Looking at China through numbers

Here's an interesting compendium of factoids on China that was published in Britain's Independent newspaper. Click here for the story that accompanied this list and scroll down to the bottom.

I can't vouch for accuracy but certainly some of the numbers seem familiar from past reporting I've done.

China: In Numbers
By Simon Usborne

30,000: The expected number of Chinese MBA graduates in 2008. The number in 1998: 0

5.7 million: Students graduated from Chinese universities in 2007 (compared with 270,000 in 1977)

30: Number of nuclear power plants being built in China

500: The number of coal-fired power plants China plans to build in the next decade

10 million: The estimated number of Chinese people who have no electricity

97: New airports to be built in the next 12 years, bringing the total number to 244 by 2020

540 million: Number of mobile phone users in China, with an increase of 44 million in the past six months

180: The number of foreign press correspondents arrested or harassed in 2007

67: The percentage of journalists who replied "no" when asked in a survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China if they believed Beijing had kept its promise to give foreign media "complete freedom of reporting" in the run-up to the Olympics. Only 8.6 per cent said "yes"

33: The number of Chinese journalists thought to be held in prisons in 2008

95: The estimated percentage of DVDs sold in China that are fake. Uncensored foreign films are widely available from 50p

20: The approximate number of foreign films passed by Chinese censors each year for screening in cinemas. Banned films have included 'Ben Hur' (for its depiction of religion), 'Brokeback Mountain' (for its homosexuality) and the 'Borat' film (for its depiction of, among other things, incest).

Passed films are often subject to further editing. Examples include the deletion of scenes showing hanging laundry in Shanghai in 'Mission: Impossible III' and the removal of footage containing Chow Yun-Fat that 'vilifies and humiliates the Chinese' in 'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'

160: Cities in China with populations that exceed a million. In the USA there are nine; in the UK just two

80: Percentage of the world's zips produced in factories in the Zhejiang Province city of Qiaotou (amounting to 124,000 miles of zip each year, or enough to stretch half way to the moon). Qiaotou also produces 60 per cent of the world's buttons (15 billion a year), while nearby Datang makes a third of the world's socks. As many as 80 per cent of the world's toys are made in China, which boasts more than 10,000 toy factories

21 million: The number of Chinese-made toys recalled last year by the US toy company Mattel

0: Miles of motorway in 1988

30,000: Miles of motorway today

6.3 million: The number of passenger cars registered in 2007 (compared with 2.3 million in 2004). More than 1,000 new private cars hit the roads every day in Beijing alone

68: The number of crimes thought to be punishable by death in China, including non-violent offences such as tax fraud, embezzlement and the taking of bribes

350 million: The number of Chinese people who smoke (a third of the world’s smokers). Around a million people a year are thought to die from smoking-related diseases

240bn yuan: (£17.3bn)* The estimated amount earned by the Chinese government in tobacco taxes in 2005

1.3 billion: China’s population. The country accounts for one in five people in the world.

400 million: The estimated number of births prevented by China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1979

22: The number of suicides per 100,000 people, about 50 per cent higher than the global average. Suicide is the fifth most common cause of death in China, and the first among people aged between 20 and 35

700,000: The number of people living with HIV or Aids in China. The UN has warned China it could have 10 million cases by 2010 unless action is taken

45 billion: Estimated number of chopsticks China produces every year, the majority of them disposable. In 2006, Beijing introduced a five per cent tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in an attempt to help save the country’s forests

30: The number of different animal penises on the menu at Guolizhuang, Beijing’s ‘penis emporium’. A yak’s costs about £15, while a tiger’s (which must be pre-ordered) will set you back £3,000

* A British pound is worth about $2 U.S.

Comments

[A B]

"180: The number of foreign press correspondents arrested or harassed in 2007"

This number is the one that jumps out as the most suspect.

First, while arrested is pretty clearly defined legally, "harassed" is something that is totally arbitrary unless carefully operationalized.

If you counted the incidents after the Tibet incidents (i.e. nasty phone calls to bureaus, death threats, etc.) the number would seem to be way too low.

There also appear to be no distinction between "harassment" by individuals, groups, government, or any way to ascertain whether the "harassment" was caused by the reporter.

I would say that if a reporter got kicked by a security guard for, e.g., Britney Spears while trying to stick a camera up her.... would not necessarily constitute an incident of "harassment" of the press, and certainly not one where any government was involved.

While it does not involve the 2007 year, the 2005 incident involving a certain journalist for the Guardian I would also not count as "harassment".

Of all the numbers presented here, prima facie, this is the most suspect one in the lot.

Could it be that journalist cannot be relied upon to keep fair, honest, accurate, statistics about incidents involving themselves?

It's OK, Tim, we are all just human after all....

[shenqh]

The number of people in jail is about one in every thousand. In USA, the number of people in jail is one for every 99.

[A B]

You forgot to add that the % of the US jail population that is black is something like 60% in local, not including federal prisons.

Something like 4.7% of all blacks are in jail at any given time in the USA.

China need to match those rates for rebellious Tibetans?

[shenqh]

The much higher number of blacks in jail is a suggestion of race discrimination. No nation can say it is perfect.

[A B]

It gets better than just the number of blacks in prison.

Blacks predominantly use crack cocaine, while whites predominantly use cocaine powder.

The stuff is identical chemically, but the penalties are drastically different:

"Congress set forth different mandatory penalties for cocaine and crack cocaine, with significantly higher punishments for crack cocaine offenses. There is a 5-year minimum prison penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving 5 grams or more of crack cocaine or 500 grams or more of powder cocaine and a 10-year mandatory minimum penalty for a first-time trafficking offense involving 50 grams or more of crack cocaine or 5,000 grams or more of powder cocaine." Source: US News

With laws like this, is it a surprise that there are a lot more blacks in jail?

It is amusing that this kind of different treatment, for all practical purposes by race does not draw international condemnation.

[A B]

From Washington Post:

"One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!""

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051203014.html?hpid=topnews