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Fernando & Lubin say, [Here are]15 Facts About China That Will Blow Your Mind!
There is both danger and good news in Chinas future and that future in some areas is already NOW--according to Vincent Fernando and Gus Lubin. - In this piece from THE BUSINESS INSIDER, The two AUTHORS have provided a wonderful list of insights on 21st Century China for us to discuss.--KAS
by Vincent Fernando, CFA -and -Gus
Lubin
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-facts-about-china-that-will-blow-your-mind-2010-2
Despite all the wild stories you have already heard about China, expect the nation to keep blowing your mind.
That's because not only is China enormous and highly diverse, but most importantly, it's rapidly changing.
Thus China's future already looks far different today than even five years ago. It's surely not your father's 'Red China', or even your older brother's 'Made in China'...
[1] By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities.
"[By 2025,] 40 billion square meters of floor space will be built -- in five million buildings. 50,000 of these buildings could be skyscrapers -- the equivalent of ten New York Cities."
Source:-Mckinsey, "Preparing for China's urban billion"
[2] -By 2030, China will add more new city-dwellers than the entire U.S. population.alt="By 2030, China will add more new city-dwellers than the entire U.S. population." class=slide-image v:shapes="_x0000_i1026">
[By 2030] China's cities will have added 350 million peopleXmore than the entire population of the United States today.
Source:-Mckinsey, "Preparing for China's urban billion"
[3] China already consumes twice as much steel as the US, Europe and Japan combined.
China is the steel market.
Even in 2010, as developed nation steel demand is expected to rebound, Chinese steel demand will still dwarf all other major economies.
This also means that China drives the seaborne iron ore and coking coal markets as well, as these commodities are key ingredients in steel.
Source: Business Insider, Posco Steel
[4] -If the Chinese, one day, use as much oil per person as Americans, then the world will need seven more Saudi Arabias to meet their demand.[5] There are already more Christians in China than Italy, and China is on track to become the largest center of Christianity in the world.
Due to the extremely rapid expansion of Christianity in China, there are now an estimated 54 million Christians in the country comprised of about 40 million Protestants and 14 million Catholics.
Meanwhile, Italy has just 60 million people in total, of which only 79% are Christian these days. Which means Italy has 47.4 million Christians, a full 12% less than China. It's partly because 16% of Italians are now irreligious.
Moreover, China's Christian population is set to grow far more rapidly than Italy's, or even much of the world's even.
"...is not going to stop-China from soon becoming home to the largest Christian population on the globe, says the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in an excellent and well-balanced article he recently wrote for the Great Britain-China Centre."
Source: -Wikipedia , -Shanghaist etc.
"Only Russia (48%), USA (42%), South Africa (41%) and Egypt (25%) remained sceptical about the scientific evidence that exists to support Darwins theory.
The results also show that a significant proportion of those people surveyed in the USA, South Africa and India (43%) believe that all life on Earth, including human life, has-always existed in its current form.
In all other countries, people in China (74%), Mexico (69%), Argentina (68%), Great Britain (63%) Russia, Spain (56%), and Egypt (52%) were of the view that more people thought that life on Earth, including human life,-evolved over time-either by a process guided by God or as a result of natural selection in which no God played a part."
Source: -British Council
[7] Chinese internet users are five times as likely to have blogs as Americans.
Yet these prolific bloggers are under the watchful eye of an internet police army:
"Although the existence of an-internet police force - estimated at more than 30,000- has been known for some time, attention has previously focused on their work as censors and monitors. Countless critical comments appear on bulletin boards of major portals such as Sohu and Sina only to be erased minutes, or sometimes just seconds, later. In the most recent case, all postings that blamed corrupt local officials or slow-moving police for the deaths of 88 children in floods last Friday were removed almost as soon as they appeared."
Source:-Business Insider, --The Guardian
[8] China has 150% more soldiers than America does, plus a high tech 'Kill Weapon' the U.S. can't deal with.
China has about 3.4 million active military personnel compared to America's 1.4 million. Moreover, in some key spaces, China might even have a tech advantage:
After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.
"The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of-destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike. Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that-it can evade tracking systems-to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and-reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes."
"If operational as is believed, the system marks the first time a ballistic missile has been successfully developed to attack vessels at sea.-Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.
Source:-U.S. Naval Institute
[9] China still hasn't rid itself of Europe's medieval plague.
"[2009:] China has ended a quarantine blockade around a remote northwestern-town hit by pneumonic plague, Xinhua news agency reported late on Saturday.
"The outbreak of the highly infectious disease killed three villagers around ZiketanTown in Qinghai province, Xinhua reported. But with no new infections reported for over a week, authorities decided to lift the blockade on the remote town of 10,000 in a heavily ethnic Tibetan area, Xinhua reported.-China experiences sporadic outbreaks of the plague, which is typically spread by rodents and fleas and can pass easily between people."
Some even suspect Chinese animal markets to be breeding grounds for new killer bugs.
"We face similar threats from other viruses and such epidemics can happen because we continue to have very crowded markets in China," said Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong.
[10] -40% of Chinese small businesses went bust or almost went bust during the world financial crisis.
"According to a report issued last week by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 20 per cent of small businesses had crashed and another 20 per cent went "to the brink of bankruptcy" during the climax of the global financial crisis from October 2008 to March last year.
"According to my research, to date, most of the 20 per cent on the brink of failure have been revived thanks to the recovering economy," said Chen Naixing, economist and director of the academy's small business research centre."
Source: -The Australian (Jan 2010)
[11] -China executes three times as many people as the rest of the world COMBINED... and uses mobile execution vans for efficiency.
"[China carries out] almost three times as many as the rest of the world put together, according to the most conservative estimate by Amnesty International. In 2008, the group confirmed 1,718 executions through news reports and public documents, but many others are not reported. Some analysts say the figure may be above 6,000. The exact number is a state secret."
Many executions are done on the road using vehicles such as those designed by Jinguan Motors:
"Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely.The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride."
Source:-The Guardian, -USA Today
[12] China averages 274 protests PER DAY.
"Although there are an estimated 100,000 mass protests in China each year, the vast majority occur in the countryside among desperate and angry peasants, and are quickly suppressed and censored."
Source: -The Telegraph
[13] When you buy Chinese stocks, you are basically financing the Chinese government. Eight of Shanghai's top ten stocks are state-controlled arms of the government.
Eight of the ten largest stocks on the -Shanghai Stock Exchange -are nothing but state-controlled companies:
PetroChina
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
Sinopec
-
-Bank of China
-China Shenhua Energy Company
-
-China Life Insurance Company
-Bank of Communications
Source:-Wikipedia etc.
[14] -50% of counterfeit goods come from China.
" China was the main source country for [intellectual property rights] infringing articles with 54% of the total amount."
"CD/DVD was the top category of articles detained with a total amount of 79 million, which accounted for 44% of the entire amount, followed by cigarettes (23%) and clothing and accessories (10%)."
Source:-European Commission Report
[15] The majority of Chinese drink polluted water.
China has 20% of the worlds population but only 7% of global water resources.
To make matters worse, 90% of cities groundwater and 75% of rivers and lakes are polluted according to the World Bank.
This means that 700 million people drink contaminated water every day.
Source:-Wikipedia , World Bank
NOTE
Although the authors of this article overuse Wikipedia, there are other corroborating -reports to be found online.
