Looking back in history and current economic data

January 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of official diplomatic relationship between China and the US. In light of this anniversary I thought it will be good to bring in some interesting links about the recent history in the relationship between the two countries, as well as comparison data on statistics….

First a link to a summary on Nixon’s historic visit to China

Then if you want to really look way back into history, use the US Department of State good chronology - it goes back to 1784!

The US Embassy in Beijing has a brief look at the last 30 years here

And finally, I thought that the comparison statistics published in a March 19, 2007 issue of TIME magazine will show a good view of the current development of China (using the same statistics for the US as a reference). The image below shows the comparison. (It was also published by China Today also using the Time magazine data)
Interesting comparison…..

Of course what this table does not show is how the numbers (statistics) will look if we were to do that same comparison but for two sections of China’s economy - the prosperous coastal regions and cities (e.g. Shenzhen, Shanghai, Qingdao, Xiamen….) and Beijing vs. the Western (less developed although currently a focus for investment for the Chinese government) provinces….. Will look for such data in the coming weeks and see how the story may change.

At any rate, Happy New Year and hopefully this brief compilation of data points and links to historic events will help you discover some missing info (from your knowledge) about China and the US-China relations.