People's Republic of China

Wealth and National Well-Being

Country Comparisons:
2010: see chart
2010: debt and reserves chart

China has second-largest economy -- after the United States. It has a low per capita GDP because of the great size of its population, and it does not have the per capita wealth to lavish on its citizens that Japan, Norway or the U.S. do. Its health figures reflect this. But as bad as these figures are they are not as bad as India's. China appears to be less bogged down by corruption than India.

World Factbook: China's Communist Party describes the economy as a "socialist market economy." Some Marxists describe it as a planned economy because of the state's command over banks, finances and investment in addition to some free enterprise. It the state wants to banks to lend, they lend. If it wants to invest in infrastructure, it invests. Anti-communists in the U.S. describe China's system as capitalist to explain its success.

Education
October 2007: China is graduating people from universities at twice the rate of the United States. (It has more than 4.38 times the population of the U.S.)

GDP annual real (not per capita) growth rate estimate

2010: 10.3%
2009: 8.7% (Bloomberg.com)
2008: 9.8%
2007: 13%
2006: 11.6%

Labor force in agriculture
2008: 38.1%

Import/export
2010: imports 1.307 trillion, exports1.506 trillion. Sixty percent of China’s exports are from manufacturing companies that are foreign owned.

Oil production and consumption:
2009: chart

Percentage of GDP spent on military
2006: 4.3%

Distribution of Wealth
The top 10 percent in household income in 2009 did 15 percent of the spending. For the lowest 10 percent of households this was 3.5%. This is for urban households only and a 2005 estimate. A 2007 estimate for the U.S. is 30% percent for the top 10 percent in wealth and 2% for the bottom 10 percent.

People

China leads the world in population, estimated by the World Factbook at 1.336 billion for July 2011. Growth rate estimate is 0.493% per year, compared to 1.344% for India.

Living in an urban area
2010: 47% in 2010, up from 43% estimated for 2008.

Migration
2011: More leaving than arriving. A net loss of 0.33 per 1,000 population.
2010: More leaving than arriving. A net loss of 0.34 persons per 1,000 population
2008: More leaving than arriving. A net loss of 0.39 persons per 1,000 population.

Ethnicities
2000 census: Han Chinese 91.5%, Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uyghur, Tujia, Yi, Mongol, Tibetan, Buyi, Dong, Yao, Korean, and other nationalities 8.5%

Flag Desecration
China is one of three countries with a law against flag desecration.

Government

Name: People's Republic of China. The Chinese have many elections, with all politics including elections dominated by the Communist Party of China.

Recent History

In 2003 the rules for divorce changed. in China one can get a divorce in ten minutes for an equivalent of one dollar. About 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women. Many women are no longer economically dependent on their husbands. Many dislike their husband's bad habits.

Small farmers in China are complaining about high taxes. A piece on the BBC website on October 4, 2004 stated the opinion that "In effect, China's poorest citizens are subsidizing the modernization of its cities." An article by Tim Luard on the BBC website, on October 13, describes people with annual incomes of less that $77 as having risen to over 3 percent of the population. He describes an economic boom as having taken place in big cities but the countryside as having remained unchanged. Luard describes one women with electricity but without a refrigerator, television of telephone. "For a toilet," he writes," she goes outside with the chickens."

July 2006: A Brit who lives in Shanghai and visited Delhi, India, prefers Shanghai. In Shanghai "the lights never go out." They did in his hotel in Delhi. In Shanghai a high speed internet connection is standard in hotels. In Shanghai there are not the many in rags sleeping on the streets at night that his saw in Delhi.

January, 2008: Murder, tax evasion, smuggling, and corruption. In July the former head of the Food and Drug Administration was put to death for taking bribes. In Guangdong Province, bag-snatching is listed as capital offense. China endeavors to rid itself of pests.

April 2008: According to Robert Barnet in Foreign Policy magazine, "... China has poured money into creating a middle class in Tibetan towns, though there hasn’t really been a dividend for the countryside and the underclass."

November 2008: China does not have the command economy of the old Soviet Union, and therefore it has an unemployment problem as business declines with reduced sales abroad. China's government urges businesses to do their best to keep unemployment down. China is gaining 8.4 million in population per year (0.629 percent) despite its one-child policy. To meet this growth China's economy must grow around 8 percent per year.

October 2009: Figures released this month indicate that China's share in world manufacturing increased from 2 percent in 1980 to 14 percent in 2008, still behind the U.S. at 22 percent -- according to a U.S. based Manufacturing Institute.

March 31, 2011: In a white paper, China complains that the U.S. is increasing its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and that there has been a rise in operations directed against China. "The United States continues to sell weapons to Taiwan, severely impeding Sino-US relations," says the white paper.