nt and underemployment in rural areas (1998
est.)

Budget:
revenues: $NA
expenditures: $NA, including capital expenditures of $NA

Industries: iron and steel, coal, machine building, armaments,
textiles and apparel, petroleum, cement, chemical fertilizers,
footwear, toys, food processing, autos, consumer electronics,
telecommunications

Industrial production growth rate: 8.8% (1998 est.)

Electricity--production: 1.16 trillion kWh (1998)

Electricity--production by source:
fossil fuel: 93%
hydro: 6%
nuclear: 1%
other: 0% (1996 est.)

Electricity--consumption: 994.921 billion kWh (1996)

Electricity--exports: 6.025 billion kWh (1996)

Electricity--imports: 755 million kWh (1996)

Agriculture--products: rice, wheat, potatoes, sorghum, peanuts,
tea, millet, barley, cotton, oilseed; pork; fish

Exports: $183.8 billion (f.o.b., 1998)

Exports--commodities: electrical machinery and equipment,
machinery and mechanical appliances, woven apparel, knit apparel,
footwear, toys and sporting goods (1998)

Exports--partners: Hong Kong 21%, US 21%, Japan 14%, Germany,
South Korea, Netherlands, UK, Singapore, Taiwan (1997)

Imports: $140.17 billion (c.i.f., 1998)

Imports--commodities: electrical machinery and equipment,
machinery and mechanical appliances, plastics, iron and steel,
scientific and photograph equipment, paper and paper board (1998)

Imports--partners: Japan 20%, US 12%, Taiwan 12%, South Korea 11%,
Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Russia (1997)

Debt--external: $159 billion (1998 est.)

Economic aid--recipient: $6.222 billion (1995)

Currency: 1 yuan (Y) = 10 jiao

Exchange rates: yuan (Y) per US$1--8.28 (February 1999), 8.2779
(December 1998), 8.2790 (1998), 8.2898 (1997), 8.3142 (1996), 8.3514
(1995), 8.6187 (1994)
note: beginning 1 January 1994, the People's Bank of China quotes
the midpoint rate against the US dollar based on the previous day's
prevailing rate in the interbank foreign exchange market

Fiscal year: calendar year

Communications

Telephones: 105 million (1998 est.)

Telephone system: domestic and international services are
increasingly available for private use; unevenly distributed
domestic system serves principal cities, industrial centers, and all
townships
domestic: interprovincial fiber-optic trunk lines and cellular
telephone systems have been installed; a domestic satellite system
with 55 earth st