Country Profile on China - Juniata College



Country Profile on China

Part B

Politics and Culture Modernization

9/27/2005

China is the third largest country in the world, next to Canada and Russia. It also has the third longest river and the highest mountain peak.[i] There is an unbalanced distribution of land with most of the agricultural residing in the east, grasslands are predominant in the west and north and forests are mostly in the far northeast and northwest.[ii]

The largest river in China is the Yangtze River, it is 6,300 km long. The middle and lower portions of the river provide an important agricultural region, which is also known as the “golden waterway”.[iii] Lastly, most of China’s large rivers find their source in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, this results in China leading the world in hydropower potential with reserves of 680 million kW.[iv]

The Poyang Lake is China’s largest freshwater lake and the Qinghai Lake is China’s largest sea water lake. The Poyang Lake is located on the Yangtze River and the Poyang River is located on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. China has 5400 islands, the largest being Taiwan and the second is the Hainan Islands. Lastly, China also has the world’s largest canyon on the Yalu Tsangpo River.[v]

China has a complex transportation system which includes highways, railroads, and waterways. The most common mode of transportation is on highways since there are 395,410 km of paved highways and only 71,898 km of railways. There is 121,557 km of waterways. The most important ports and harbors are Dalian, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Qingdao, Qinhuangdao and Shanghai.[vi]

China has eight provinces where there is a population of over 50 billion people. Those eight provinces are: Anhui Province, Guangdong Province, Henan Province, Hubei Province, Hunan Province, Jiangsu Province, Shandong Province, Sichuan Province. There are eleven cities that have a population over one million people and one of them is Guangzhou with a population of 10.15 million people.[vii]

The main religions in China are Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism and Christianity, Confucianism, and Taoism. Buddhism was introduced to China in the first century A.D. and grew to become the most influential religion in the fourth century.[viii] China has more than 13,000 Buddhist temples.[ix] Today there are three branches of Chinese Buddhism: Han, which is the most widely practiced, Tibetan Buddhism, which is popular mostly in Inner Mongolia and Tibet, and Pali/ Southern Buddhism, which is practiced mostly in the Yunnan Province.

Today Confucianism is one of the oldest religions practiced today in China. However, it is slowly beginning to die off. It is, however, still practiced in rural towns. The way Confucianism is taught is by word of mouth and parents usually teach it to their children through no other way than that method.[x]

Islam did not reach China until the mid-seventh century and it was the Yuan Dynasty which saw the prosperity of Islam. Islam is mostly practiced by the Hui, Uygar, Kazak, Kirgiz, Tatar, Ozbek, Tajik, Dongxiang, Salar and Bonan peoples. Today China has more than 30,000 mosques.[xi]

Catholicism did not impact China until the seventh century and Protestantism did not impact China until the early nineteenth century. Today, most of the Catholics and Protestants are Miao, Yao or Yi people. Today there are 4,600 Catholic churches and over 12,000 Protestant churches.[xii]

It is hard to say when Daoism really began in China, but one can speculate that it occurred in the second century and was based on the philosophy of Lao Zi. There are about 1500 temples in China today, but there is no one specific type of people who practice Daoism.

The last main type of religion practiced is local/popular religion. In addition to the major religions just discussed, a fundamental aspect of Chinese tradition is the institution of territorial cults and their festivals.[xiii] A territorial cult festival is also known as a temple fair.[xiv] The best way to differentiate between different local cults is to watch their procession festival, which is the greatest ritual.[xv] In this type of religion there are no priests or pastors but rather care takers who just look after the temple.[xvi] Families go and worship on their own and there are no real sacred texts.[xvii] Additionally, the Gods of this religion represent order since they were all at once humans and know the way human works.[xviii]

China is the most populous country in the world housing 1.2 billion people, which accounts for 20% of the world’s population.[xix] Even with this astronomical number of people residing in China the population growth is slowing down from 1.47% in the 1980’s, to 0.58% in 2005.[xx] A reason for the slow down in population growth would be because of the drastic fall in fertility rates. In the 1950s and 1960s the fertility rate was 5.6 and today the fertility rate is 2.1. According to Shen Yimin of the Population and Environment Society of China, this is the fastest and most drastic decline in the history of mankind.[xxi] Even though China is seeing a decrease in population growth they are undergoing a different type of population crisis. Since individuals are having less children China is experiencing a shrinking labor pool and the government is only investing a small percentage into social welfare.[xxii] To try to deal with this problem in 2004 the government implemented a “pilot project of rewarding some rural households practicing family planning”. Last year, more than 310,000 farmers received approximately 200 million yuan (US$24 million) in cash reward for having only one child or two daughters in their families where this program was implemented.[xxiii]

Another crisis facing the Chinese government is the drastic difference in standard of living between those residing in urban areas compared with those residing in rural areas. The income gap between urban and rural residents has increased dramatically since 1985 where it was 1.7 to 1, and has widened to 3.1 to 1 in 2002. However, this number does not take into account the benefits that urban residents enjoy. When taking those enjoyments into account the gap could be as big as 6 to 1.[xxiv] This is such a problem because farmers make up 64% (900 million people) of China’s entire population and if they are at such a disadvantage it will end up pulling the economy down.[xxv] Furthermore, the amount of money going towards those individuals in rural areas towards education is a dismal amount. In 2002, China invested more than 580 billion yuan in education, however only 23% of that money went to those individuals in rural areas.[xxvi] This is an obvious problem since more than 60% of the entire Chinese population resides in these rural areas and they are not getting an equal education to those 40% living in urban areas.

In 2003 China’s labor force incorporated 760.8 million individuals and in 2004 it had the second largest economy behind the United States.[xxvii] A breakdown of the 2003 labor force by industry shows that agriculture was the largest industry with 49%, followed by services with 29% then industry with 22%.[xxviii] There main agricultural products are rice, wheat, potatoes, corn and peanuts, and their main industries are mining and ore processing, iron, steel and aluminum.[xxix]

China exported approximately 583.1 billion dollars in 2004 and imported around 552.5 billion dollars in 2004.[xxx] Their main export commodities were machinery and equipment, plastics and optical and medical equipment, where as their main import commodities were oil and mineral fuels, organic chemicals and iron and steel.[xxxi]

On July 20th, China released the statistics report for the first half of 2005 and inside the publication there were some very important economic numbers. The GDP grew by 9.5% to 6.7422 trillion yuan; however this was 0.2 percentage points less than last year.[xxxii] Also, the disposable income per capita of China’s urban residents increased 9.5% (5,374 yuan) since last year and it increased 12.5% (1,586 yuan) for rural residents.[xxxiii] The unemployment rate, which is 4.2%, is below the target unemployment of 4.7%, and the Chinese government is trying to keep inflation below 4% since last summer inflation peaked at just over 5%.[xxxiv]

China is trying to move ahead in the economic world and one way that they are accomplishing this is by encouraging there students to go into the fields of science and technology. It is also important to note that China graduates three times more engineers than the US, which leads to three times the amount of ideas. This push towards the sciences is being referred to as the “Second Revolution”.[xxxv]

Lastly in regards to China’s economy, it has just been announced that China’s central bank is considering letting the market set the value of the yuan. This is a huge step for the Chinese since it will show other nations that they would like to be taken seriously in the economic realm. Furthermore, it would stop China’s role as being the sole counterparty in all foreign-exchange deals, which it inevitably increase its trading power.[xxxvi]

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[i] “Geography” The Website of the Economic and Commercial Counselor’s Office of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] “China”. Website of the CIA”

[vii] “Chinese cities and provinces” Website of China Today.

[viii] “Religious Beliefs”. Website of 2004/106453.hrm

[ix] Ibid.

[x] “

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] Feuchtwang, Stephan. “Popular Religion in China: The imperial metaphor.” Great Britain: Curzon Press, 2001.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Overmyer, Daniel. “Religions of China: The world as a living system. ” Long Grove: Waveland Press, 1986.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] “The People of China” Website of the Energy Information Administration.

[xx] “China”. Website of the CIA” ; to learn more about China’s population see appendix 1

[xxi] “China’s one child policy, two child reality” Website of the US-Chinese Embassy

[xxii] Kahn, Joseph. “The most populous nation faces a population crisis” Website of the New York Times

[xxiii] “China to cap population at 1.37 billion by 2010”. Website of the Chinese Embassy

[xxiv] Shangyao, Cai. “Urban-Rural Income Gap” Website of the China Daily.

[xxv] “Rural and Urban China---Worlds Apart” Website of

[xxvi] Shangyao, Cai. “Urban-Rural Income Gap” Website of the China Daily.

[xxvii] China”. Website of the CIA”

[xxviii] Ibid.

[xxix] Ibid.

[xxx] Ibid.

[xxxi] Ibid.

[xxxii] “Half year statistics show strong Chinese growth” Website of the Asia Times.

[xxxiii] Ibid.

[xxxiv] “China’s Economy” Website of the US-China Business Council.

[xxxv] Schmid, John. “China engineers its next great leap” Website of the Milwaukee Sentinel.

[xxxvi] “Central bank considers yuan market makers” Website of the China Daily.

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