China has undergone tremendous changes over the past three decades since the reform and opening up, turning from impoverishment to affluence, from imprisonment to freedom, and from economic collapse to miraculous revival. This period has influenced or changed the future and destiny of numerous Chinese people as well as China. This book illustrates in a digital way the impressive changes in all aspects of people’s livelihood, such as education, employment, migrant workers, medical insurance, housing, environmental protection, transportation, culture, social insurance and the endowment insurance, sports, communications, networking, aviation, automobile, finance and taxation, movies and television dramas etc. It explains the changes behind the numbers in plain language, outlines the achievements made during the thirty years of the reform and opening up with a mass of accurate statistics and charts so that through the changes of figures the readers can intuitively understand the tremendous achievements of the reform and opening up which can not be copied. These changes are reflected not only in people's material life, but also in their spiritual life. On the one hand, people's attitudes, ideas and views towards various issues have changed a lot. The Chinese society as a whole has become more open. In the process of integration into the international community, China is growing and becoming more mature and confident.
The most important feature of this book is that the authors intentionally selected some areas, though not so magnificent, but more closely related to ordinary people. Using topics of common interest that people are familiar with as the starting point, the authors display the development and changes in these areas with figures to help readers gain a general picture from small details. This is not just a simple list of figures, but also speaks with figures, taps out the track of figures and tries to tell the “stories” behind the figures, describing with figures ups and downs we have gone through together. Behind these figures, it gradually presents a growing People’s Republic of China which is full of confidence, vitality, enthusiasm and optimism.
The editor in chief of this book is the dean of the School of Statistics of Renmin University of China, and all the authors are from the School of Statistics, Renmin University of China. Mostly coming from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the data and statistics used in this book are authoritative, accurate and true. With figures to interpret the changes in China is a popular practice, because figures are the most fair. Speaking with figures can make what is vague much clearer and figures put before us a true China. Through statistics, we can see both the present situation of China and the great changes over the past 30 years. Besides, in the background of the whole world, we can also examine China’s development and its status in today’s world, to find out our shortcomings and gaps so that we can make a more rational thinking about the revival of the Chinese nation.(By Shen Jun) |
