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Government & Economy

World Communities: China 5-8

Government and Economy

Communism
The Chinese government is based on communism. Communism is a government and an economy. The basic idea of communism is that everyone should have the same pay, same living arrangements, etc.

To make this happen, the government owned everything. In the country, the government owned the farms. In the cities, the government owned the businesses. Everybody worked for the government. That meant that everyone always had a job. Many people liked this kind of security.

There was a problem. The government couldn’t run all the companies and farms and some of them went out of business. Now the Chinese government is helping people to own their own companies and farms. This is a big change.

In a communist government, the rulers are not elected by the people. The rulers stay in power until they choose to leave. They can tell the people what they must do. For instance, Mao Zedong, the first ruler, told the people to have many children so China could be strong. There were so many children that China had more people than any other country in the world. Check out the pie chart to give you an idea of how many people this was.

The whole pie represents all the people in the world, 6,300,000,000. Each section represents a country. Red is China with 1,280,000,000. This is one out of every 5 people in the world or 20%. Blue is the United States with 300,000,000 people. This is one out of every 20 people in the world or 5%. White is the rest of the world’s people, 4,720,000,000. This is 3 out of every 4 people or 75% of the world’s population.

There were so many people living in China that there was a problem. There wasn’t enough food for everyone. The government came up with a new policy. Each family could have only one child. This was really followed in the cities. If a family had twins, they were supposed to put one of the twins up for adoption. In our school, we have a Chinese twin was adopted by an American family. They live in our neighborhood.

Another rule that Chairman Mao made was to close China. In the early part of his rule the Chinese were not allowed to travel to other countries. People from around the world could not travel to China. When Chairman Mao died, that rule started to change. Today, there is more and more travel to China. As a matter of fact, the Chinese government is going to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Many people will travel to Beijing to see the games. They will enjoy traveling in China!

Jobs, Stores and Transportation in the Cities

Four out of every ten people live in the cities.

Red is the number of people living in the cities in China. This is 4 out of every 10 people. This is 40%. Blue is the number of people living in the country, 6 out of every 10. This is 60%.

Red is the number of people living in the cities in the United States. This is 7 out of every 10 or 70%. Blue is the number of people living in the country or 3 out of every 10. This is 30%. Many more Americans live in the city than Chinese do in China. This makes a big difference in their schools. 10,000,000 children drop out of school each year in China. This usually happens because the children need to help their parents farm.

People like living in the cities because jobs pay better. People can work in factories making things like cars and radios, tools for farming and building.

In the big cities like Beijing, there are stores just like in the United States. But there are still some outdoor markets as there were in the past.

There are highways and many cars.

Jobs, Markets and Transportation in the Country

Many people live in the country. They are farmers. Most have a very small plot of land to farm. Life is not easy.

There are not many cars or paved roads. Most people ride bicycles. Farmers take their produce, what they grow, to the market to sell. In the villages there are some stores that do sell clothing and medicines.

You should have answered questions 5 and 6 for your press conference.