AREA: 9,596,961 sq. km (3,705,407 sq. mi).
POPULATION: 1,218,800,000.
CAPITAL: Beijing, pop.(10,819,000)
RELIGION:...Officially atheist, Confucian,Buddhist,
Taoist, Christian
LANGUAGE: Chinese, mandarin, cantonese
LITERACY: 78%.
.
LIFE EXPECTANCY: 69 years.
ECONOMY: Industry: steel, chemicals, electronics,
fertilizers, textiles, armaments, petroleum,
coal, machinery. Export crops: rice,corn, oilseeds. Food crops: rice,
wheat, corn, fruits, vegetables,
For much of the past 2,000 years China has been the driving force in Asia. The continent's second largest country (after Russia) is the most populous in the world, home to one in five of all people. Natural resources—including coal and iron .
By 200 B.C. the Chinese state had expanded from its realm in the Yellow River Basin into central and southern Asia. While the West stagnated in the early Middle Ages, China achieved its high-water mark of prosperity and artistic achievement during the Tang dynasty, A.D. 618-909. Chinese technology astonished Marco Polo, who arrived in 1275. By the 18th century China was larger than ever; the addition of 200 million new mouths to feed set off a decline, hastened in the 19th century by repeated rebellions and wars with Western trading powers. Britain introduced Indian opium, and China's efforts to limit import of the narcotic led to the Opium War of 1839-42. As a result of this war, in 1898 China agreed to lease the Territory of Hong Kong to Britain for 99 years.
In the early 20th century, revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen looked first to the West for a republican model of government, then turned to Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism. Rivalries between the ruling Nationalist Kuomintang Party under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party under Mao Zedong continued through World War II; civil war from 1946-49 ended with the retreat of the Nationalists to Taiwan.
Mao drew the new People's Republic inward. With
charismatic authority he tried unsuccessfully to rouse the economy through
collectivization and by mobilizing workers and slowing population
growth. After Mao's death in 1976 Deng Xiaoping loosened state control
and opened China to
the West, while keeping a firm grip on
the country. During the1980s rising prosperity stirred popular hopes for
a voice in decision making. The government's crushing of student-led protests
in Beijing in June 1989 raised a central question: How long will China
balk at the democratic values reshaping
Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and
other parts of Asia?
China's attitude toward free-market economics
came into sharp focus in 1997 with the end of the British lease on Hong
Kong. Under Britain's democratic and capitalist rule, Hong Kong enjoyed
tremendous economic success. The return to Chinese administration evoked
fears that democratic
freedoms might be lost. A Sino-British agreement
signed in 1984 states that Hong Kong will maintain most of its democratic
systems and its capitalist economy for at least 50 years. Hong Kong returned
to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997. It remains to be seen whether a policy
of "one nation, twosystems" can succeed.
