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China Fact Sheet
Spanning 9.6 million square km (3.7 million square miles) from the Tibetan plateau to the East China Sea, China is the world's fourth-largest country after Russia, Canada and the United States.2 China is home to about one fifth of the world's population, with a staggering 1.29 billion people.3 Mao Zedong's decision, supported by the leadership of China's communist party, to launch the "Great Leap Forward" (GLP) campaign, aiming to use Communist fervour to modernise China, brought economic ruin and famine in one fell swoop.4 Between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961 some 30 million Chinese starved to death and about the same number of births were lost or postponed as a result of the GLP.5 During the GLP, peasants were forced to abandon their private food production and newly formed agricultural communes, which at that time was the source of more than 80% of China's food energy.6 China's one child policy was established by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979 to limit communist China's population growth.7 In urban areas, where the one-child policy is strictly enforced, a second child may be denied medical and educational services, parents are likely to face a fine equivalent to ten years' wages, and may even lose their jobs.8 There are approximately 13.5 million university students in China of which 263,000, or 19%, are from poor families.9 Only about one-third of the nation's primary school students gain access to some secondary education, while less than 2 percent ever attend a regular university.10 |
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Machu Picchu