China
Government, Economy, Culture, and Geography
Government
China has a Communist government. President HU Jintao and Premier WEN Jiabao are the leaders of the Executive branch in China. The legislative branch is called the National People's Congress or Quanguo Renmin Daibiao Dahui. The judicial branch contains all of the courts for the country. They passed their constitution on December 4, 1982. Citizens can vote when they are 18 years old.
Economy
The per capita GDP, or average salary of people in China is $9,100 per year. China's import partners are Japan 11.2%, South Korea 9.3%, US 6.8%, Germany 5.3%, Australia 4.6%. These are the countries that China buys goods from. China's export partners are US 17.1%, Hong Kong 14.1%, Japan 7.8%, South Korea 4.4%, Germany 4%. China grows and produces many crops and meats such as rice, wheat, potatoes, corn, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, apples, cotton, oilseed, pork, and fish. It is famous for these industries: mining and ore processing, iron, steel, aluminum, and other metals, coal; machine building; armaments; textiles and apparel; petroleum; cement; chemicals; fertilizers; consumer products, including footwear, toys, and electronics; food processing; transportation equipment, including automobiles, rail cars and locomotives, ships, and aircraft; telecommunications equipment, commercial space launch vehicles, and satellites. Its economy is made up of agriculture: 36.7%, industry: 28.7%, and services: 34.6%.
Culture
People living in China are called Chinese. The ethnic groups living there include Han Chinese 91.5%, Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uighur, Tujia, Yi, Mongol, Tibetan, Buyi, Dong, Yao, Korean, and other nationalities 8.5%. The languages they speak include Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects. The religions they believe include Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Christian 3%-4%, Muslim 1%-2%.
Geography
China is mostly mountains, high plateaus, and it has deserts in west, plains, deltas, and hills in the east. The natural resources of China insclude coal, iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, uranium,, hydropower. China has to deal with many natural disaster including typhoons (about five per year along southern and eastern coasts), damaging floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, and volcanic eruptions.