China population : result of latest national census released Thursday Yong-Soo Eun, Hanyang University

China: Background information

Before addressing the food for thoughts proposed earlier, lets briefly review a basic
question of what kind of country China is, starting with territory and population.

China occupies an extensive territory. It is the fourth largest country in the world and the largest
country located in Asia. China has more people than any other country: 1.4 billion, equivalent to
about 20% of the total world population. There are a lot of ethnic groups in China. The
population of China consists of about 56 ethnic groups. Maintaining territorial integrity has thus
been a key objective for the Chinese government. This issues feature in many of the
relationships with the fourteen countries that share land borders with China. Ensuring basic
living standards for Chinas large population is also a major objective for the Chinese
government.

The political party in China is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its current leader is
President XI Jinping. CCP has ruled the country since 1949, and political power is concentrated
in the higher levels of CCP; decision-making process often focuses on the role of the leader.

China is one of the worlds few remaining socialist states openly endorsing communism.
Politburo members have never faced competitive election. The politburo controls three
important bodies; these are the Military Affairs Commission, which controls the armed forces;
the National Peoples Congress, or parliament; and the State Council, the governments
administrative arm.

South Korea and China normalized diplomatic relations in 1992, since then there have been
rapid and significant developments in the bilateral relations. For example, China is the largest
trading partner of South Korea: the bilateral trade between them reached about US$227 billion
in 2015, which means that China accounted for more than 25 percent of South Koreas total
exports. Meanwhile, in that year, South Korea, as Asias fourth-largest economy, became
second-largest trading partner of China. The trade and investment between the two countries
are highly likely to continue to grow, with the recent Korea-China FTA in effect (seeChina-Korea
FTA)