Special episode: Eight Numbers To Understand China
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.8 | Happy Lunar New Year, New Year, the Year of the Dragon. I'm Celia Hatton, Asia Pacific editor for the BBC. |
| 0:20.0 | When I first moved to Beijing years ago, something one of my Chinese colleagues, Lily said, has always stuck with me. |
| 0:27.5 | In China, she explained, it always comes back to the numbers. |
| 0:32.0 | Numbers and data can shed light on the big trends, |
| 0:35.8 | things that are happening inside China right now. So with that in mind, |
| 0:40.4 | welcome to eight numbers to understand China. We've chosen eight special numbers and gathered |
| 0:47.6 | a host of fascinating people to let us in on the wider meaning behind each of them. |
| 0:53.2 | Why fewer people are getting married, |
| 0:55.6 | why millions of apartments are sitting empty, |
| 0:58.5 | and even why there's only one mythical creature |
| 1:01.7 | on the Chinese zodiac. Why eight? one mythical |
| 1:03.8 | 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, |
| 1:15.0 | China's life expectancy back in 1949 when the country was founded. |
| 1:20.0 | That's right. Chinese people lived to an average age of 35 when the People's Republic came into being. |
| 1:27.0 | 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 |
| 1:37.3 | reveals just how quickly life there has transformed within a relatively short span of time. |
| 1:44.0 | And as Chinese broadcaster Yangi explains, older generations plan their lives far differently now. |
| 1:52.0 | This figure is matters for Chinese people because I think |
| 1:55.1 | the Chinese people is really care about live longer or longevity. So I think it is |
| 2:00.9 | like kind of evidence approved to show, you know, how like Chinese people's life |
| 2:06.6 | changing a lot in the past six decades. |
... |
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