Snippit: China's Growth in The Independent

The Independent have an excellent article on how economic growth is affecting both people's lives and their lifestyles:

Victorian England must have felt like this. Visitors to Manchester were equally appalled and in awe of the stream-driven cotton mills. Huge wealth; huge misery. People ran to the city not because there were good jobs in the mills but because it was a better living than they could have had in the country. At least there was food to eat and there was money to be sent home.
And so the workers flock to the cities in China, to what we would call sweat-shops, to produce the toys, clothes and furniture for the shops of the West.

As well as some interesting stats:

30,000: The expected number of Chinese MBA graduates in 2008. The number in 1998: 0

160: Cities in China with populations that exceed a million. In the USA there are nine; in the UK just two

0: Miles of motorway in 1988

30,000: Miles of motorway today

45 billion: Estimated number of chopsticks China produces every year, the majority of them disposable. In 2006, Beijing introduced a five per cent tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in an attempt to help save the country’s forests

30: The number of different animal penises on the menu at Guolizhuang, Beijing’s ‘penis emporium’. A yak’s costs about £15, while a tiger’s (which must be pre-ordered) will set you back £3,000

400 million: The estimated number of births prevented by China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1979

Full article here.