After a three-month break, China has resumed importing Iranian fuel oil, a practice that has helped it avoid U.S. sanctions designed to punish countries that import crude oil from Iran.
The restructuring of the economy and resulting efficiency gains have contributed to a more than tenfold increase in GDP since 1978.
Deterioration in the environment – notably air pollution, soil erosion, and the steady fall of the water table, especially in the north – is another long-term problem.
The country’s per capita income was at $6,567 (IMF, 98th) in 2009.
Available energy is insufficient to run at fully installed industrial capacity, and the transport system is inadequate to move sufficient quantities of such critical items as coal.
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 technological level and quality standards of its industry as a whole are still fairly low, notwithstanding a marked change since 2000, spurred in part by foreign investment.
Over the years, large subsidies were built into the price structure, and these subsidies grew substantially in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Both forums will start on Tuesday.
Last year was the eighth consecutive year that the nation’s ODI had grown.
It also aims to sell more than 15 million of the most fuel-efficient vehicles in the world each year by then.
Although China is still a developing country with a relatively low per capita income, it has experienced tremendous economic growth since the late 1970s.
Despite initial gains in farmers’ incomes in the early 1980s, taxes and fees have increasingly made farming an unprofitable occupation, and because the state owns all land farmers have at times been easily evicted when croplands are sought by developers.
China is the world’s largest producer of rice and wheat and a major producer of sweet potatoes, sorghum, millet, barley, peanuts, corn, soybeans, and potatoes.
Fish and pork supply most of the animal protein in the Chinese diet.
There are also extensive iron-ore deposits; the largest mines are at Anshan and Benxi, in Liaoning province.
There are large deposits of uranium in the northwest, especially in Xinjiang; there are also mines in Jiangxi and Guangdong provs.
China also has extensive hydroelectric energy potential, notably in Yunnan, W Sichuan, and E Tibet, although hydroelectric power accounts for only 5% of the country’s total energy production.
After the 1960s, the emphasis was on regional self-sufficiency, and many factories sprang up in rural areas.
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Sanction Side-step: Iranian Oil Flows Back into China
