Students from China at U.S. colleges and universities surged 23 percent this year to 157,558, accounting for more than a fifth of all international scholars in the country. more ›

Netizens found that a report was put on the official website of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) with proofreading changes. While no statistics were changed, a total of 42 corrections was made to the report of around 3,000 characters. Most of the changes were made to correct grammatical problems and improve the accuracy of the report. more ›

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute calculates that America has lost 2.8 million jobs to China in the past decade, with 70 percent coming from manufacturing. 24/7 Wall St. has listed the top ten states that have lost the most jobs due to the shifting rules of global commerce since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. more ›

A new study looking at the Overseas Chinese experience edited by Fujian's Huaqiao University (华侨大学) claims that less than a third of Chinese students who've studied abroad since 1978 eventually return to China. From 1978 to 2009, only 497,400 students out of the 1.62 million who've left have made their way back to China. The new findings are in line with the trend of everyone and their corrupt fifth uncle wanting to get out of China, which leads us to suspect that for the majority of Chinese, the true meaning of the Chinese Dream is to simply find a way to leave. more ›

"Marriage in China has entered a phase of uncertainty," declares Chen Yijun, a marriage and family researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in yesterday's People's Daily. "The traditional Chinese marriage model has broken down amid the rapid transformation of Chinese society." more ›

This video, strange in that it's a well-produced English-language PSA-type clip directed specifically at the Chinese, covers just about every dismaying Chinese health statistic out there. Compiled from WHO, UN, and Chinese Ministry of Health data, the statistics show that apparently regardless of all the calesthenics, China is getting really fat and dying from all kinds of terrible diseases. more ›

Hey check it out! Continuing in the vein of mapping out our private bits (see map of global penis size vs. IQ here), take a look at the world's boobs by breast cup size! Yet another example of Target Map's ability to provide indispensably important data in clear, geographical form. Unfortunately for China, they're not scoring too high on either index. The source of the boob data wasn't given, so we can't comment further on reliability or underlying variables. But it looks like some high fives might be happening up in Northern Europe and Russia... more ›

This Penis Size Map is from a completely serious new website called TargetMap.com. According to this map, Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Colombia and Venezuela are the world's most well endowed nations, while South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, India and Burma -- all in east Asia -- are the world's least well endowed. Chinese men, clocking in at 10.89cm (4.3in), are the world's #8 least well endowed. Unfortunately though, because of difficulty in collating data, what you see on this map is from statistics compiled at different points in time. The data for China was apparently from the heady days of revolution (and malnutrition) in 1953.
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China Daily reported on three surveys conducted among readers of various papers this week, and most of the results don't look so good. In a nutshell, nobody's happy, everybody wants to be an official, and the dual-pension system sucks. more ›

Jeepers. It’s time to put down that cigarette, take a (deep) breath of semi-fresh air, and read up on these latest smoking statistics in China. more ›

And we've got the statistics to prove it. A recent BCG report on China's Internet usage has found the PRC's users spend more hours a day online than their US counterparts and BRICI buddies. Thomas Crampton reposted some of the figures below: more ›

That's right. It now stands at 404 million, and to do a double take -- if China's internet users were to form their own country, they'd be the world's third most populous nation after China and India. more ›

Despite the rise in cancer rates and the threat of swine flu, it seems that Shanghainese people on average are living longer. The life expectancy of a person in the city has now risen to 81.73 years, eclipsing the record of 81.28 just set last year. As per the rest of the world, females here tend to live longer than males, living an average of 84.06 years compared to the regular guy's 79.42. The local government says this longevity is due to increased medical capabilities - besides old people being able to get older, the infant and maternal mortality rates have also dropped to developed nation levels. Now let's just hope that the success we've gotten in Shanghai can be replicated in the rest of the country, where the average lifespan is roughly five years less. more ›

Marriage is forever, unless you get divorced, or so the saying goes. Well, the Shanghai version also includes "or want to make some money really quick:" couples who divorce receive double the state's compensation for relocation, so the new trick is to get divorced, get paid, and then get remarried. more ›

We're used to seeing mind boggling statistics living here in China, but this one still made our jaws drop. This country now has 703 million mobile phone users - that's double the population of the United States chatting on their cellphones. According to a report released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the number of mobile users rose by 61.41 million in just the last six months. Meanwhile the overall number of people using phones rose by 48.99 million to 1.03 billion. Handset makers, welcome to your heaven. Source: People's Daily online more ›

We suppose it's always good to know how you stack up to the rest of your countrymen, so that's probably why China's now launching it's second "nationwide adult figure measurement" program. Over 25,000 people are expected to participate in the study by the China National Institute of Standardization and the results will help design everything from handrail heights in buses to the size of face masks. The last time China checked out everyone's measurements was between 1986 and 1988. This new study will be even more detailed, adding figures like "height of the sole." Source: China Daily and Sina more ›

So it seems like people who are douchebags in one way are highly likely to be douchebags in another way as well. AsiaTimes Online reports that an anti-graft official recently acknowledged in public that 95% of corrupt officials had a woman on the side. In fact, keeping mistresses has become so fashionable that its seems like "concubinism is back." These mistresses are often given houses, money to play with and sometimes contracts for profitable projects. One banker in Shenzhen was reported to have spent 18.4 million RMB (of his bank's money) on his fifth mistress in almost three years. Another man in charge of infrastructure projects in Eastern China, had more than 140 women at his beck and call. Gross. The anti-graft official warned that mistresses were an easy way for an official to become corrupt. But we're inclined to believe that if an official's interested in keeping mistresses, he probably wasn't pure and true to begin with. more ›

Uh oh, it looks like us pedestrians aren't the only ones getting stolen from recently, thanks to the current dastardly economic situation. City police have now issued a warning reminding companies that keeping large amounts of cash on their premises may not be a good idea. Shanghai has seen a 35% rise in thefts of local areas since February, compared to the same period last year. The most robbed districts: Qingpu, Pudong, Fengxian, Songjiang and Jiading. Source: Shanghai Daily more ›

CNNIC has released two reports on the status of China's mobile internet, which is used by about 117.6 million out of the current 640 million registered cellphone holders. China Web 2.0 Review summarized some of the key findings: more ›

Harper's Magazine recently announced via Twitter that all 25 years of its awesome stats section, Harper's Index, was now available and searchable online here. We searched "shanghai" and got two results. One was about Chairman Mao jackets at Shanghai Tang, and the other was actually related to the city. Here it is, from June 2005: "Percentage change since 1994 in treatment for male infertility and erectile dysfunction in Shanghai: +100." There are considerably more results for "china." more ›

Of the 22.6% of the country that now has access to the Internet, 162 million blog, while 234 million log on to read up on the news. more ›

Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden speaks to Thomas Crampton about the rise of China and how the world has not quite come around to understanding its magnitude and significance. An excellent communicator and engaging speaker who's great at putting figures into perspective. If you're interested to hear more, watch him debunking third-world myths in this presentation he gave at TED. more ›