Global News Podcast - Special episode: Eight Numbers To Understand China

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Why are millions of apartments in China sitting empty? How has the country managed to produce as much cement in two years as the US did in the last century? For a special edition celebrating the Lunar New Year, the BBC's Asia Pacific editor Celia Hatton looks at the significance of eight numbers representing different aspects of modern China. Celia teams up with some of the BBC's China correspondents and analysts to look at topics ranging from China's marriage rates to its zodiac calendar.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Happy Lunar New Year, the year of the dragon.

I'm Celia Hatton, Asia-Pacific editor for the BBC. When I first moved to Beijing years ago, something one of my Chinese colleagues, Lily, said has always stuck with me. In China, she explained, it always comes back to the numbers. Numbers and data can shed light on the big trends, things that are happening inside China right now. So with that in mind, welcome to 8 Numbers to Understand China. We've chosen 8 special numbers and gathered a host of fascinating people to let us in on the wider meaning behind each of them. Why fewer people are getting married, why millions of

apartments are sitting empty, and even why there's only one mythical creature on the Chinese zodiac. Why eight? It's a lucky number in China, and it surfaces a lot this time of year. So let's get going. Our first number, the number 35, China's life expectancy back in 1949 when the country was founded. That's right. Chinese people lived to an average age of 35 when the People's Republic came into being. Now, the average person in China can expect to live to just over 78. That's higher than the U.S. The rise in China's life expectancy reveals just how

quickly life there has transformed within a relatively short span of time. And as Chinese broadcaster Yang Yi explains, older generations plan their lives far differently now. This figure is matters for Chinese people because I think the Chinese people really care about live longer or longevity. So I think it is like kind of evidence or proof to show, you know, how like Chinese people's life changing a lot in the past six decades. Back in 1949, when these new nations founded, the Chinese people just went through the two major wars, the Second World War and the Civil War. So that is why the average age is too short.

But when the time goes to the 1980s, China is starting their economic reform. The other people now like retirement, they were playing for how they will spend the next two or even three decades to enjoy their retirement. And what about your family? Do you see that reflected in your family in terms of what your grandparents might have experienced? Yes, absolutely. I still remember the year of 1994 is my grandparents retired. At that year, I was just age of five. I just remember my grandparents enjoyed their very heavy life.

They could watch TV in the morning. They could do the morning exercises. So I still remember when I was very young, I just loved my grandparents' life. But, you know, my mom usually tells me that when you're old, you will get this kind of joyful like your grandpa or grandma. But what's interesting is that your grandparents will probably – their grandparents didn't have that same experience, right? They were probably some of the first to really be able to retire and be able to look forward to a nice long retirement, right? Yes. For my grandparents, I think they are the first generation.

Their whole career experience are all in this new country. So it's very different. Many of their peers, they spend their whole life working for a state-owned company. The state-owned company will cover everything about your life, especially like paying your retirement. So I think for them, yeah, they're truly the first different generation in the whole Chinese history. Broadcaster Yang Yi, on to our next number. The next number is nine.

The number of years China's marriage rate has been declining. I am Leita Hong Fincher. I'm the author of a book called Left Over Women, The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. So Leita, nine years of decline in the marriage rate. Can you talk to us about that figure and what it tells us? Well, China's marriage rate has fallen for nine straight years, which is a very long time. That decline is coming to a large extent from young women, especially those who've gone to college, who just don't want to get married anymore. What led to this change in

attitude towards marriage? What fueled it? Partly, it's coming from the state, from government regulations. The government has actually made it a lot more difficult to get a divorce. Another thing that was really important is that in 2011, there was a big legal change regarding marital property. The effect of the change was that marital property belongs to the person who purchased the property. And because property has tended to be owned solely by men in China, all these married women often don't have their names on the property deeds of marital property. So if they divorce, these women don't get any share of the marital property. So that's a huge blow to women's economic rights in marriage. Is the government trying to reverse this? Is it trying to encourage people to get married?

Absolutely. And the thing is, the government has been trying to push especially educated young women into marriage for a long time, especially since 2007, when the government launched this propaganda campaign about so-called leftover women. A deliberate attempt to shame single educated women and to make them feel like they really have to get married or no man is going to want to marry them. Do you think anything might change this trajectory? We've seen nine years of a decline in marriage rates. Nine consecutive years of decline is a very long time. But I just don't see marriage and birth rates just rebounding really significantly. Actually, just a few months ago, Xi Jinping, who's the ruler of China, actually said that China has to become more of a marriage and child-rearing culture and that the government wants to more proactively encourage marriage and childbirth.

Leta Hong Fincher, author of Leftover Women. Time to hear some of our messages. Hi Celia, it's Tessa Wong from the Asia Online team in Singapore. Now, the number I'd like to choose is 6.39. That's China's birth rate last year. It was the second year running that the population shrank. But they're hoping that things will turn around this year. That's because it's the year of the dragon. It's considered the luckiest year to be born in. So many couples have been planning to have dragon babies and they're

sharing tips online on how to conceive. Now, it may not make a huge difference. In the past, dragon year birth rate bumps were minuscule. But for China these days, every baby counts. Hi, Global News Podcast. I'm Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, Asia correspondent based in Taipei. And the number I've chosen is 12, because that's the current number of countries that officially recognise Taiwan, if you include the Vatican, which isn't really a country. But never mind. Why is it significant?

Well, because until recently, the number was 13, and it could soon be 11. The tiny state of Nauru switched to Beijing last month, and the equally tiny Pacific state of Tuvalu could be next. Taiwan still has some close political allies, but most of the micro-states that stick with Taiwan arguably do so for the rather crude reason that Taipei gives them lots of money. China can now match, or often overmatch, Taiwan's financial inducements. It's been reported that Beijing promised Nauru 100 million US dollars to get it to switch recognition. China's displeasure at Taiwan again electing a president from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party

will likely lead to Beijing luring away more of Taiwan's allies in the coming months. Always good to hear from our correspondents. On to our next number. 7.2 million, the number of vacant unsold apartments in mainland China. 7.2 million, a bit of a sticky number for Chinese officials because for every empty apartment, there's often an investor who's lost money or an embarrassed Chinese official who gave the OK to a building project, thinking the economy would take off in a place that didn't actually attract many people. The number of empty, unfinished or unsold dwellings is a sensitive number in China, so it's rare to hear Chinese officials say anything like this.

How many vacant homes are there now? Each expert gives a very different number, with the most extreme believing the current number of vacant homes are enough for three billion people. That's He Kang, former deputy head of the Statistics Bureau. Other, more conservative estimates put the number of empty but finished apartments or flats at 7.2 million. That's still a huge figure. For more, we're turning back to Yang Yi. Why so many unsold empty places? Usually it's in what's so-called the second or third tiers of Chinese cities. It is not the famous cities as you know, like Beijing, Shanghai. In the central Shanghai, there's no room, it's empty. But maybe if you see the city called Nanchang,

it is located in the middle of China, and it has a highly empty housing rate. So in the past several years, the government believed they could sell more lands and attract the property enterprises to build new house here. But because for the government, it is a big income about to sell the land.

But they do not care about the future because maybe for these cities, no enough younger people work there or live there. They do not need so many houses and flats. So that is why they're empty now. So people are buying, investing in these new apartments in kind of newer cities, new developments, in the belief that at some point, they'll be in demand, that they'll be busy. Is that the idea? Yes, I think in the past two decades in China, I think one thing I think that everyone truly believe is the housing price will continuously rising. So I think it's a strong confidence for everyone,

not just the people who buy it, as well as the people who build it. For the property enterprises, they also believe the housing price will continuously rise. So many people see the housing market is a good thing to invest. Yang Yi. Hello, this is Mickey Bristow. I'm the BBC's other Asia-Pacific editor. My number is... well, I'm not sure what my number is. I want to know how many people were killed

by the Chinese army around Tiananmen Square in June 1989 following mass protests. Hundreds might have died, perhaps thousands, but there's no official publicly available figure. The Chinese government simply hasn't released one. I've chosen this statistic to illustrate the secrecy that often surrounds numbers in China.

The Communist Party wants to control the narrative of just about everything and some numbers, like this one, would tell a story it doesn't want to be heard. So the number of dead around Tiananmen Square is a number that doesn't exist. Mickey brings us to an interesting point. Let's pause for a moment here, just to acknowledge the idea that numbers can be manipulated. That's true when it comes to China. Take the country's youth unemployment figure, measuring the number of young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are out of work. That jobless number soared last year, just as the Chinese economy was tanking,

reaching a high of 21.3% last June. That's more than one in five young people. And then, the government abruptly stopped publishing the data. The youth unemployment number wasn't being calculated correctly, explained China's State Statistics Bureau. The data had included students who were looking for jobs before they graduated, and some officials thought that wasn't accurate. But many in the public thought the decision to pull the data was fishy, and they complained online. Months of silence followed, and then a new youth unemployment number was released in January.

A new calculation method brought the number down to 14.9%. It's a much lower number than before because it excludes those still in school. Case in point, numbers can sometimes be malleable, but they're still worth paying attention to, even just to ask why, when the Chinese economy isn't doing very well, the government decided to change how a number is calculated. Let's move on to our next example. Next in eight numbers to understand China, the number three, the number of seconds China's most popular live stream seller needed to display a product before that method of selling was banned. Hi, I'm Kerry Allen, and I'm a China media analyst at the BBC. OK, so Carrie, the next number we're going to discuss is three, three seconds.

And it relates to an online seller named Zheng Xiangxiang. Can you tell us who she is and how she was selling products online? So Zheng Xiangxiang, she gained the nickname the Queen of Douyin, Douyin being China's domestic version of TikTok. If you watch one of her live streams, a box just comes into view from one side of the screen, and she'll literally open the lid, hold an item up, say the price of it. For example, a T-shirt, you see the t-shirt. And then she literally just throws it off screen and another box appears from the other side

and she grabs it, opens the box, shows maybe a towel or some socks, throws the box off screen. It reminds me of game shows in the 1980s. It's bonkers. It is, yes. I mean, when I originally watched one of her videos, I was thinking that like a lot of online sellers, she will be selling luxury items, which are very popular in China. But China does have a huge live streaming industry. And actually, during the first half of 2023, there were more than 110 million e-commerce live streams.

So a lot of people are thinking, how do I become a bit different? So, you know, they rely on their appearances. Or in her case, they do something incredibly wacky like this. And people watching these live streams, they were just taken aback that you could sell an item so quickly, three seconds. But Chan has banned this method of selling now, right? Yes, it was very, I get the sense that the government was very nervous about this tactic of selling in such a way, because one of the things, these items being very cheap, they can be faulty items, there can be problems with them.

So yeah, these new regulations, they came into effect in late October. But her live streams now are very, very closely watched. And what she does instead is she takes a bit more time selling items. Cecilia, there's another number I want to flag up to you as well. And that is 404. When I was living in China, I'd see it all the time if I accidentally typed in Facebook, Google or Twitter platforms that are censored in the country. It's the error message that displays error 404. And it's become a number that's synonymous with secrecy and things the government doesn't want people to see. And do people try to get round this 404 number? They can do yes with a VPN if

they want to access platforms that the great firewall of China has censored. So a piece of software can allow them to circumvent censored websites. It's become a buzzword online where people basically say that they can't talk. So if they want to talk about a sensitive topic and they know that if doing so their message gets censored, they will literally say 404. It's a way of people almost saying, I can't speak openly. The BBC's Kerry Allen. Let's check our messages again. G'day, Global News Pod. I'm Stephen McDonnell in the Beijing Bureau, and my number is six for the

region's most famous here for spicy food. Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan and Guizhou. Some might also add dishes from Jiangxi and Guangxi as an extra. Whatever, spicy Chinese food can be a revelation if you've only ever tried the sweeter Chinese dishes from the south. And nothing goes better with tongue-numbing Sichuan peppers than a glass of Aussie red. I'm hungry now. Hi Global News Port, this is Martin Yip with BBC News Chinese in Hong Kong, and my pick is 23. So Britain handed Hong Kong back to China nearly 27 years ago. Under the terms of that deal called the Basic Law, Article 23 demands Hong Kong to write its own security law to protect China from things like espionage. Hong Kong tried to put a security law

in 2003, but the strict terms of that deal led to big street protests. Then after the massive 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations, China's communist government imposed its own version of the security law onto Hong Kong. Many activists and opposition politicians went to prison or are living in exile, and civil life has pretty much disappeared. Now Hong Kong's leader John Lee wants to answer to Beijing's demands to put in Hong Kong's own version of the security law and to criminalize even more things. And so Article 23 legislation is back on the agenda. Thanks to Stephen McDonald and Martin Yip. And on to our chosen numbers. The number two. China produced and used as much cement in two years as the US did in the last

century. That's a fact that was often thrown around on the internet. It caught the attention of Hannah Ritchie, who works for the online scientific publication Our World in Data. And so she did some digging of her own. First, I think I was a bit sceptical about that statistic because it seems very far-fetched. But yes, I checked the numbers. I went to the US Geological Survey who track global cement production. And it turns out that it's true. Every two years, China does produce more cement than the US did over the entire 20th century. Now, I think that's important for a few reasons. I think it tells us a few stories about China. I think just the first and the glaring one is how quickly China is industrialising. China has

been growing very quickly economically. And what we tend to see when countries grow very fast economically is they start to urbanise very quickly. People tend to move from rural areas into cities. And that just needs a lot of infrastructure. It needs roads. It needs bridges. It needs buildings. And that has led to this big boom in cement production. But some might say, isn't there a difference between China producing cement and China using cement? Couldn't it have exported some of that cement that it produced?

Yeah, I also had that question. I thought maybe China is just exporting it to the rest of the world and consuming very little of it. But actually, when you break down the numbers, the amount that China exports is actually very, very small. So most of the cement that China is producing is actually consuming in the infrastructure that it's building domestically. So Hannah, we talk a lot about China's use of resources, but there's a flip side to all of this, isn't there, when it comes to China's environmental record? Yes, we often talk about China's consumption of resources. We were talking about cement there, but there's also coal consumption, which has grown very rapidly in China. But there is a flip side to this where China is also moving extremely quickly on clean energy.

Just to give a few stats that might put this in perspective. So last year, China added enough solar and wind to power the UK or France. And that's just one year of installations would be enough to cover, you know, whole European countries. Another stat that might put that into context, so that in that year, China added more solar than the US has built in its entire history. So China is now moving extremely quickly on this clean energy, which is now starting to slightly tip its environmental record in the other way. And I think we'll actually just start to see really positive transitions here. Dr. Hannah Ritchie from

Our World in Data with a bit of good news coming from the numbers in China. The next number is more than 1 million. As we've already mentioned, some numbers can be difficult to pin down in China. That's true in the far western region of Xinjiang. Facts surrounding China's persecuted Muslim Uyghur population inside Xinjiang are very difficult to verify. They feature stories of torture and imprisonment on a vast scale. In 2018, the United Nations said there were credible reports that more than a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities were being held in detention centers in Xinjiang. In 2022, a UN report included research estimating that 10 to 20 percent of the adult ethnic population in Xinjiang had been detained in such centers. Those are serious allegations that I put to Uyghur campaigner Rahima Mahmoud.

Even though people repeated that this large scale of detention been happening, we couldn't really get attention from the international community until what you mentioned that UN in 2018 said that we acknowledge that over 1 million. And that's the time like the world started to know about Uyghur people, start to notice about what is happening. Can you tell us about your people? Tell us about the Uyghurs and what they're facing right now? Uyghurs, we are Muslim, we are Turkic, we speak Uyghur language, which is very similar to Uzbek languages. And because also the so-called Xinjiang, the new frontier is colonized by China, and there has been a lot of resistance, the policies that was implemented very

discriminative until last seven years, then we are facing genocide. So really, in the past, what starting around estimated around 2016, or so, that's when it's believed that China began opening up a network of detention centres, detention camps? Can you tell me more? Well, the detention centres were always there. But the concentration camps that they built, very, very large scale of concentration camps, some can hold up to 30,000 people. But Beijing would say these places that you have called concentration camps, they say we're not doing anything wrong. These are retraining centers, they call them. People can come and go as they like.

What would you say to that? They say it's re-education centers and all that. But satellite images showed it's with barbed wire layers and layers of this security. And also we had so many testimonies from the survivors about torture, about food deprivation, about how crowded the facilities are, how they were forced to denounce religion, denounce their language and forced sterilization, forced abortion, forced confessions. We have heard so many accounts of these people who were detained inside and later were released because they had foreign connections. You know, Rehema, we've been talking about these big numbers and what's been happening on a vast scale. But we can't forget, this is a really personal story for you as well. You have

a personal number as well. What would that be? So I have nine siblings when I left in 2000. After six years, didn't hear anything about what happened to them. And last year in April, I learned my eldest sister died. And my brother, who I spoke to back in 2017, was inside the camp in three different camps, was released because of severe health problems. I know now that I have eight siblings and the person who passed me this information said, make sure don't contact any of them for their safety. I simply don't have any information and it's sad, it's difficult. You know, during COVID, when people couldn't visit their family, at least they could speak to them over the phone, right?

And just imagine all the Uyghurs who are living in exile. And only when someone dies in the family, someone manages to pass on that information. Rahima Mahmood. Next in eight numbers to understand China, the number seven, the number of men who really rule China. We've gotten through lots of numbers so far, touching on everything from demographics to real estate. But we haven't yet talked much about who's really in charge in China. It's a complicated question. Between the Communist Party and the Chinese government, which runs alongside it,

there's a whole pyramid of officials in China, from local towns through to provinces that are bigger than European countries, right up to the central government in Beijing. But right at the top of that pyramid sits one committee with seven men, including China's top leader, Xi Jinping. So who are the mysterious seven? A question I put to Dr. Yu Jie. I'm Dr. Yu Jie. I'm a senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, a think tank based in London. So, Yu Jie, we're focusing now on the number seven. I'm a senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, a think tank based in London.

So, Yu Jie, we're focusing now on the number seven. That's the number of men who sit on the Politburo Standing Committee, which is a bit of a dull sounding term. But actually, that group of seven is very important in China, isn't it? Can you explain why? Absolutely. I mean, the magnificent seven sitting on the outpacks of the Chinese politics. Can you explain why? almost every single policy of the state, as well as the party. And that is make this seven men, which run the world's second largest economy become very important. I've seen from images that they dress in a similar way in the photos that have been released, a video have been

released of them. No women sitting at the table. Yes, I don't think there's ever been a woman. There has never been a case of women in the Standing Committee. I think this is also partially to do with the history of how the party has evolved. There seems to be unspoken rule that if they're going to recruit women, and that need to have a thorough evaluation. Wow. What unites the seven or the six and President Xi? How did they get to hold a seat at that table? First thing is the political loyalty. And of course, they are loyal to President Xi and has to be loyal to the party. And secondly, they also represent a different geographic areas of the country as well. And I think thirdly, and each of them specializing on one policy area.

So that's why we have this number seven. Now, some might think that Xi Jinping is so powerful that we really should have saved a number on this podcast just for him, the number one. But no, the number one, our last number, will be devoted to another powerful creature, the dragon. Let's not forget that this Lunar New Year is the year of the dragon. And the dragon is the only mythical creature on the Chinese zodiac. To explain why, here's Chinese feng shui master Angela Ang. There are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, and most of them are farm animals. And the dragon is the only mythical creature.

And I think it was purposely made this way. So first of all, being a mythical creature, that means that it will have superpowers that the other animals will not have. And in China, Huangdi, the first emperor, is known for being a dragon or like reborn from a dragon. If somebody is born in the year of the dragon, a lot of them can appear mysterious, imaginative, and ambiguous. So dragons have a certain charm about them. If you are born in the year of the dragon, it does not mean you're going to have an extra good year. It actually means you are against the year. Your cosmos is actually out of sync. That means this year, be careful of self-sabotage. That's right, Angela. So just to interject, so for example, my daughter is 12

this year. It's her year. She's the year of the dragon. And I know from my time in China that when it's your year, your zodiac year, you're expected to wear red at all times during that year or something red. Can you take us through that tradition and why it's recommended that you wear something red when it's your zodiac year? So Chinese New Year, there are certain colors that we will wear and certain colors that we will avoid. So you notice there's a lot of red because red is considered a lucky and auspicious color. During Chinese New Year, if you were older, you might give your child who's already 20 even, yet before they get married, a red envelope with money in it as good luck. And those who receive it get good luck. Those who give

get good luck. So there's something about the color red. Now, traditions vary, but what's your favorite part of the Lunar New Year celebrations? I think my favorite part is going to the parades and watching the celebrations. I absolutely love watching the lion dances, the excitement, the smell of firecrackers, lots of them. It is something you must experience. Well, thanks for joining us and Happy New Year to you, Angela. Xin nian kuai le. Xin nian kuai le. So I wish everybody a wonderful, auspicious new year. Thank you. And thanks to you for joining us for this special edition of the Global News Podcast, Eight Numbers to Understand China.

I'm Celia Hatton. This program was produced by Chantal Hartle. It was mixed by Holly Palmer. With extra thanks to Kerry Allen, Will Leonardo, and our correspondents, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, Tessa Wong, Martin Yip, Mickey Bristow, and Stephen McDonald. And thanks, too, to our program editor, Karen Martin. Happy Year of the Dragon to you all. Thank you. plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts

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