China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow extraterritoriality for foreign nationals, and cede Hong Kong to the British under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, the first of the Unequal Treaties.
The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan. The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest.
The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the Korean Peninsula, as well as the cession of Taiwan to Japan. The Qing dynasty also began experiencing internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the White Lotus Rebellion, the failed Taiping Rebellion that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest.
The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s. In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began.
Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died.
The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s. In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began.
The initial success of the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s. In the 19th century, the great Chinese diaspora began.
The Guangxu Emperor drafted a reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern constitutional monarchy, but these plans were thwarted by the Empress Dowager Cixi.
The ill-fated anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty.
The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty.
Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the Xinhai Revolution of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China.
The Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the 1911 Revolution, when the Republic of China (ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty.
The Manchu Qing dynasty, then allied with Ming dynasty general Wu Sangui, overthrew Li's short-lived Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty. === Late imperial === The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China.
Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912. === Republic (1912–1949) === On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president.
On 12 February 1912, regent Empress Dowager Longyu sealed the imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old Puyi, the last Emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of monarchy in China.
In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China.
In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself Emperor of China.
In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own Beiyang Army, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916. After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented.
In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, the then Principal of the Republic of China Military Academy, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political manoeuvrings, known collectively as the Northern Expedition.
The political division in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the communist People's Liberation Army (PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the Chinese Civil War.
This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the Long March, until Japanese aggression and the 1936 Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront Imperial Japan. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), a theater of World War II, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the PLA.
After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Taiwan, including the Pescadores, was returned to Chinese control.
Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China. === People's Republic (1949–present) === Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands.
The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China on mainland China while the Kuomintang-led ROC government retreated to the island of Taiwan.
Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China. === People's Republic (1949–present) === Major combat in the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most of mainland China, and the Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only Taiwan, Hainan, and their surrounding islands.
On 1 October 1949, Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990. === Economic growth === From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy.
After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union, in which scientific research was part of central planning.
In 1949, only 20% of the population could read, compared to 65.5% thirty years later.
In 1950, the People's Liberation Army captured Hainan from the ROC and incorporated Tibet.
However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s. The regime consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords.
The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974.
An emphasis on public health and preventive medicine has characterized Chinese health policy since the early 1950s.
Both have improved significantly since the 1950s.
However, China's sex ratio is more balanced than it was in 1953, when males accounted for 51.82 percent of the total population. ===Ethnic groups=== China legally recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups, who altogether comprise the Zhonghua Minzu.
In 1956, the government introduced simplified characters, which have supplanted the older traditional characters in mainland China.
However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation.
The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959.
However, the Great Leap Forward, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in an estimated 15 to 35 million deaths between 1958 and 1961, mostly from starvation.
In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976.
Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of sandstorms, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea.
While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted.
In 1970, China launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth country to do so independently.
From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%. Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family.
Both the PRC and the ROC currently claim to be the sole legitimate government of China, resulting in an ongoing dispute even after the United Nations recognized the PRC as the government to represent China at all UN conferences in 1971. China is nominally a unitary one-party socialist republic.
In October 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council. After Mao's death, the Gang of Four was quickly arrested by Hua Guofeng and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
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.
The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974.
In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976.
Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule.
After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology was established as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed. ===Modern era=== Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending.
Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and [rights activist]s for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests. After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014.
Elder Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, and instituted significant economic reforms.
According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019.
China's economic growth has been consistently above 6 percent since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978.
Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade.
China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million.
Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990. === Economic growth === From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy.
Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007.
Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978.
After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition, although many of the free public health services provided in the countryside disappeared along with the People's Communes.
While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development.
From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%. Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family.
Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits).
The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019.
China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013.
By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981.
China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982.
The large "floating populations" of migrant workers make conducting censuses in urban areas difficult; the figures below include only long-term residents. ===Education=== Since 1986, compulsory education in China comprises primary and junior secondary school, which together last for nine years.
In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries. Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s.
The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The Chinese state is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression throughout the Chinese nation.
In 1989, the suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries. Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s.
According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013.
The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990.
Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990.
Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990. === Economic growth === From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy.
The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS. ===Transport=== Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways.
Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010.
The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993.
The country signed the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993.
The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s.
In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries.
The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the world's largest annual human migration takes place. China's high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s.
The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world. Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated.
Compared with the 2000 population census, the Han population increased by 66,537,177 persons, or 5.74%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7,362,627 persons, or 6.92%.
Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and [rights activist]s for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests. After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014.
The country joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao's leadership in the 2000s.
China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.
In 2003, China became the third country to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , ten Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women.
Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011.
China's large population and densely populated cities have led to serious disease outbreaks in recent years, such as the 2003 outbreak of SARS, although this has since been largely contained.
In 2004, it proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues.
The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005. China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States.
The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006. China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types.
In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China. China's railways, which are state-owned, are among the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006.
Vocational education is available to students at the secondary and tertiary level. In February 2006, the government pledged to provide completely free nine-year education, including textbooks and fees.
China's environmental watchdog, SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification.
China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined.
Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007.
A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017.
The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and [industry|heavy industries], but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008.
In 2008, China established dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity.
Chinese-born scientists have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine once respectively, though most of these scientists conducted their Nobel-winning research in western nations. China is developing its education system with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country.
From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%. Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family.
In 2009, Chinese students from Shanghai achieved the world's best results in mathematics, science and literacy, as tested by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide evaluation of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance.
In 2009, the government began a 3-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion.
Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and [rights activist]s for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests. After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014.
It later produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010. China is home to at least 551 species of mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh).
In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage. Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades.
Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget. ==Economy== Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020.
Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%. China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline.
1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No.
In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs. In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy.
The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north. ==Demographics== The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,370,536,875.
Data from the 2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may be around 1.4, although due to under-reporting of births it may be closer to 1.5–1.6. According to one group of scholars, one-child limits had little effect on population growth or the size of the total population.
According to the 2010 census, the sex ratio at birth was 118.06 boys for every 100 girls, which is beyond the normal range of around 105 boys for every 100 girls.
The 2010 census found that males accounted for 51.27 percent of the total population.
Ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China, according to the 2010 census.
The 2010 census recorded a total of 593,832 foreign nationals living in China.
In 2010, about 82.5 percent of students continued their education at a three-year senior secondary school.
In 2010, 27 percent of secondary school graduates are enrolled in higher education.
In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in China, only totalled ¥3,204.
Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990 to 9.9% in 2010.
In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China. The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019.
China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries. However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects.
Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the BRICS group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's third official summit at Sanya, Hainan in April 2011. Under its interpretation of the One-China policy, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China.
In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s.
Annual education investment went from less than US$50 billion in 2003 to more than US$250 billion in 2011.
In 2011, around 81.4% of Chinese have received secondary education. , 96% of the population over age 15 are literate.
By 2011, the campaign resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage.
In 2011, China was estimated to be the world's third-largest supplier of pharmaceuticals, but its population has suffered from the development and distribution of counterfeit medications. , the average life expectancy at birth in China is 76 years, and the infant mortality rate is 7 per thousand.
However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused major social displacement. Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy (which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the one-child policy and prison system, as well as instituting a vast anti corruption crackdown.
The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017.
2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation.
In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion.
China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012, and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies.
Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military. China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018.
In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure investment project.
China has a close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the UN Security Council. ====Trade relations==== China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013, as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's biggest commodity importer.
The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013 but it is not clear the extent to which its various practices have stopped.
China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013.
According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013.
China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021.
In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover onto the lunar surface.
The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%.
By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981.
The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child.
Chinese authorities have been criticized by political dissidents and [rights activist]s for widespread human rights abuses, including political repression, mass censorship, mass surveillance of their citizens and violent suppression of protests. After economic reforms in 1978, and its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's economy became the second-largest country by nominal GDP in 2010 and grew to the largest in the world by PPP in 2014.
On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs. Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country.
In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP GDP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2014, according to the World Bank.
In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world.
According to a 2014 study, approximately 74% are either non-religious or practise Chinese folk belief, 16% are Buddhists, 2% are Christians, 1% are Muslims, and 8% adhere to other religions including
By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from [power]: a total installed capacity of 197 GW makes China the largest hydroelectric power producer in the world.
China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade.
According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation.
Beginning in the mid 1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits).
A 2015 poll conducted by Gallup International found that 61% of Chinese people self-identified as "convinced atheist", though it is worthwhile to note that Chinese religions or some of their strands are definable as non-theistic and [religions, since they do not believe that divine creativity is completely transcendent, but it is inherent in the world and in particular in the human being.
comprising roughly 45% of maritime's dry-bulk market. By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries.
The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor.
China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019.
According to the OECD, China spent 2.11% of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2016.
China also became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016.
In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy.
The current General Secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012 and was re-elected on 25 October 2017.
The incumbent premier is Li Keqiang, who is also a senior member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's de facto top decision-making body. In 2017, Xi called on the communist party to further tighten its grip on the country, to uphold the unity of the party leadership, and achieve the "Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation".
On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs. Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country.
According to the Chinese government, China's military budget for 2017 totalled US$151.5 billion, constituting the world's second-largest military budget, although the military expenditures-GDP ratio with 1.3% of GDP is below world average.
China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined.
In 2017, China spent $279 billion on scientific research and development.
Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE were the top 2 filers of international patents in 2017.
A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017.
As of 2017, the country had of railways, the second longest network in the world.
As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest. There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020.
In 2017, the Ports of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Guangzhou, Qingdao and Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world in container traffic and cargo tonnage. ===Water supply and sanitation=== Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as water scarcity, contamination, and pollution.
The figures in the table below are from the 2017 census, and are only estimates of the urban populations within administrative city limits; a different ranking exists when considering the total municipal populations (which includes suburban and rural populations).
China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries. However, China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, with $52 billion invested in 2011 alone; it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects.
The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader, Xi Jinping, to remain president of China (and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) for an unlimited time, governing as a dictator.
China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018.
China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity. Foreign and Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth.
In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export. === Wealth in China === As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires.
China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million.
The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990.
Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990.
In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs. In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy.
In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by the year 2030.
Economists also expect China's middle class to expand to 600 million people by 2025. === China in the global economy === China is a member of the WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018.
By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries.
In 2018 China's GINI index was 0.467, according to the World Bank. ==Science and technology== ===Historical=== China was once a world leader in science and technology up until the Ming dynasty.
According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US.
The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history. ===Telecommunications=== China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018.
By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total.
China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China.
China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the biggest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018.
Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military. China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012 as well as global services by the end of 2018.
In 2018, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the longest highway system in the world.
From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%. Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family.
This number increased significantly over the last years, reaching a tertiary school enrolment of 50 percent in 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei in 2019. == Geography == China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to the subtropical forests in the wetter south.
The country also has significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019, and were unfit for use.
In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world.
In the early 2010s, US politicians argued that the Chinese yuan was significantly undervalued, giving China an unfair trade advantage. Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades.
The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labour prisons and camps, known collectively as the Laogai. In 2019 a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners.
According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019.
Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%. China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline.
China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019.
In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse.
In other words, as of 2019, 100 million Chinese are in the top 10% of the wealthiest individuals in the world—those who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000.
Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest.
In 2019, China was No.
China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021.
In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the moon.
By the end of 2019, high speed rail in China had over of dedicated lines alone, making it the longest HSR network in the world.
With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest.
China's own standards for poverty are higher and still the country is on its way to eradicate national poverty completely by 2019.
The percent of the country's population living in urban areas increased from 20% in 1980 to over 60% in 2019.
In 2010, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in China. The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019.
In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion.
China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others. China's Belt and Road Initiative has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations.
By 2020, China plans to give all its citizens a personal "Social Credit" score based on how they behave.
According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation.
Office of the Secretary of Defense – argue that China does not report its real level of military spending, which is allegedly much higher than the official budget. ==Economy== Since 2010, China had the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$15.66 trillion (101.6 trillion Yuan) as of 2020.
China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020.
China has four (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index.
In 2020, hundreds of individual Chinese drug vendors illegally manufactured synthetic drugs such as fentanyl for export. === Wealth in China === As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionaires—there were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires.
As of October 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires with nearly 878, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week.
According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country.
China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020. However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country.
In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecast that China's middle-class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S.
China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week.
In 2011, China's first space station module, Tiangong-1, was launched, marking the first step in a project to assemble a large crewed station by the early 2020s.
In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union.
The 35th and final satellite of Beidou constellation was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, thus becoming the 3rd completed global navigation satellite system in service after GPS and GLONASS. ===Transport=== Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of national highways and expressways.
As of 2020, China boasts the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest. There were approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020.
Despite the high results, Chinese education has also faced both native and international criticism for its emphasis on rote memorization and its gap in quality from rural to urban areas. As of 2020, China had the world's second-highest number of top universities.
On 19 January 2021, the United States Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that the United States Department of State had determined that "genocide and crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated by China against the Uyghurs. Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country.
China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020. However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country.
China has been the world's largest market for industrial robots since 2013 and will account for 45% of newly installed robots from 2019 to 2021.
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