and for many years it has
executed more people than any other country in the world, carrying out
more than three-quarters of the world's executions.
China was admitted to the World Trade
Organization in Nov. 2001. Its entry ended a 15-year debate over whether
China is entitled to the full trading rights of capitalist countries.
In Nov. 2002, Vice President Hu Jintao became
general secretary of the Communist Party at the 16th Party Congress,
succeeding President Jiang. Hu Jintao also assumed the presidency in March
2003.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a
worldwide health threat, hit China in March 2003. After coming under fire
by the World Health Organization for underreporting the number of its SARS
cases, China finally revealed the alarming extent of its epidemic.
Beijing officials angered democracy advocates in
Hong Kong in April 2004, when they banned popular elections for Hong
Kong's chief executive, scheduled for 2007.
Tension between China and Taiwan intensified in
March 2005, when China passed an antisecession law that said the country
could use force if Taiwan moved toward achieving independence. “The
state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to
protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the
legislation said. Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian called the bill a
“law of aggression.”
In June 2005, the China National Oil Corporation
(Cnoc) bid $18.5 billion to take over the U.S. oil company Unocal. The
Chinese firm withdrew the bid in August amid strong resistance from U.S.
officials.
After months of pressure from the Bush
administration, China announced in July 2005 that it will no longer peg
the yuan to the dollar. Instead, the yuan is linked to a fluctuating group
of foreign currencies.
The police shot and killed about 20 people who
were protesting the construction of a power plant in the southern city of
Dongzhou in December. Chinese officials blocked the spread of information
about the event.
Government officials announced in December that
China's economy had grown by 9% in 2005. China is poised to have the
world's fourth-largest economy, after the United States, Japan, and
Germany.
In May 2006, China completed construction on the
Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. More than a
million people will be displaced when the area is flooded. In July 2006,
China opened a $4.2-billion, 710-mile-long railway from Qinghai Province
to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The highest railway in the world, it
ascends as high as 16,500 ft, requiring all compartments to have regulated
oxygen levels. The railway will increase ethnic Chinese migration into
Tibet, which many see as a deliberate attempt to dilute Tibetan
culture.
China tested its first antisatellite weapon in
January 2007, successfully destroying one of its own weather satellites.
Analysts deemed the move a provocative challenge to the United States'
supremacy in space-based technology. Others speculated that China is
seeking to push the U.S. toward signing a treaty to ban space-based
weapons.
In the spring and summer of 2007, dog food and
toothpaste products that originated in China were recalled due to the
presence of poisonous ingredients, leading many to question the safety of
Chinese products and the reliability of its regulatory system. In July,
China's former head of the State Food and Drug Administration was executed
for accepting bribes from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for
favors.
In January 2008, severe snowstorms in eastern
and southern China killed at least 24 people. Half of the country's 31
provinces lost power, about 827,000 people were evacuated from their
homes, at least 600,000 train passengers were stranded, and some 20 major
airports were closed. The economic cost of the storm is projected to be
$3.2 billion.
In March, some 400 Buddhist monks participated
in a protest march in Lhasa to commemorate the failed uprising of 1959,
that resulted in the Dalai Lama fleeing to India. The protests, the
largest in two decades, turned violent, with ethnic Tibetans reportedly
attacking Chinese citizens and vandalizing public and private property.
Chinese police used force to suppress the demonstrations. Tibetan leaders
said that more than 100 Tibetans were killed, but Chinese officials
claimed only 16 fatalities occurred and denied that police had used lethal
force. China barred many international news organizations from the country
and limited the flow of information out of the country. The demonstrations
and violence spilled into Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan Provinces in western
China. Chinese officials accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the
protests, a charge the spiritual leader denied. Zhang Qingli, Tibet's
Communist Party leader, reportedly called the Dalai Lama “a jackal
in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the
heart of a beast."
President Hu visited Japan in May and cited an
"everlasting warm spring" in relations between the countries. It was the
first visit by a Chinese head of state in a decade. While Hu and Japan's
prime minister Yasuo Fukuda failed to make progress on resolving a dispute
involving a gasfield in the East China Sea, they did agree to regular
meetings, signaling a thaw in a cool relationship.
At least 68,000 people were killed and thousands
injured when a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan
Provinces in western China on May 12. Nearly 900 students were killed when
Juyuan Middle School in the Sichuan Province collapsed. Several other
schools also collapsed, killing about 10,000 students. In addition, a
well-known panda reserve in Wenchuan was destroyed. The disaster was
further complicated by landslides in Sichuan Province that blocked rivers
and formed quake lakes that officials feared may cause devastating floods.
It was China's worst natural disaster in three decades.
See also Encyclopedia: China.
U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
China
National Bureau of Statistics of China: www.stats.gov.cn/english/index.htm
Information Please® Database, © 2008 Pearson
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