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Located in East Asia, China is the largest of all Asian countries and has the largest population of any country in the world. Occupying nearly the entire East Asian landmass, it occupies approximately one-fourteenth of the land area of the Earth. Among the major countries of the world, China is surpassed in area by only Russia and Canada, and it is almost as large as the whole of Europe. Economic Background Despite China's size, the wealth of its resources, and the fact that about one-fifth of the world's population lives within its borders, its role in the world economy was relatively small until late in the 20th century. However, since the late 1970s China has dramatically increased its interaction with the international economy, and it has become a dominant figure in world trade. Both China's foreign trade and its gross national product (GNP) have experienced sustained and rapid growth, especially since foreign-owned firms began using China as an export platform for goods manufactured there. The Chinese economy thus has been in a state of transition since the late 1970s as the country has moved away from a Soviet-type economic system. Agriculture has been decollectivized, the nonagricultural private sector has grown rapidly, and government priorities have shifted toward light and high-technology, rather than heavy, industries. Nevertheless, key bottlenecks have continued to constrain growth. Available energy has not been sufficient to run all of the country's installed industrial capacity, the transport system has remained inadequate to move sufficient quantities of such critical commodities as coal, and the communications system has not been able to meet the needs of a centrally planned economy of China's size and complexity. China is the world's largest producer of rice and is among the principal sources of wheat, corn (maize), tobacco, soybeans, peanuts (groundnuts), and cotton. The country is one of the world's largest producers of a number of industrial and mineral products—including cotton cloth, tungsten, and antimony—and is an important producer of cotton yarn, coal, crude oil, and a number of other products. Its mineral resources are probably among the richest in the world but are only partially developed. China has acquired some highly sophisticated production facilities through foreign investment and joint ventures with foreign partners. The technological level and quality standards of many of its industries have improved rapidly and dramatically. The labor force and the pricing system are still areas of concern. Underemployment is common in both urban and rural areas, and there is a strong fear of the disruptive effects that widespread unemployment could cause. The prices of some key commodities, especially of industrial raw materials and major industrial products, are still determined by the state, although the proportion of these commodities under state control continues to decline. A major exception is energy, which the government continues to regulate. China's increasing contact with the international economy and its growing use of market forces to govern the domestic allocation of goods have exacerbated this problem. Over the years, large subsidies were built into the price structure, and these subsidies grew substantially from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, when subsidies began to be eliminated. A significant factor was China's acceptance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, which carried with it stipulations about further economic liberalization and government deregulation. Political Background With more than 4,000 years of recorded history, China is one of the few existing countries that also flourished economically and culturally in the earliest stages of world civilization. Indeed, despite the political and social upheavals that frequently have ravaged the country, China is unique among nations in its longevity and resilience as a discrete politico-cultural unit. Much of China's cultural development has been accomplished with relatively little outside influence, the introduction of Buddhism from India constituting a major exception. Even when the country was penetrated by such “barbarian?peoples as the Manchu, these groups soon became largely absorbed into the fabric of Han Chinese culture. This relative isolation from the outside world made possible over the centuries the flowering and refinement of the Chinese culture, but it also left China ill prepared to cope with that world when, from the mid-19th century, it was confronted by technologically superior foreign nations. There followed a century of decline and decrepitude, as China found itself relatively helpless in the face of a foreign onslaught. The trauma of this external challenge became the catalyst for a revolution that began in the early 20th century against the old regime and culminated in the establishment of a communist government in 1949. This event reshaped global political geography, and China has since come to rank among the most influential countries in the world. Central to China's long-enduring identity as a unitary country is the province, or sheng (“secretariat?. The provinces are traceable in their current form to the Tang dynasty (AD 618?07). Over the centuries, provinces gained in importance as centres of political and economic authority and increasingly became the focus of regional identification and loyalty. Provincial power reached its peak in the first two decades of the 20th century, but, since the establishment of the People's Republic, that power has been curtailed by a strong central leadership in Beijing. Nonetheless, while the Chinese state has remained unitary in form, the vast size and population of China's provinces—which are comparable to large and midsize nations—dictate their continuing importance as a level of subnational administration. Despite its size, the People's Republic of China is organized along unitary rather than federal principles. Both the government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; Pinyin: Zhongguo Gongchan Dang; Wade-Giles romanization: Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an Tang), moreover, operate “from the top down,?arrogating to the “Centre?all powers that are not explicitly delegated to lower levels. To run the country, the government and the CCP have established roughly parallel national bureaucracies extending from Beijing down to local levels. These bureaucracies are assisted by various “mass organizations”—e.g., trade unions, a youth league, women's associations, and writers' and other professional associations—that encompass key sectors of the population. These organizations, with their extremely large memberships, have generally served as transmission lines for communicating and uniformly implementing policies affecting their members. No voluntary associations are permitted to function that are wholly independent of CCP and government leadership. Current Events: Energy Consumption is well endowed with mineral resources, and more than three dozen minerals have proven economically important reserves. The country has rich overall energy potential, but most of it remains to be developed. In addition, the geographical distribution of energy places most of these resources far from their major industrial users. Basically, the Northeast is rich in coal and petroleum, the central part of North China has abundant coal, and the southwest has great hydroelectric potential. However, the industrialized regions around Guangzhou (Canton) and the lower Yangtze region around Shanghai have too little energy, while there is little industry located near major energy resource areas other than in the southern part of the Northeast. Thus, although energy production has expanded rapidly, it has continued to fall short of demand, and China has been purchasing increasing quantities of foreign petroleum and natural gas. China's energy production has grown rapidly since 1980, but it has continued to fall considerably short of demand. This is partly because energy prices were long held so low that industries had few incentives to conserve. Increasingly, however, demand has outstripped supply. In addition, it has often been necessary to transport fuels (notably coal) great distances from points of production to consumption. Coal provides about two-thirds of China's energy consumption, although its proportion is slowly declining. Petroleum production, which grew rapidly from an extremely low base in the early 1960s, has increased much more gradually from 1980. Natural gas production still constitutes only a small (though increasing) fraction of overall energy production, but gas is supplanting coal as a domestic fuel in the major cities. China's electric-generating capacity has expanded dramatically since 1980, and the proportion allocated to domestic consumption also has grown considerably. Some four-fifths of all power generated is at thermal plants, with nearly all the rest at hydroelectric installations; only a tiny proportion is from nuclear energy, from plants located near Shanghai and Guangzhou. China's extensive river network and mountainous terrain provide ample potential for the production of hydroelectric power. Most of the total hydroelectric capacity is in the southwest—notably in Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, and Hubei—where coal supplies are poor but demand for energy is rapidly growing. The potential in the Northeast is fairly small; however, it was there that the first hydroelectric stations were built (by the Japanese). As a result of considerable seasonal fluctuations in rainfall, the flow of rivers tends to drop during the winter, forcing many power stations to operate at less than normal capacity, while in the summer, on the other hand, floods often interfere with production. The massive Three Gorges project on the Yangtze River east of Chongqing, involving the construction of a dam and reservoir (underway since 1994), began limited hydroelectric production in 2003. Cabinet Members EXECUTIVE YUAN Hu Jintao: President of China; Communist Party of China; since March 15, 2003; Wen Jiababo: Premier of the State Council; Communist Party of China Wu Yi: Vice Premier; Communist Party of China Zeng Peiyan: Vice Premier; Communist Party of China Hui Liangyu: Vice Premier; Communist Party of China MINISTRIES Head of Foreign Affairs Ministry: Francisco Ou Head of National Defense Ministry: Chen Chao-min Head of Finance Ministry: Ho Chih-Chin Head of Economic Affairs Ministry: Chii-Ming Yiin Head of Transpiration and Communications Ministry: Mao Chi-Kuo Work Cited "China -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia." Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Britannica Online. 05 Jan. 2009 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/111803/China.