China BeijingFive-star red flag, length and width proportion: 3:2. March of the Volunteers (lines: Arise, those who do not want to be slaves! We will use our flesh and blood to build another Great Wall. China has reached the brink of national collapse. All the people have been making their last outcry. Arise! Arise! Arise! All our hearts become one. Let us face the angry guns. March on! Let us face the angry guns. March on! March on! March on! On!) October 1, the country was founded in 1949.
High in its west and low in its east: mountain areas 33.3%, plateaus 26%, basins 18.8%, plains 12% and hills 9.9%. Most of the country in the temperate zone, although geographically the country stretches from the tropical and subtropical zones in the south to the frigid zone in the north. China has a great variety of wildlife, over 4,400 vertebrates, more than 100 rare species of the world: the giant panda, the golden monkey, the white-lipped deer, the South China Tiger, Crossoplilon mantchuricum, the white-flag dolphin, the Chinese alligator, and the crowned crane. China has a great variety of plants, 32,000 species of higher plants, including nearly all the major kinds of vegetation found in the frigid and temperate zones of the northern hemisphere. China carried out its fifth national population census on November 1, 2000. It has a population of 1,295.33 million. Of which: the total population of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities (excluding Jinmen and Mazu islands of Fujian Province hereafter) and of servicemen on the mainland of China was 1,265.83 million; the population of Hong Kong SAR was 6.78 million; the population of Macao SAR was 440 thousand; the population of Taiwan Province and of Jinmen, Mazu and a few other islands of Fujian Province was 22.28 million. Compared with the population of 1,133.68 million from the 1990 population census (with zero hour of July 1, 1990 as the reference time), the total population of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and the servicemen of the mainland of China increased by 132.15 million persons, or 11.66 percent over the past 10 years and 4 months. The average annual growth was 12.79 million persons, or a growth rate of 1.07 percent. 71 years old by the end of 2000. The males: 51.63%, the females: 48.37%; people aged below 14: 22.89%; people aged 15-64: 70.15%; people aged above 65: 6.96%; urban population: 36.09%; rural population: 63.91%. Of the 56 ethnic groups in China, the Hui and Manchu use the same languages as Han people, while the rest of groups have their own spoken and written languages. New Year's Day (January 1), the Spring Festival (the New Year's Day by Chinese lunar calendar), International Labor Day (May 1), and the National Day (October 1). Among the 5,400 islands, Taiwan Island (about 36,000 square km) is the largest, Hainan Island (about 34,000 square km) the second. Among the 19 mountains over 7,000 meters high in the world, seven are in China. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as "the roof of the world", has many high mountains. The Himalayas, with an average elevation of 6,000 meters, have the world's highest peak Mount Qomolangma, 8,848 meters above sea level. The canyon on the Yalu Tsangpo River, the world's largest, 504.6 km in length and 6,009 meters in depth.
The Grand Canal, 1,801 km long, the longest man-made river in the world. Its cutting began in the fifth century BC. The Poyang Lake on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is China's largest freshwater lake; the Qinghai Lake on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the country's largest salt lake. Agriculture IntroductionIn 1949, China’s grain output was 113.18 million tons, and that of cotton 444,000 tons; the agricultural foundation was fragile. Between 1950 and 1953, the Chinese government carried out a wide-ranging land reform in the rural areas. Peasants with little or no land were given land of their own, greatly arousing their enthusiasm for production. During the period of the First Five-Year Plan (1953-57), the yearly gross output of agriculture increased by 4.5 percent, on average. This period was the first “golden time” for China’s agricultural development. From 1958 to 1978, China’s agriculture developed slowly. During this period, China practiced the cooperative and people’s commune systems in rural areas successively, which emphasized the effectiveness of centralized and unified management, but reduced the efficiency of resource utilization and allocation. As a result, the peasants’ enthusiasm for production was greatly dampened. In this period, the gross agricultural output value increased by only 2.3 percent, on average, every year. The rise of township enterprises has promoted the all-round development of the agricultural economy. In 1987, the gross output value of township enterprises exceeded that of farming; in 1990, the township enterprises earned 13 billion US dollars from exports, about 23.8 percent of the national gross value of foreign exchange earned from exports. Thousands of towns are playing an important role in eliminating the differences between urban and rural areas, and promoting the integration of urban and rural areas. The per capita net income of farmers increased from 134 yuan in 1978 to 2,210 yuan in 1999.
Culture & Art IntroductionThe Chinese government has spared no effort to promote economic, cultural and educational progress in the areas inhabited by minority people, and to improve the material, cultural and living standards of the broad masses of the minority people while attaching great importance to respecting their religious beliefs and customs, and protecting their cultural legacy. Most Tibetans believe in Tibetan Buddhism. Now Tibet has more than 1,700 places for Buddhist activities, with more than 46,000 lamas resident in monasteries. Almost every Buddhist dwelling has a small scripture hall or prayer niche. Every year, the number of Buddhists going to Lhasa to worship totals more than one million. Since the 1980s, the Central Government has allocated more than 200 million RMB yuan to Tibet for the renovation of the Potala Palace, the Tashilhunpo Monastery, the Jokhang Temple, the Samye Monastery, and other places of worship. In addition, special funds were allocated for the publication of the Tibetan editions of The Tripitaka (The Buddhist Canon) and other classics, and the China Advanced Institute of Tibetan Buddhism was founded in Beijing, and the Institute of Tibetan Buddhism, in Lhasa. In 1995, in accordance with the religious rituals and historical conventions of Tibetan Buddhism, including lot-drawing from a golden urn, the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Erdeni was discovered. Thus, China completed the identification, confirmation and enthronement of the 11th Panchen Erdeni. In Xinjiang and Ningxia, the government provides various services to Moslems for pilgrimages. Since the 1980s, more than 40,000 Chinese Muslims have gone to Mecca. Now Xinjiang has more than 23,000 mosques, and 29,000 clergy to meet the religious needs of Muslims. The Islamic Association of Xinjiang has founded the Institute of Islamic Theology, and published the Koran in the Uygur language. The Chinese government respects the dietetic customs and burial rites of the minority peoples who believe in Islam, and has worked out laws and regulations on producing Muslim food and opened Muslim cemeteries. Economic development INTRODUCTIONAlong with the coming of 2000, the PRC had undergone a glorious yet tortuous course of 50 years, amid great changes in Chinese society. Before the founding of New China in 1949, China's highest yearly outputs of major industrial and agricultural products were 445,000 tons of yarn, 2.79 billion meters of cloth, 61,880,000 tons of coal, 320,000 tons of crude oil, 6 billion kwh of electric energy production, 150 million tons of grain, and 849,000 tons of cotton. Since the founding of New China, especially in the 21 years after the start of the reform and opening to the outside world in 1978, China has made great achievements in economic construction and social development. In 1999, the GDP was 8,205.4 billion yuan, an increase of 6.4 times over 1978, at constant prices; the outputs of some major industrial and agricultural products, such as grain, cotton, meat, edible oil, coal, steel, cement, cloth and TV sets, leapt from a backward position to first place in the world.
In accordance with Deng Xiaoping's theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, the 13th National Congress of the CPC, held in 1987, adopted the strategy of three stages for China's economic construction: First, doubling the GNP of 1980 to end shortages of food and clothing, which was basically completed at the end of the 1980s; second, quadrupling the GNP of 1980 by the end of the century, which was achieved in 1995, ahead of schedule. Thus, the Chinese government worked out the Ninth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Term Objectives for the Year 2010, which put forward new objectives: Those for the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000) were as follows—Complete the second phase of the strategic plan for the modernization drive in an all-round way and quadruple the per capita GNP of 1980 in 2000, when the population will have increased by about 300 million over that of 1980; raise the people's living standard to that of a fairly comfortable life, with poverty practically eradicated; and expedite the formulation of a modern enterprise system and initially establish the basis of a socialist market economy. Third, basically realizing modernization in the mid 21st century, the GDP per capita reaching the level of the moderately developed countries, and people living a well-off life. The objectives for the year 2010 are to double the GNP of 2000 so that the people will enjoy even more comfortable lives, and bring a more or less complete socialist market economy into being. With the fulfillment of these goals, China's productive forces, overall national strength and the people's living standards will have gone a big step further, and the country's social and economic aspects will have undergone historic changes, laying a solid foundation for the realization of modernization.
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