12 Key Data Points Reflecting China’s Progress in 2024
Source Xinhua, Dawn, Arab News, Anadolu and Minute Mirror
The development journey over 2024 has been extraordinary, with encouraging achievements. Join us as we revisit the key developments of this year, with twelve key data points highlighting the country’s progress in critical areas.
China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.8 percent year on year in the first three quarters of 2024, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. The GDP reached around 94.97 trillion yuan (about 13.33 trillion U.S. dollars) in the January-September period.
China’s railway transported over 4 billion passengers during the first 11 months of 2024, hitting a record high, China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (China Railway) said.
China’s total goods imports and exports maintained steady growth in the first 11 months of 2024, expanding by 4.9 percent year on year in yuan terms. Goods trade value expanded to 39.79 trillion yuan, or 5.6 trillion in U.S. dollar terms, in the January-November period, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
China’s annual production of new energy vehicles (NEVs) surpassed the 10 million milestone for the first time, further contributing to the world’s carbon reduction efforts.
The 100,000th China-Europe freight train, X8083, which had departed from Chongqing in China, arrived in Duisburg of Germany, marking a historic milestone for this rail link.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed the Spring Festival, the social practices of the Chinese people in celebration of the traditional new year, on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This brings the number of intangible cultural heritage items in China on the UNESCO list to 44, the most of its kind worldwide.
China recorded 765 million domestic tourist trips during the 7-day National Day holiday, representing a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent on a comparable basis, according to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The figure is 10.2 percent more than that of the same period in 2019.
China saw its express delivery volume in 2024 surpass the 150-billion-parcel mark for the first time, according to the State Post Bureau. The record figure came in as the country’s booming courier market has remained prosperous and active.
China successfully launched a new carrier rocket into space from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site in the southern island province of Hainan. The mission was the maiden flight of the Long March-12 carrier rocket, and the first launch mission undertaken by the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site.
The number of 5G base stations in China now exceeds 4.1 million, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed. Currently, 5G technologies have been applied in 80 major sectors of the national economy, and the 5G network is covering more rural areas, according to the ministry.
China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world’s largest filled-aperture and most sensitive radio telescope, has identified more than 1,000 new pulsars. The number of new pulsars discovered by FAST has surpassed that of all foreign telescopes combined during the same period, according to the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).
The seventh China International Import Expo (CIIE) saw a total of 80.01 billion U.S. dollars worth of tentative deals reached for one-year purchases of goods and services. The figure represented an increase of 2 percent from that of last year.
Reference Link:- https://english.news.cn/20241228/008905cdf9574133ab3fd8f4a837fefc/c.html
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
