History and Culture of the People’s Republic of China

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The People’s Republic of China is a country with one of the richest cultural backgrounds and the largest population in the world with 1,338,612,968 people. It holds “1/5 of the world’s population” (Banister 2). Located in eastern Asia, it is the fourth largest country with a total area of 9,596,960 sq km and the second largest electricity consumer and exporter after the U.S. The vast amount of natural resources make China one of the leading manufacturers of the worlds products from raw materials such as steel and iron to finished goods as toys, various machinery, textiles and electronics. I choose the People’s Republic of China because I have always been intrigued with the history and culture of the Chinese people. China is incessantly changing and has experienced more changes in the last 50 years than any other Asian country. The one factor that has affected population growth is the 1979 one child policy implanted by Deng Xiaoping. It is said to be the largest population control effort in history (Lang). The policy is said to have avoided “250 million live births” (BBC NEWS) and has since then been able to keep the Chinese population under control. Regarding culture, the use of chopsticks is a commonly known main cultural trait of Chinese people. They are also known to be very virtuous, highly respectful to eachother and a disciplined set of people. Chinese culture operates on the teachings of Confucius who stresses the importance of family, humaneness, sincerity and public mortality. In the 1980’s, China underwent rapid economic growth and now most of its economic activities are in the primary and secondary sector such as the mining and construction. With its vast population (which helps provide cheap labour) China has been abl... ... middle of paper ... ...o’s death, the government realized that Mao’s policies were inadequate and unsustainable in the real world the “… success of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore […] may have led to the People’s Republic of China to believe that it can have similar success by modifying its system” (Tisdell 9) In conclusion, the population and economic activity are interrelated. With a large population, such as China’s manufacturing, mining, construction, agriculture is the dominant economic activity because the population is big bringing cheap labour and cheap production cost. Whereas if the population is small, very likely that quaternary activities such researchers, consultant groups would be the dominant economic activity. In all, population and economy are one in the same … one cannot exist without the other. Behind every great economy is a population

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