Industry of China. Industry and agriculture in China

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

The rapid development of China's industry began in 1978. It was then that the government began to actively implement liberal economic reforms. First of all, they concerned the reorientation of the main industries for export, attraction of foreign investments, as well as the creation of economic zones with a favorable tax and administrative climate. As a result, in our time this country is one of the world leaders in the production of almost all groups of goods.

A Brief History of Industrial Development in China

No matter how surprising it may sound, but until the middle of the twentieth century, China was a state of a semi-feudal system with an underdeveloped economy and production. In terms of industrialization, it lagged behind the developed world countries for more than a hundred years, and acted only as a raw material and agricultural appendage. The situation began to change after 1949, when the People's Republic of China was proclaimed. After industrialization was carried out in a relatively short time, China's industry and agriculture began to develop rapidly. An eloquent proof of this can be called the fact that in just fifty years about 370 thousand new enterprises have appeared in the state. The volume of production for this period of time increased by 39 times. Today, the country is in a leading position in the world in terms of the number of plants and factories. Its entire industry is represented by 360 different branches. Due to the extremely high pace of development, the government is sometimes even forced to restrain it. This is being done to prevent surges and another crisis in the global economy. The largest centers of China's industry are concentrated mainly in the coastal eastern provinces. These include Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong and others.

Gas and oil production

The country boasts quite rich mineral resources. Despite this, China's processing industries are much better developed than mining. Be that as it may, the amount of natural gas reserves found in the southern and eastern regions of the country, according to researchers, is more than 4 thousand billion tons. As of today, less than 4% of them are explored. As for oil production, it accounts for one fifth of the production of fuel and energy resources in China. The reserves of black gold, which provide 16% of export foreign exchange earnings, are about 64 billion tons.

Currently, there are 32 enterprises specializing in oil production in the country. The largestlocal processing plants are located in the provinces of Qaidam, Yumen, Dagang and Shandong.

Light industry

Even in pre-revolutionary times, China's light industry played a leading role in the structure of its economy. This area remains very important for the development of the country even now. Indeed, the food and textile industries account for almost 21% of all industrial products produced in the state. The leading enterprises that produce it are scattered throughout the country. The food industry is most developed in the southwest of China. In the northwestern regions, there are mainly enterprises that specialize in animal husbandry and cotton processing. Northeast companies are mainly engaged in the paper, dairy and sugar industries such as China's light industry. In general, there are more than 23 thousand textile companies on the territory of the state, in which the production and processing of raw materials are characterized by a clear focus, as well as about 65 thousand food industry enterprises. Do not forget with all this and the production of paper. Although it is not as large-scale as the previous two industries, it still plays a very important role in the development of the country.

Heavy industry

Similar to other sectors of the economy, China's heavy industry is also developing at a fairly high pace. For enterprises specializing in it, after a long rise in the past few years, a slight decrease in production volumes has become characteristic. At the same time, according to the opinion of many worldanalysts, it has nothing to do with product quality and pricing. The fact is that now the country has excess capacity, which, against the background of a slowdown in consumption, not only in the state itself, but throughout the world, simply needs to be reduced. The most profitable, as practice shows, as of today in this industry are small enterprises. Experts say that this cannot continue for a long time, so in the near future the market will definitely redistribute, after which approximately 5% of companies in this industry will go bankrupt or be absorbed by large firms.

Engineering

Until the middle of the last century, it did not play any role in the development of China's economy. The country's industry practically did not manufacture machines and mechanisms with components, aircraft, tractors, cars, and so on. In fact, mechanical engineering after the 1949 revolution in China was created in a new way. During the first five-year plan alone, more than 60 plants were built on the territory of the country (a third of them were built thanks to active technical support from the USSR). As a result, the situation has now changed dramatically.

Currently, the industry produces more than 53 thousand items of products and fully meets the internal needs of the state. The largest engineering centers include Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai and Tianjin.

Metallurgy

As noted above, the country is very richnatural resources. Thanks to this, the metallurgical industry of China is also quite developed. In almost every province or autonomous region, there are iron and steel enterprises, the total number of which exceeds 1.5 thousand. The state produces more than a thousand varieties of steel, including high-temperature-resistant aviation alloys and high-alloy grades with predetermined characteristics.

The main drawback, which is typical for most companies in this area, has become a relatively low technical level of production and their poor equipment with modern technologies. Moreover, about 70% of such enterprises are not equipped with treatment facilities at all. As for non-ferrous metallurgy, the conditions for its development can certainly be called favorable, since in the bowels of the earth there are rich deposits of copper, manganese, zinc, silver, gold, lead and many other ores. At the same time, one cannot fail to note the fact that only a few decades ago, the extraction of only some of them was actively developing, and the development itself was carried out chaotically, without observing elementary safety rules.

Automotive

China's automotive industry plays an important role in the country's economy. The effectiveness of the policy pursued by the government of the country in this direction is very high. First of all, it is expressed by the fact that joint companies with many leading automakers are successfully developing in the state. As ofToday, the Celestial Empire independently provides for almost all domestic needs in vehicles. At the same time, their imports do not exceed 10%. This situation is largely due to the fact that the government does not set the task of automobilization of the population (only 1% of residents have their own cars). A number of taxes, restrictions and duties have led to the fact that a car is a luxury item here.

Construction industry

Far from the last place in terms of development is China's construction industry. This is not surprising, because the country has giant reserves of gypsum, graphite, quartz, high-quality clays, asbestos, limestone and mica. The most massive among all types of building materials was the production of cement, which is established in the north-eastern region of the country. Most of the ceramic tile companies are concentrated in Boshan, Jiangxi, Urumqi and Shenyang, while brick factories are located near Beijing. Sichuan City is famous for its powerful asbestos factories.

Chemical industry

Despite the large reserves of gas, coal and phosphates, many industries have not been paid attention to in China for a long time. Some of them were simply recreated after the revolution. The Chinese chemical industry is no exception. In the first half of the fifties of the last century, 33 large companies specializing in this area appeared here. At the same time, in such a short period of time, the product range has grown tenfold, to the mark of 900 items.

The largest chemical enterprises are located in Nanjing, Shanghai, Harbin, Shenyang and Jilin.

Agriculture

The constant increase in the population leads to an increase in the consumption of food products. In this regard, the government of the Middle Kingdom calls one of the priorities to ensure the further active development of such industries as the food industry and agriculture in China. The country pursues a policy of comprehensive support for the peasantry in order to improve their standard of living and increase the yield of cultivated plants. In particular, peasants are exempted from agricultural tax, taxes on products, slaughter of livestock and other payments. In addition, citizens who are employed in this industry are provided with all kinds of subsidies, subsidies, profitable loans and even gratuitous assistance.

In almost all provinces, at the legislative level, the state guarantees the purchase of crops from peasants. Separate words deserve the contribution of local breeders, who managed to develop a number of crops with a yield several times higher than that of traditional varieties.

Conclusion

This article briefly describes only the main industries in China. Undoubtedly, the Celestial Empire has achieved great success in other areas of economic activity. These include the development of information and biological technologies, pharmaceuticals, non-waste industries, communications,improvement of computer technology, development of new energy sources, reduction of environmental pollution and many other areas.