When I moved to Beijing years ago, one of my Chinese colleagues at the BBC told me something I’ve never forgotten: “China is always about the numbers.”
Therefore, to understand what is happening inside China at the moment, at the BBC we chose eight issues to shed light on characteristics and trends that dominate the Asian giant.
But we didn’t do it alone, we went to specialists and experts on what is happening in this nation.
Why eight?
Because it is considered the luckiest number in China.
And these eight figures tell us about vastness, singularities and even dragons.
So let’s get started.
35
When the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Chinese lived to an average age of 35 years..
As a point of comparison, that same year in the United States life expectancy was 65 for men and 70 for women.
Now, the average person in China can expect to live to just over 78 years old.
That’s more than in the US.
The increase in life expectancy in China reveals how quickly life has transformed in a relatively short period of time.
“This figure is important for the Chinese, because they really care about longevity,” explains journalist Yang Yi.
“In 1949, when the new nation was founded, the Chinese people had just gone through the two most important wars: World War II and the Civil War. That is why the middle age was too short.
“But by the time the 1980s rolled around, China was beginning economic reform, and older people were planning how they would spend the next two or even three decades enjoying their retirement.”
“In 1994, I was 5 years old and my grandparents retired, and I remember how much I loved their life: they could watch TV, they did morning exercises… My mom told me, ‘When you’re old, you’ll enjoy that kind of joy.’
“They were from the first generation to work their entire lives in the communist era.
“They always worked for a state company, which covered everything related to their lives, especially their retirement payments.
“So It was a very different generation in all of Chinese history“.
9
9 is the number of years that the marriage rate has been decreasing.
We asked Dr. Leta Hong Fincher, author of “Excess Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China,” what that number tells us.
“That the marriage rate has fallen for 9 consecutive years is a long time.
“That decline is largely coming from young women, especially those who have gone to college and who simply no longer want to get married.”
What led to this change in attitude toward marriage?
“Partly it comes from the State, from government regulations.
“The government has made it much more difficult to get divorced.”
“Another thing that was very important is that in 2011 there was a big legal change regarding marital property, which dealt a big blow to women’s economic rights in marriage.”
Has the government tried to reverse that trend by encouraging people to get married?
“Absolutely, and for a long time, especially since 2007, when she launched the propaganda campaign about so-called ‘leftover women’, a deliberate attempt to shame educated single women and make them feel that they really have to get married.”
Fincher doubts marriage rates will recover significantly, although China’s ruler Xi Jinping recently spoke of more proactively encouraging a culture of marriage and parenting.
6.39
This number was suggested by Tessa Wong, digital journalist at BBC News Asia, from Singapore.
“That’s China’s birth rate. Last year was the second year in a row that the population declined.
“But they hope things will change this year, since it is the year of the Dragon.
“It is considered the luckiest year to be born and many couples have been planning to have ‘dragon babies’, and are sharing tips online on how to conceive.
“Now, there may not be a big difference.
“In the past, Dragon year birth rate increases were minuscule, but For China these days, every baby counts“.
3
This number gives us a glimpse of how vast the trading industry is. online in China.
3 is the number of seconds the most popular seller in China needed to show a product on her live broadcasts before that sales method was banned.
“Her name is Zheng Xiang Xiang earned the nickname of the queen of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok,” says BBC Chinese media analyst Kerry Allen.
During his live broadcasts, an assistant would hand him boxes from which he removed everything from jackets and brooms to cameras and sanitary napkins.
He would hold them, say the price, and get rid of them, in a matter of seconds, to take another, and another, and another…
“China has a huge e-commerce live streaming industry: in the first half of 2023 alone there were more than 110 million streams.
“So people have to find a way to differentiate themselves. Many depend on their appearance. Others, like in your case, do something incredibly crazy, and surprise those who see them.”
The crazy thing worked for him.
Zheng Xiang Xiang went viral, amassed 500 million followers and several media outlets reported that he sold up to US$18 million in one week.
Following its viral success, Douyin created a new rule that prohibits this type of sale and any other that shows products with little or no information in a live broadcast.
“I have the feeling that the government was concerned about this sales tactic because the items could be defective or cause problems, hence the new regulations, which came into force at the end of October 2023.”
2
Every two years, China produces and uses more cement than the US in the entire 20th century.
That is a fact that is often spread on the internet.
To Hannah Ritchie, who works for the online scientific publication Our World in Datacaught his attention, so he did some research on his own.
“I started out a little skeptical about that statistic because it seemed so far-fetched, so I checked the numbers at the US Geological Survey, which tracks global cement production.
“Turns out it’s true.”.
“It is an important figure because it tells us some stories about China.
“And the first and most obvious is the speed with which China is industrializing.
“China has been growing very rapidly economically, and what we tend to see when that happens is that countries start to urbanize very quickly.
“People tend to move from rural areas to cities, and that requires a lot of infrastructure: roads, bridges, buildings.
“That has led to a huge boom in cement production.”
But some might say there is a difference between what China produces cement and what it uses.
Could it be that it exports part of the cement it produces?
“Yes, I asked myself that question too.
“But actually, when you break down the numbers, the amount that China exports is actually very, very small.
“Therefore, most of the cement that China is producing is consumed by the country’s infrastructure,” confirms Ritchie.
1,000,000
Some figures can be difficult to pin down in China. That’s true in the western Xinjiang region.
The facts surrounding China’s persecuted Muslim Uighur population within Xinjiang are very difficult to verify.
And they tell stories of torture and imprisonment on a grand scale.
In 2018, the United Nations said there were credible reports that more than one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were being held in detention centers in Xinjiang.
In 2022, a UN report included research estimating that between 10 and 20% of Xinjiang’s adult ethnic population had been detained in such centers.
“Even though people were reporting about the massive arrests, we didn’t really manage to get the attention of the international community until the UN recognized that million,” laments Uyghur activist Rahima Mahmut.
Speaking about the Uyghurs and their situation, he noted that “we are Muslims, we are Turks. We speak the Uyghur language, which is very similar to Uzbek languages.
“Xinjiang was colonized by China and there has been a lot of resistance because the policies that were implemented were very discriminatory.”
It is estimated that around 2016 or so, China began opening a network of detention camps
“Well, their detention centers were always there, but they built large-scale concentration camps. Some can hold up to 30,000 people.”
Beijing assures that it is not doing anything wrong in these places, which are retraining centers, as they call them, and people can come and go as they wish.
“They say they are re-education centers and all that, but satellite images show barbed wire and layers of security.
“And we have many testimonies from survivors about torture, food deprivation, overcrowded facilities; that they were forced to denounce their religion, their language and forced confessions, sterilizations and abortions.
“We have heard many stories of people who were freed because they had connections abroad.”
Rahima Mahmut left in 2000 and last year received news that one of her sisters had died, and a brother, who had been in three detention centers was released due to serious health problems.
“I have eight siblings left and the person who gave me this information told me not to contact any of them for their safety.
“It’s sad. It’s hard”.
7
So far we’ve cited a lot of figures, ranging from demographics to infrastructure, but we still haven’t talked much about who’s really in charge in China.
It’s a complicated question.
Between the Communist Party and the Chinese government, which operates alongside it, there is an entire pyramid of officials, including those in local cities, those in provinces that are larger than European countries, all the way up to the central government in Beijing.
Right at the top of that pyramid is the Politburo Standing Committee, with seven men (there has never been a woman), including China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has gone.
Who are the mysterious seven? A question I put to Yu Jie, senior China researcher at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
“The Magnificent Seven, who are at the top of Chinese politics, are close allies and confidants of President Xi, and decide almost all policies of the state, as well as the party.
“That implies that these men, who run the second largest economy in the world, are very important.”
But, How do they get a seat at that table?
“The first thing is political loyalty; They have to be loyal to the presidency and also to the party.
“Second, they represent a different geographic area.
“And, thirdly, each of them specializes in a political field.”
Now, some think that with Xi being so powerful, we should have reserved a number for him: 1.
But not. Our last issue is dedicated to another powerful creature.
1
This is the year of the Dragon, the only mythical creature of the Chinese zodiac.
What makes it so special?
“It is the best among the zodiac animals in the minds of the Chinese people, because it is imaginary,” explains Yang Yi.
“It combines different elements of the best characteristics of other animals: it can fly, swim, walk… the dragon can do anything.”
There are 12 animals that alternate each lunar new year: the rat, the ox, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the monkey, the rooster, the dog and the pig.
But the dragon reigns supreme as the most powerful and desired, predicting prosperity and good luck.
Its importance goes beyond the zodiac; After thousands of years of Chinese folklore, the dragon became an emblem of benevolent divinity, imperial power and unity.
Wise and powerful, he symbolizes courage, confidence and adventure, and represents success and majesty.
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