Reuters: CHINA: Key facts about China

11/05/2002
Reuters English News Service

BEIJING, Nov 5 (Reuters) - These are key facts about China, set for a sweeping leadership change during its 16th Communist Party Congress that opens on November 8:

POPULATION: China is the world's most populous nation, with 1.276 billion people at the end of 2001.

AREA: Covering 9.6 million square km (3.7 million square miles), China is the world's fourth-largest country after Russia, Canada and the United States.

China's neighbours are Russia and Mongolia to the north, North Korea in the northeast, the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in the northwest, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan to the west and southwest, and Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam to the south.

CAPITAL: Beijing.

RELIGION: The Chinese government, which is officially atheist, greatly controls all official religious activity. However, government reports indicate China has more than 200 million religious followers. About half, or 100 million, are Buddhists followed by a large but unknown number of Daoists.

About 20 million Muslims are concentrated in northwestern China, according to published Western estimates. An estimated 25 million Chinese are registered in state-approved Christian churches, while at least 40 million are thought to worship in underground churches.

Government officials estimate there were once 2.1 million members of the now banned Falun Gong movement, although the group's New York-based information centre has put the figure as high as 60 million. [Government estimate in 1998 was 70 million but changed to 2.1 million after Jiang’s regime started persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in 1999]

ARMED FORCES: A nuclear power, China guards military data closely, but diplomatic sources and Western analysts estimate it has at least 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles and more than 100 intermediate-range and 350 short-range ones.

The People's Liberation Army has 2.47 million personnel and a 500,000-member reserve. The active ground forces total about 1.7 million. The army has 7,060 main battle tanks and 14,500 artillery pieces.

The People's Armed Police, a paramilitary force, has about 1.3 million personnel.
The Air Force consists of around 4,500 fighters and ground attack aircraft, and has some 420 light and medium bombers.

The Navy has about 60 destroyers and frigates, as well as approximately 50 diesel and six nuclear submarines. China has no aircraft carriers and lacks "blue-water" capability that would allow it to project power far from its shores.

ECONOMY: Gross domestic product in 2001 was 9.593 trillion yuan ($1.16 trillion), up 7.3 percent from 2000. Most economists see growth near eight percent this year as China continues to be one of the world's best-performing economies.

Urban residents had a per capita income of 6,860 yuan ($826) in 2001 while rural residents earned 2,366 yuan ($285). Nearly two-thirds of the population lives in the countryside.

China joined the World Trade Organisation last December, pledging to slash import tariffs and open key industries like telecommunications and finance wider to foreign investment.

Total trade in 2001 was nearly $510 billion, up 7.5 percent on 2000. A boom in exports - up nearly 20 percent so far this year - has helped sustain economic growth and create jobs for millions of workers being laid off from ailing state companies.

Optimism over WTO reforms has spurred investment. Nearly $40 billion in foreign funds flowed into China in the first nine months of 2002 and the yea's total could hit $55 billion.

The yuan currency, also called the renminbi, is pegged to the U.S. dollar and trades in a tight band around 8.28 to one dollar. It is not freely convertible, meaning most Chinese citizens and businesses cannot change their yuan holdings into foreign cash.

MODERN HISTORY:

The roots of Chinese civilisation can be traced back several thousand years, but the genesis of the Chinese nation is widely considered to have begun with the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.) which united several warring kingdoms. The word "China" is thought to be derived from the Qin name.

More than 2,000 years later, the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, fell in 1911 to republican forces after 267 years in power. The 1920s saw the start of a long struggle for supremacy between the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong's Communists.

China also battled the invading Japanese, whose gradual incursions in the 1930s flared into all-out war by the end of the decade. Millions of Chinese died in the fighting and memories of that conflict remain a major irritant in relations with Japan.

The civil war dragged on for another four years after Japan's defeat. Finally Mao drove Chiang and his army into exile on the island of Taiwan off the country's southeastern coast, and founded the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.

In its early years, the People's Republic was closely allied with its Communist mentor, the Soviet Union, and modelled itself on Stalin's centralised system.

But ideological and foreign policy arguments soon broke out and the Communist giants split bitterly in the early 1960s, with frequent military clashes along their long common frontier. Most border disputes were settled during a thaw in Sino-Russian ties in the 1990s.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" campaign to use Communist fervour to modernise China in one fell swoop brought economic ruin and famine that killed an estimated 30 million people between 1958 and 1961.

In 1966, Mao, fearing a power grab by other party leaders, launched the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution that plunged the country into 10 years of chaos. Millions of workers, officials and intellectuals were banished to the countryside for hard labour. Many were tortured, killed or driven to suicide.

In the 1970s, despite domestic turmoil, China - with few friends - began to mend fences with the non-Communist world even as relations with the Soviet bloc remained hostile.
The Nationalists on Taiwan had occupied China's permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, but Beijing replaced them in 1971. Beijing still views the island as a renegade province, and insists Taiwan will be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon became the first U.S. leader to visit Communist China. Diplomatic relations with Washington were normalised in 1979.

The year 1976 was historic for China. A huge earthquake in Tangshan, a city near Beijing, killed more than 250,000. Later that year Mao died at 82. His death ended the Cultural Revolution and the radical "Gang of Four", led by Mao's widow Jiang Qing, were arrested and imprisoned.

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping emerged as key leader and set about repairing the damage of Mao's rule. His market-oriented reforms, embodied in the maxim "To get rich is glorious", sparked more than two decades of phenomenal growth that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty.

But in 1988, China slid into economic chaos with bank runs and panic buying triggered by rising inflation that peaked at more than 30 percent in cities. Public discontent set the stage for pro-democracy demonstrations the next year.

On June 4, 1989, after weeks of protests in Beijing's central Tiananmen Square, troops backed by tanks crushed the demonstrations, killing hundreds of people and once again isolating China on the world stage.

After the crackdown, Deng plucked Jiang Zemin from relative obscurity in Shanghai to be the new Communist Party chief. Jiang replaced Zhao Ziyang, sacked for his sympathetic views towards the protesters. Zhao remains under house arrest in Beijing.
Chinese leaders were also badly shaken by the collapse of the Soviet Union and many feared any attempt at Gorbachev-style political reform would result in a national meltdown in China.

Deng remained China's paramount leader despite holding no official titles. In early 1992 he made a high-profile tour of southern China, blessing the region's capitalist reforms and kickstarting a nationwide push towards a market economy in the face of opposition from Communist hardliners.

But major problems continued to plague the economy.

State enterprises that were the backbone of the socialist economy found themselves weighed down by bloated payrolls, shoddy products and bad management. Some two-thirds were losing money and were being propped up by state subsidies that also threatened the financial stability of the banking system.

The year 1997 was also pivotal for China.

Deng died in February 1997 at 92 and Jiang proved he was in charge when he vanquished political rivals at a Communist Party congress in the following September. The congress saw the elevation of economic supremo Zhu Rongji to the number three spot in the party. The acerbic, no-nonsense Zhu immediately named a clean-up of ailing state industry as one of his top goals. He also pledged to deepen economic and financial reform.

At midnight on June 30, the territory of Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty after more than 150 years of British rule. Macao reunited with the mainland two years later, sweeping away the last vestiges of Western colonialism.

In 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton visited China in a high point for ties. But relations would be severely strained the next year by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by a U.S. plane during the air campaign in Yugoslavia. Three Chinese were killed in what Washington described as a mistake. Violent protests damaged American diplomatic missions in China.

Tensions rose again in April 2000 when a Chinese warplane collided with a U.S. spy plane, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the American crew to land on China's southern Hainan island. The 24-member U.S. crew was released 11 days later.

An unforeseen [group] emerged in April, 1999 when about 10,000 middle-aged members of a spiritual group called Falun Gong staged a silent demonstration at the leadership compound in Beijing to protest a clampdown on their practices.

Shocked by the turnout and loyalty of practitioners, Beijing [Jiang] outlawed the movement, […] and arresting tens of thousands of believers. The torture and harassment of Falun Gong members have drawn international criticism.

[…]