Country profilesChina

Humanitarian profile

China is investing heavily in Africa, but is criticised by the West for providing unconditional aid to governments with poor human rights records. China still ranks itself as a developing country with 150 million people below the poverty line. It is prone to earthquakes, typhoons and flooding.

Country snapshot

China is the world's most populous nation, and boasts the oldest continuous civilisation with records dating back more than 3,000 years. Outpacing the rest of the world in science and arts, Ancient China is credited with four great inventions -- papermaking, printing, gunpowder and the compass.

Civil unrest, famine and occupation by Western powers dominated China in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But after stagnating under the authoritarian Communist rule of Mao Zedong -- Chairman Mao -- China is experiencing what has been described as a second industrial revolution. Thirty years ago China's economy was the world's tenth largest, it's now the fourth largest and also the world's largest exporter.

However, the absence of political reforms to match economic success presents a long term challenge to Communist rule in the one-party state. Experts say the party's monopoly of power makes it immune to scrutiny, encourages corruption and threatens freedom of expression.

Government

The Communist Party has ruled the People's Republic of China since winning a civil war in 1949 and driving the Nationalists from the mainland to Taiwan.

The party sets policies and fills government posts. It is headed by the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee, the country's most important political and policymaking body.

The National People’s Congress, or parliament, meets annually and includes nearly 3,000 delegates representing China's 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, as well as Hong Kong, Macau and the military. A small delegation represents self-governed Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, although none of the members lives on the island or is chosen by its people.

The National People's Congress is generally considered a rubber stamp to the Communist party, whose chief, Hu Jintao, also serves as president.

Members of the National People's Congress, are elected by municipal, regional and provincial people's congresses and the People's Liberation Army for five-year terms.

The president, the head of state, and the vice-president are elected for a five-year term by the National People's Congress and can be re-elected once. The prime minister, the head of government, is nominated by the president and confirmed by the National People's Congress. However, the government is subordinate to the 76 million member Communist party.

Party committees control government and society at all levels. Party members hold almost all senior posts in government, the armed forces and many businesses.

There are no political opposition groups.

Economy

Market-oriented reforms since 1979 have transformed China's economy, previously a centrally planned system that was largely closed to international trade.

China has recorded average annual economic growth of over 9 percent in the 26 years to 2008, resulting in a tenfold increase in gross domestic product (GDP).

Industry and construction account for about 46 percent of GDP. Major industries are coal and metal ore mining, steel and non-ferrous metal production, textiles, chemicals, transport equipment, ships, aircraft and electronics.

China is the world's biggest steel and coal producer and the second largest consumer of energy after the United States. More cars are sold in China than in the United States.

Thanks to very competitive wage rates and a skilled workforce it has become the most important destination for foreign firms wishing to relocate their manufacturing plants. In 2008 foreign investment was $92 billion.

Its enormous success in export markets gave it the world's largest current account surplus at $426 billion in 2008 and the world's largest foreign exchange reserves at $2.4 trillion at the end of 2009.

Other countries, particularly the United States, regularly complain that its currency exchange rate is unfairly low. More than 40 percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture even though only 10 percent of the land is suitable for cultivation and agriculture contributes only 13 percent of GDP.

Its crop land area is only 75 percent of the United States but China produces 30 percent more crops and livestock than the United States. The global recession had little or no effect due to an enormous fiscal stimulus package equivalent to 14 percent of GDP. Economic growth was 8.7 percent in 2009 and expected at over 10 percent in 2010.

History

The roots of Chinese civilisation can be traced back several thousand years, but the genesis of the Chinese nation is widely considered to have started with the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) which united several warring kingdoms. The word "China" is thought to be derived from the Qin name. More than 2,000 years later, the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, fell in 1911 to republican forces after 267 years in power.

The 1920s saw the start of a long struggle between the Nationalists led by military leader Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong's Communist insurgents. China also battled the invading Japanese, whose gradual incursions in the 1930s flared into all-out war by the end of the decade. Millions of Chinese died in the fighting and the war is still a major irritant in relations with Japan.

The civil war continued after Japan’s defeat and Mao founded the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, after driving Chiang and his army to Taiwan off China’s southeastern coast.

In its early years, the People’s Republic of China was closely allied with Communist mentor, the Soviet Union, and modelled itself on Stalin’s centralised system.

But ideological and foreign policy arguments soon broke out and the Communist giants split bitterly in the early 1960s. Their long common frontier was bloodied by frequent military clashes. Most border disputes were settled during a thaw in Sino-Russian ties in the 1990s.

Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” campaign to catapult China into the modern industrial age by collectivising agriculture and creating steel in 'backyard furnaces' brought economic ruin and famine that killed an estimated 30 million people from 1958-61.

In 1966, Mao, fearing a power grab by other party leaders, launched the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution that plunged the country into 10 years of chaos. Millions of workers, officials and intellectuals were banished to the countryside for hard labour. Many were tortured, killed or driven to suicide.

In the 1970s, despite domestic turmoil, China -- with few friends -- began to mend fences with the non-Communist world even as relations with the Soviet bloc remained hostile.

In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Communist China. Diplomatic relations with Washington were normalised in 1979.

The year 1976 was historic for China. A huge earthquake in Tangshan, a city near near Beijing, killed some 300,000 people. Later that year, Mao died, age 82. His death ended the Cultural Revolution.

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping emerged as key leader and set about repairing the damage of Mao’s rule. His market-oriented reforms sparked more than two decades of phenomenal growth that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty.

But in 1988, China slid into economic chaos with bank runs and panic buying triggered by rising inflation that peaked at more than 30 percent in cities. Public discontent set the stage for pro-democracy demonstrations the next year.

On June 4, 1989, after weeks of protests in Beijing’s central Tiananmen Square, troops backed by tanks crushed the demonstrations, killing hundreds of people and once again isolating China on the world stage.

After the crackdown, Deng plucked Jiang Zemin from relative obscurity in Shanghai to be the new Communist Party chief. Jiang replaced Zhao Ziyang, sacked for his sympathetic views towards the protesters.

Deng remained paramount leader until his death in February 1997, at age 92. Jiang vanquished political rivals at a Communist Party congress that September.

In December 2001, China joined the World Trade Organisation after more than a decade of negotiations, agreeing to slash tariffs on imported goods and open many industries wider to foreign companies over the next few years.

The Communist Party completed a sweeping leadership reshuffle of the party in 2002 and government in 2003 that saw Jiang and other ageing leaders give way to a younger generation headed by Hu Jintao, who became president in 2004 and ally Wen Jiabao, who took office as prime minister in 2003. Their leadership has maintained the party's monopoly of power.

The year 2008 was marked by Tibetan protests led by Buddhist monks against Chinese rule; an 8.0-magnitude earthquake in the southwestern Sichuan province and Beijing's hosting of the Olympic Games.

In 2009, ethnic riots broke out in China's restless far western region of Xinjiang, involving Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people native to the region, and Han Chinese.

Legal snapshot

China's legal system is based on civil law and principles derived from continental Europe and the Soviet Union.

The judiciary is composed of four tiers: the highest is the Supreme People's Court, whose judges are appointed by the National People's Congress; then at provincial level, Higher People's Courts; followed by the Intermediate People's Courts at prefecture level and finally Basic People's Courts at district level.

Judges are appointed and paid by local people's congresses and local governments and their decisions are subject to approval by each court's Communist party committee.

There are frequent media reports of extortion by the police and reports that police and border guards offer protection to organised crime.

Despite recent reforms, trials are frequently closed and few defendants have access to lawyers. Torture remains widespread and forced confessions are routinely admitted as evidence.

U.S.-based Freedom House watchdog says there are between 300,000 and 3 million people in labour camps, many of them held for their religious or political views.

The right to strike was removed from the constitution in 1982, but there are many instances of labour unrest

China is ranked 79 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index measuring perceived levels of public-sector graft (1st position is perceived as least corrupt).

China has launched a sustained anti-corruption drive and intensified a crackdown on graft in the public sector, investigating and prosecuting ministers, public officials and employees, Transparency said in a 2009 report. Corrupt officials above provincial levels were disciplined and preventive measures to deal with stimulus packages to tackle the financial crisis, the watchdog said.