China by Numbers

$249,000: The average annual spending of wealthy Chinese in 2009

Source: China.com.cn (Chinese)

85%: The proportion of Chinese IT employees unsatisfied with their salary and considering new jobs

Source: people.com.cn (Chinese)

8.1m: The number of barrels per day of crude oil that Beijing plans to process in 2011.

$7,327: The loan available to recent university graduates who want to start their own businesses. The program is part of Beijing’s plan to find employment for the 6.1 million graduates that are expected to join the workforce this year.

75%: The percentage of the US$86.8 billion in new loans issued by Chinese banks in April that went to “nonfinancial and other types of companies” – mostly the country’s state-owned enterprises.

55: The number of cities included in China Unicom’s pilot program for the rollout of third-generation mobile phone services. The company hopes to increase the program to 284 cities by the end of September.

19 – Number of Shanghai college students that committed suicide last year. Suicide is considered the most common form of death for Chinese university students.

2050 – The year that China will have more than 438 million people older than 60, with over 100 million of them 80 and above. By that time, the country will have just 1.6 working-age adults to support every person aged 60 and above, compared with 7.7 in 1975, according to report by the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

$1.15b – Huawei’s 2008 profit, up 20% year-on-year. Alcatel-Lucent posted a loss of US$6.72 billion.

$8,780 – The expected starting price for Great Wall Motor’s planned GWKulla all-electric car, likely to be one of China’s cheapest battery-powered cars. GM’s Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid is expected to sell for US$40,000.

23k - Number of cartons of cigarettes that civil servants in Gongan County, Hubei province are to purchase for official government use in an effort to stimulate the economy

$1.26b - The value of the initial public offering of China Zhongwang Holdings, the world’s biggest so far this year. The aluminum-products maker sold 1.4 billion new shares or 25.9% of its enlarged share capital for HK$7 (US$0.90) per share

70 – Approximate number of Mexicans in quarantine around China after a 25-year-old Mexican man entered China via Shanghai with symptoms of swine flu

1.25m – The number of metric tons of soybeans Beijing will buy in an effort to boost farmers’ confidence and prices going into the new planting season

5m: The number of face masks being shipped overseas every day from Yiwu, Zhejiang province. This is a small boom for the city known as China’s small commodities capital, as it has seen many factories close due to the global economic downturn.

$205b: Tax revenue for the State Administration of Taxation (SAT) for the first quarter of 2009, down 6.9% year-on-year. The SAT is urging provincial-level tax authorities to close local tax loopholes in order to increase revenue.

42% – Increase in China sales for Gucci in 2008, 10 times its global growth rate. China is one of the world’s fastest-growing luxury markets, according to Bain & Co, a market research consultancy.

6.6% – The drop in China’s producer price index (PPI) for April. It is the fifth month of declines and wider than March’s drop of 6%. The PPI measures changes in wholesale prices and is a closely watched indicator of inflation.

$4.18b – The combined venue and operating budget for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

502 – Number of Chinese TV dramas produced in 2008. That’s 27 less than in 2007 – the first drop in TV productions in five years.

$73 billion – The amount that Beijing invested in science and technology funding in 2006 as part of a 15-year program. It was announced last week that the program was not performing according to expectations.

$1.6 billion – The amount of money Coca-Cola has invested in China since 1979. The company just announced that it is investing US$2 billion in the country over three years to expand production, distribution and R&D.

1/3 – Segment of Chinese viewers of the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants who are between the age of 25 and 44. It is the fourth most popular show among women in that age group.

$20 million – Amount in US dollar of the winning bids for each of the bronze sculptures – looted from Beijing’s Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) by European forces in 1860s – sold at a Christie’s auction in Paris last week. Cai Mingcao, the winning bidder, called his bid a “patriotic act,” and said he would not pay for the bronzes.

16 – The length, in months, of the mission of the Chang’e 1 lunar satellite, which came to an end in a controlled collision with the moon of March 1.

13,000 – The number of vehicles ordered from Jaguar Land Rover by Chinese firm SCAS Investment Group during a European shopping expedition by Chinese companies. SCAS signed a memorandum of understanding to buy 10,000 Land Rovers and 3,000 Jaguar automobiles over three years in a deal worth US$853 million.

The Great Wall by all accounts is 6,300 km long. But 90% of this architectural and engineering marvel is under threat of disappearing. Only about 20% of the Great Wall is currently in reasonable shape, and another 30% is in ruins, which means almost half of it has disappeared.
(China Daily – 2007-08-06)

In 1980, there were an estimaged 500 million bicycles in China.
(http://www.ibike.org/statistics.htm)

In 2007, Chinese archaeologists found fossilized remains of a primitive human species that lived about 2.04 million years ago in the Three Gorges area in southwest China, the earliest ever found in the country. The speciman is called Wushan man and is more than 300,000 years older than Yuanmou man, which was discovered in southwestern Yunnan province in the 1960s and was previously recognized as China’s earliest human species.
(China Daily – 2007-11-14)

sq km

Source: Bulletin of China Land and Resources