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| People's Republic of China
Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó |
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| Anthem: March of the Volunteers 《义勇军进行曲》 |
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 Controlled areas in dark green;
Claimed but uncontrolled areas in light green |
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| Capital | Beijing (北京) 39°55′N 116°23′E / 39.917°N 116.383°E |
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| Largest city | Shanghai (上海) | |||||
| Official language(s) | Standard Mandarin (de facto)[1] | |||||
| Recognised regional languages | See Languages of China | |||||
| Official scripts | Simplified Chinese[1] | |||||
| Ethnic groups | 92% Han; 55 recognised minorities |
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| Demonym | Chinese | |||||
| Government | Single-party state People's democratic dictatorship,[2] Democratic centralism, Unitary state, Socialist state,[3] Communist state |
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| - | President | Hu Jintao | ||||
| - | Premier | Wen Jiabao | ||||
| - | NPCSC Chairman | Wu Bangguo | ||||
| - | CPPCC Chairman | Jia Qinglin | ||||
| Legislature | National People's Congress | |||||
| Establishment | ||||||
| - | People's Republic of China proclaimed. | 1 October 1949 | ||||
| Area | ||||||
| - | Total | 9,640,821 km2 [c] or 9,671,018 km2[c](3rd/4th) 3,704,427 sq mi |
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| - | Water (%) | 2.8[c] | ||||
| Population | ||||||
| - | 2010 estimate | 1,338,612,968[4] (1st) | ||||
| - | 2000 census | 1,242,612,226 | ||||
| - | Density | 139.6/km2 (53rd) 363.3/sq mi |
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| GDP (PPP) | 2009 estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $8.767 trillion[5] (2nd) | ||||
| - | Per capita | $6,549 (97th) | ||||
| GDP (nominal) | 2009 estimate | |||||
| - | Total | $4.911 trillion[6] (3rd) | ||||
| - | Per capita | $3,696 (98th) | ||||
| Gini (2007) | 47.0[7] | |||||
| HDI (2007) | ▲ 0.772[8] (medium) (91nd) | |||||
| Currency | Chinese yuan (¥) (CNY) |
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| Time zone | China Standard Time (UTC+8) | |||||
| Date formats | yyyy-mm-dd or yyyy年m月d日 (CE; CE-1949) |
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| Drives on the | right, except for Hong Kong & Macau | |||||
| Internet TLD | .cn[b] | |||||
| Calling code | +86[b] | |||||
| a. ^ See also Names of China.
b. ^ Information for mainland China only. Hong Kong, Macau and territories under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, are excluded. c. ^ 9,598,086 km2 excludes all disputed territories.9,640,821 km2 Includes PRC-administered area (Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract, both territories claimed by India), Taiwan is not included.[9] |
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The People's Republic of China (PRC, ISO 3166-2 code CN), commonly known as China, is a country in East Asia. It is the most populous state in the world with over 1.3 billion people, about one in five humans. China is ruled by the Communist Party of China under a single-party system,[10] and has jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two highly autonomous[11] special administrative regions (SARs) (Hong Kong and Macau). The PRC's capital is Beijing.[12]
At about 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles), the PRC is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area,[13] and the second largest by land area.[14] Its landscape is diverse, with forest steppes and deserts (the Gobi and Taklamakan) in the dry north near Mongolia and Russia's Siberia, and subtropical forests in the wet south close to Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The terrain in the west is rugged and at high altitude, with the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain ranges forming China's natural borders with India and Central Asia. In contrast, mainland China's eastern seaboard is low-lying and has a 14,500-kilometre long coastline bounded on the southeast by the South China Sea and on the east by the East China Sea beyond which lies Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.
The ancient Chinese civilization—one of the world's earliest—flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River which flows through the North China Plain.[15] For more than 4,000 years, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies (also known as dynasties). The first of these dynasties was the Xia (approx 2000BC) but it was the later Qin Dynasty that first unified China in 221 BC. The last dynasty, the Qing, ended in 1911 with the founding of the Republic of China (ROC) by the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). The first half of the 20th century saw China plunged into a period of disunity and civil wars that divided the country into two main political camps – the Kuomintang and the communists. Major hostilities ended in 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established in mainland China by the victorious communists. The KMT-led Republic of China government retreated to Taipei, its jurisdiction now limited to Taiwan and several outlying islands. As of today, the PRC is still involved in disputes with the ROC over issues of sovereignty and the political status of Taiwan.
Since the introduction of market-based economic reforms in 1978, China has become the world's 5th fastest growing economy, and is the fastest growing G-20 major economy[16] the world's largest exporter and third largest importer of goods, although claims that China is the second largest importer are largely based on a statement by Li Keqiang in a January 2010 NY Times article.[17] Rapid industrialization has reduced its poverty rate from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001.[18] However, the PRC is now faced with a number of other problems including a rapidly aging population due to the one-child policy,[19] a widening rural-urban income gap, and environmental degradation.[20][21] Moreover, China has been criticized for its human rights violations,[22] and for having a problematic record of interfering with press freedom.[23]
China is a major power and the world's third largest economy nominally (or second largest by PPP) and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as being a member of multilateral organizations including the WTO, G-20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army with the second-largest defense budget. China has been characterized as a potential superpower by some academics,[24] military analysts,[25] and public policy and economics analysts.[26]
Contents |
History
Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party of China in control of mainland China, and the Kuomintang (KMT) retreating to Taiwan. On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China.[27] "Communist China" or "Red China" were two of the names of the PRC.[28]
The economic and social plan known as the Great Leap Forward resulted in an estimated 36 million deaths.[29] In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, which would last until Mao's death a decade later. The Cultural Revolution, motivated by power struggles within the Party and a fear of the Soviet Union, led to a major upheaval in Chinese society. In 1972, at the peak of the Sino-Soviet split, Mao and Zhou Enlai met Richard Nixon in Beijing to establish relations with the United States. In the same year, the PRC was admitted to the United Nations in place of the Republic of China for China's membership of the United Nations, and permanent membership of the Security Council.
After Mao's death in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four, blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping quickly wrested power from Mao's anointed successor Hua Guofeng. Although he never became the head of the Party or State himself, Deng was in fact the Paramount Leader of China at that time, his influence within the Party led the country to economic reforms of significant magnitude. The Communist Party subsequently loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives and the communes were disbanded with many peasants receiving multiple land leases, which greatly increased incentives and agricultural production. This turn of events marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an increasingly open market environment, a system termed by some[30] "market socialism", and officially by the Communist Party of China "Socialism with Chinese characteristics". The PRC adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982.
In 1989, the death of pro-reform official, Hu Yaobang, helped to spark the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, during which students and others campaigned for several months for more democratic rights and freedom of speech. However, they were eventually put down on 4 June when PLA troops and vehicles entered and forcibly cleared the square, resulting in numerous casualties. This event was widely reported and famously videotaped, which brought worldwide condemnation and sanctions against the government.
President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji, both former mayors of Shanghai, led post-Tiananmen PRC in the 1990s. Under Jiang Zemin's ten years of administration, the PRC's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual GDP growth rate of 11.2%.[31][32] The country formally joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Although the PRC needs economic growth to spur its development, the government has begun to worry that rapid economic growth has negatively impacted the country's resources and environment. Another concern is that certain sectors of society are not sufficiently benefiting from the PRC's economic development. As a result, under current President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, the PRC has initiated policies to address these issues of equitable distribution of resources, but the outcome remains to be seen.[33] More than 40 million farmers have been displaced from their land,[34] usually for economic development, contributing to the 87,000 demonstrations and riots across China in 2005.[35] For much of the PRC's population in major urban centres, living standards have seen extremely large improvements, and freedom continues to expand, but political controls remain tight and rural areas poor.[36]
Politics
The PRC is regarded by several political scientists as one of the last five Communist states (along with Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, and Cuba),[37][38][39] but simple characterizations of PRC's political structure since the 1980s are no longer possible.[40] The PRC government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian, with heavy restrictions remaining in many areas, most notably on the Internet, the press, freedom of assembly, reproductive rights, and freedom of religion.
Compared to its closed-door policies until the mid-1970s, the liberalization of the PRC is such that the administrative climate is less restrictive than before, however the PRC is still far from the liberal democracy practiced in most of Europe or North America, and the National People's Congress has been described as a "rubber stamp" body.[41] The PRC's incumbent President is Hu Jintao and its Premier is Wen Jiabao.
The country is run by the Communist Party of China (CPC), which is guaranteed power by the Constitution.[42] The political system is very decentralized[43] with limited democratic processes internal to the party and at local village levels, although these experiments have been marred by corruption. There are other political parties in the PRC, referred to in China as democratic parties, which participate in the People's Political Consultative Conference and the National People's Congress. There have been some moves toward political liberalization, in that open contested elections are now held at the village and town levels,[44][45] and that legislatures have shown some assertiveness from time to time. However, the Party retains effective control over government appointments: in the absence of meaningful opposition, the CPC wins by default most of the time. Political concerns in the PRC include lessening the growing gap between rich and poor and fighting corruption within the government leadership.[46]
The level of support to the government action and the management of the nation is among the highest in the world, with a 86% of people who express satisfaction with the way things are going in their country and with their nation's economy according to a 2008 Pew Research Center survey[47] According to a survey titled "Top 10 political figures in Mainland China and Taiwan" conducted in Hong Kong, approximately 1000 participants were given a list of 10 well-known political leaders in Mainland China and Taiwan. Mainland leaders (such as Wen Jiabao, Zhu Rongji and Hu Jintao) have received higher rating than leaders in Taiwan (such as Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou and Lien Chan).[48]
Foreign relations
The People's Republic of China maintains diplomatic relations with most major countries in the world. Sweden was the first western country to establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic on 9 May 1950.[49] In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.[50] The PRC was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, the PRC has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the Republic of China government; it has acted furiously when any country shows signs of diplomatic overture,[51] or sells armaments to Taiwan.[52]
The government opposes publicized foreign travels by former and present ROC officials promoting Taiwan's independence, such as Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, and other figures, such as Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, and the exiled Uyghur leader, Rebiya Kadeer. For instance, Beijing objected to a trip Kadeer made to Japan in July 2009[53][54] and Australia in the following month, and officially complained to the respective governments.[54]; it cancelled a session of dialogue with Germany after Angela Merkel met with the Dalai Lama in 2007.[55]
The PRC has been playing an increasing role in calling for free trade areas and security pacts amongst its Asia-Pacific neighbors. In 2004, the PRC proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues that pointedly excluded the United States.[56] The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005. The PRC is also a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), with Russia and the Central Asian republics.
Sinophobic attitudes often target Chinese minorities and nationals living outside of China. Sometimes the anti-Chinese attitudes turn violent, such as the May 13 Incident in Malaysia in 1969 and the Jakarta riots of May 1998 in Indonesia, in which more than 2,000 people died.[57] In recent years, a number of anti-Chinese riots and incidents have also occurred in Africa and Oceania.[58][59] Anti-Chinese sentiment is often rooted in socio-economics.[60]
Much of the current foreign policy is based on the concept of China's peaceful rise. Conflicts with foreign countries have occurred at times in its recent history, particularly with the United States; for example, the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict in May 1999 and the U.S.-China spy plane incident in April 2001. Its foreign relations with many Western nations suffered for a time following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, though they have since recovered.
The relationship between China and Japan has been strained at times by Japan's refusal to acknowledge its wartime past to the satisfaction of the PRC; take for instance revisionist comments made by prominent Japanese officials and in some Japanese history textbooks. Another point of conflict between the two countries is the frequent visits by Japanese government officials to the Yasukuni Shrine. However, Sino-Japanese relations have warmed considerably since Shinzo Abe became the new Japanese Prime Minister in September 2006. A joint historical study to be completed by 2008 of WWII atrocities is being conducted by the PRC and Japan.
Equally bordering the most countries in the world alongside Russia, the PRC was in a number of international territorial disputes. China's territorial disputes have led to localized wars in the last 50 years, including the Sino-Indian War in 1962, the Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969, and the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979. In 2001, the PRC and Russia signed the Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship,[61] which paved the way in 2004 for Russia to transfer Yinlong Island as well as one-half of Heixiazi to China, ending a long-standing Sino-Russian border dispute. Other territorial disputes include islands in the East and South China Seas, and undefined or disputed land borders with India and Bhutan.
While accompanying a rapid economic rise, the PRC since the 1990s seeks to maintain a policy of quiet diplomacy with its neighbors. It does so by keeping economic growth steady and participating in regional organizations and cultivating bi-lateral relations in order to ease suspicion over China's burgeoning military capabilities. The PRC has started a policy of wooing African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation.[62][63] Xinhua, China's official news agency, states that there are no less than 750,000 Chinese nationals working or living in Africa.[64] There are some discussions about whether China will become a new superpower in the 21st century, with certain commentators pointing out its economic progress, military might, very large population, and increasing international influence but others claiming it is headed for economic collapse.[65][66][67][68][69]
Human rights
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While economic and social controls have been greatly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly controlled by both central and local governments. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property rights. However, these provisions do not afford significant protection in practice against criminal prosecution by the State.[70][71][72]
Tens of millions who have moved to the cities find themselves treated as second-class citizens by China's urban population, who tend to look down on country folk.[73] There is dissatisfaction from peasants as a result of land seizures by the wealthy middle class of the cities.[73] Official discrimination, such as in the hukou system of household registration, between rural and urban has been described as an apartheid system.[74] In 2003/2004, the average farmer had to pay three times more in taxes even though his income was only one sixth that of the average urban dweller.[74] Since then, a number of rural taxes have been reduced or abolished, and additional social services provided to rural dwellers.[75][76][77]
Censorship of political speech and information is openly and routinely used to silence criticism of government and the ruling Chinese Communist Party.[78] In particular, press control is notoriously tight: Reporters Without Borders considers the PRC one of the least free countries in the world for the press.[79] In the Reporters Without Borders' Annual World Press Freedom Index of 2005,[79] the PRC ranked 159 out of 167 places.
Chinese journalist He Qinglian in her 2004 book Media Control in China[80] documents government controls on the Internet and other media in China. The government has a policy of limiting groups, organizations, and beliefs that it considers a potential threat to "social stability" and control, as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The Communist Party has had mixed success in controlling information: a very strong media control system faces very strong market forces, an increasingly educated citizenry, and cultural change that are making China more open, especially on environmental issues.[81][82]
A number of foreign governments and NGOs routinely criticize the PRC, alleging widespread civil rights violations including systematic use of lengthy detention without trial, forced confessions, torture, mistreatment of prisoners, restrictions of freedom of speech, assembly, association, religion, the press, and labor rights.[78] China leads the world in capital punishment, accounting for roughly 90% of total executions in 2004.[83]
The PRC government has responded by arguing that the notion of human rights should take into account a country's present level of economic development, and focus more on the people's rights to subsistence and development in poorer countries.[84] The rise in the standard of living, literacy, and life expectancy for the average Chinese in the last three decades is seen by the government as tangible progress made in human rights.[85] Efforts in the past decade to combat deadly natural disasters, such as the perennial Yangtze River floods, and work-related accidents are also portrayed in China as progress in human rights for a still largely poor country.[84]
Administrative divisions
The People's Republic of China has administrative control over twenty-two provinces and considers Taiwan to be its twenty-third province.[86] There are also five autonomous regions, each with a designated minority group; four municipalities; and two Special Administrative Regions that enjoy some degree of autonomy. The twenty-two provinces, five autonomous regions, and four municipalities can be collectively referred to as "mainland China", a term which usually excludes Hong Kong and Macau.
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