title: Fred Trump

text: Frederick Christ Trump Sr. (October 11, 1905 – June 25, 1999) was an American real estate developer and businessman. A member of the Trump family, he was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States.


title: Fred Trump

text: In partnership with his mother, Elizabeth Christ Trump, Fred began a career in home construction and sales. Their real estate development company was incorporated as E. Trump & Son in 1927 (later called the Fred Trump Organization). It grew to build and manage single-family houses in Queens, barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast, and more than 27,000 apartments in New York City.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump was investigated by a U.S. Senate committee for profiteering in 1954, and again by the State of New York in 1966. Donald became the president of his father's real estate business in 1971, and they were sued by the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division for violating the Fair Housing Act in 1973; in the case settlement, the Trumps were ordered to take several measures to curb racial discrimination.


title: Fred Trump

text: For decades following World War II, Trump concealed his German ancestry (instead claiming Swedish heritage) to avoid associations with Nazism in light of the Holocaust. He also supported Jewish causes. During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, reports of Fred Trump's arrest at a 1927 Ku Klux Klan parade resurfaced, although there is no direct evidence that he supported the organization. As president, Donald repeatedly and falsely claimed that his father was born in Germany.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 2018, an exposé by "The New York Times" revealed that Trump and his wife, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, provided over $1 billion (in 2018 currency) to their progeny overall, while effectively evading over $500 million in gift taxes. Trump illicitly contributed several million dollars to Donald between 1987 and 1991, and shortly before his death (while suffering from Alzheimer's disease), transferred the bulk of his apartment buildings to his surviving children; several years later, they sold these for over 16 times their previously declared worth.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump's father, the German American Frederick Trump (also known as Friedrich) amassed considerable wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush by running a restaurant for the miners. Friedrich returned to Kallstadt in 1901, and by the next year, met and married Elizabeth Christ. They moved to New York City, where their first child, Elizabeth, was born in 1904. Later that year, the family returned to Kallstadt. Fred was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents wished to residency, but Friedrich was banished for dodging the draft. The family returned to New York on July 1, 1905, and moved to the Bronx, where Frederick Christ Trump was born on October 11. Fred Trump's younger brother, John G. Trump, was born in 1907. All three children were raised speaking German. In September 1908, the family moved to Woodhaven, Queens.


title: Fred Trump

text: Many details of Trump's childhood come from autobiographical accounts and emphasize independence, learning and, above all, hard workeven to the point of being somewhat fictionalized. At the age of 10, Trump worked as a delivery boy for a butcher. About two years later, his father died in the 1918 flu pandemic. From 1918 to 1923, Fred attended Richmond Hill High School in Queens, while working as a caddy, curb whitewasher, delivery boy, and newspaper hawker. Meanwhile, his mother continued the real estate business Frederick had begun. Interested in becoming a builder, Fred put up a garage for a neighbor and took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints. He also studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses.


title: Fred Trump

text: After graduating in January 1923, Trump obtained full-time work pulling lumber to construction sites. He continued his carpentry education and went on to be a carpenter's assistant. Trump's mother loaned him $800 to build his first house, which he completed and sold in 1924. By 1926, Trump had built 20 homes in Queens, selling some before they were finished to finance others. Elizabeth Trump held the business in her name because Fred had not reached the age of majority. The name "E. Trump & Son" appeared in advertising by 1924. The company was incorporated in 1927.


title: Fred Trump

text: On Memorial Day in 1927, over a thousand Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members marched in a Queens parade to protest "Native-born Protestant Americans" being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City". The 21-year old Trump and six other men were arrested. All seven were referred to as "berobed marchers" in the "Long Island Daily Press". Trump, detained "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so", was dismissed. Among the men arrested on the same charge was a bystander who had had his foot run over by a police car. According to the police, the five remaining men were certainly Klan members. Multiple newspaper articles on the incident list Trump's address (in Jamaica, Queens), which he is recorded as living at on various documents from 1928 to 1940. Despite this arrest, there is no evidence that Trump was a member or supporter of the KKK.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1933 Trump built one of New York City's first modern supermarkets, called Trump Market, in Woodhaven, Queens. It was modeled on Long Island's King Kullen, a self-service supermarket chain. Trump's store advertised "Serve Yourself and Save!" and quickly became popular. After six months, Trump sold it to King Kullen.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1934, Trump and a partner acquired in federal court the mortgage-servicing subsidiary of Brooklyn's J. Lehrenkrauss Corporation, which had gone bankrupt and subsequently been broken up. This gave Trump access to the titles of many properties nearing foreclosure, which he bought at low cost and sold at a profit. This and similar real estate ventures quickly thrust him into the limelight as one of New York City's most successful businessmen.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump made use of loan subsidies created by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) not long after the program was initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934. By 1936, Trump had 400 workers digging foundations for houses that would be sold at prices ranging from $3,000 to $6,250. Trump used his father's tactic of listing properties at prices like $3,999.99. In the late 1930s, he used a yacht called the Trump Show Boat to advertise his business off the shore of Coney Island. It played patriotic music and floated out swordfish-shaped balloons which could be redeemed for $25 or $250 towards one of his properties. In 1938, the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle" referred to Trump as the "Henry Ford of the home building industry".


title: Fred Trump

text: During World War II, Trump built barracks and garden apartments for U.S. Navy personnel near major shipyards along the East Coast. After the war, he expanded into middle-income housing for the families of returning veterans. From 1947 to 1949, Trump built Shore Haven in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, which included 32 six-story buildings and a shopping center, covering some 30 acres, and procuring him $9 million in FHA funding. In 1950, he built the 23-building Beach Haven Apartments over 40 acres near Coney Island, procuring him $16 million in FHA funds. The total number of apartments included in these projects exceeded 2,700.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1961, Trump donated $2,500 to the re-election campaign of New York mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., helping him gain favor for the construction of Trump Village, a large apartment complex in Coney Island. The project was constructed in 1963–64 for $70 million. It was one of Trump's biggest and last major projects, and the only one to bear his name. He built more than 27,000 low-income apartments and row houses in the New York area altogether.


title: Fred Trump

text: In early 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other federal leaders began denouncing real estate profiteers. On June 11, "The New York Times" included Trump on a list of 35 city builders accused of profiteering from government contracts. He and others were investigated by a U.S. Senate banking committee for windfall gains. Trump and his partner William Tomasello were cited as examples of how profits were made by builders using the FHA. The two paid $34,200 for a piece of land which they rented to their corporation for $76,960 annually in a 99-year lease, so that if the apartment they built on it ever defaulted, the FHA would owe them $1.924 million. Trump and Tomasello evidently obtained loans for $3.5 million more than Beach Haven Apartments had cost. Trump argued that because he had not withdrawn the money, he had not literally pocketed the profits. He further argued that due to rising costs, he would have had to invest more than the 10% of the mortgage loan not provided by the FHA, and therefore suffer a loss if he built under those conditions.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1966, Trump was again investigated for windfall profiteering, this time by New York's State Investigation Commission. After Trump overestimated building costs sponsored by a state program, he profited $598,000 on equipment rentals in the construction of Trump Village, which was then spent on other projects. Under testimony on January 27, 1966, Trump said that he had personally done nothing wrong and praised the success of his building project. The commission called Trump "a pretty shrewd character" with a "talent for getting every ounce of profit out of his housing project", but no indictments were made. Instead, tighter administration protocols and accountability in the state's housing program were called for.


title: Fred Trump

text: On July 1, 1965, Trump purchased Coney Island's recently closed Steeplechase Park for $2.3 million, intending to build luxury apartments. The next year, he announced plans for a enclosed dome with recreational facilities and a convention center. At a highly publicized ceremony in September 1966, Trump demolished the park's Pavilion of Fun, a large glass-enclosed amusement center. He reportedly sold bricks to ceremony guests to smash the remaining glass panels, which included an iconic representation of the park's mascot, the "Funny Face". The next month, New York City announced plans to acquire the former park grounds for recreational use. Trump filed a series of court cases related to the proposed rezoning, ultimately winning $1.3 million. After the site laid vacant for several years, Trump started subleasing it to a manager of fairground amusement park rides. Over another decade, the city eventually succeeded in reclaiming the property.


title: Fred Trump

text: Fred's son Donald joined his father's real estate business around 1968, initially working in Brooklyn, and rising to become company president in 1971. He began calling the company the Trump Organization around 1973. The younger Trump entered the real estate business in Manhattan, while his father stuck primarily to Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Donald later said: "It was good for me. You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself." By most accounts, Fred himself had set the family's sights on Manhattan. According to Mary L. Trump, Fred was "intimately involved in all aspects of Donald's early forays into the Manhattan market," and Louise Sunshine (vice president of the Trump Organization from 1973 to 1985) states that Fred was "behind [Donald] in every way, shape and form [including] financing of these developments".


title: Fred Trump

text: In the mid-1970s, Donald received loans from his father exceeding $14 million. In 2015–16, during his campaign for U.S. president, Donald claimed that his father had given him "a small loan of a million dollars" which he used to build "a company that's worth more than $10 billion". An October 2018 "New York Times" exposé on Fred and Donald Trump's finances concludes that Donald "was a millionaire by age 8", and that he had received $413 million (adjusted for inflation; $450.9 million in 2021 currency) from Fred's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60 million ($152.8 million in 2021 currency) in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.


title: Fred Trump

text: Minority applicants turned away from renting apartments complained to the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the Urban League, leading these groups to send test applicants to Trump-owned complexes in July 1972. They found that white people were offered apartments, while black people were generally turned away (by being told there were no vacancies); according to the superintendent of Beach Haven Apartments, this was at the direction of his boss. Both of the aforementioned advocacy organizations then raised the issue with the Justice Department. In October 1973, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Trump Organization (Fred Trump, chair, and Donald Trump, president) for infringing the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In response, Trump attorney Roy Cohn countersued for $100 million in damages, accusing the DoJ of false accusations.


title: Fred Trump

text: Some three dozen former Trump employees were interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Some testified that they had no knowledge of any racial profiling practices, and that a small percentage of their apartments were rented to blacks or Puerto Ricans. A former doorman testified that his supervisor had instructed him to tell prospective black tenants that the rent was double its actual amount. Four landlords or rental agents confirmed that applications sent to the Trump organization's head office for approval were coded by the race of the applicant. One former employee testified that a codewhich he believed was used throughout the Brooklyn branch of the companyreferred to "low lifes" such as "blacks, Puerto Ricans, apparent drug users, or any other type of undesirable applicant", and nine times out of ten it meant the applicant was black; blacks were also falsely told there were no vacancies. A rental agent who had worked with the company for two weeks said that when he asked Fred Trump if he should rent to blacks, he was told that it was "absolutely against the law to discriminate", but after asking again, he was instructed "not to rent to blacks", and was further advised to:


title: Fred Trump

text: A consent decree between the DoJ and the Trump Organization was signed on June 10, 1975, with both sides claiming victorythe Trump Organization because the settlement did not require them "to accept persons on welfare as tenants", and the head of DoJ's housing division for the decree being "one of the most far-reaching ever negotiated". It personally and corporately prohibited the Trumps from "discriminating against any person in the ... sale or rental of a dwelling", and "required Trump to advertise vacancies in minority papers [for two years], promote minorities to professional jobs, and list vacancies on a preferential basis". Finally, it ordered the Trumps to "thoroughly acquaint themselves personally on a detailed basis with ... the Fair Housing Act of 1968".


title: Fred Trump

text: In early 1976, Trump was ordered by a county judge to correct code violations in a 504-unit property in Seat Pleasant, Maryland. According to the county's housing department investigator, violations included broken windows, dilapidated gutters, and missing fire extinguishers. After a court date and a series of phone calls with Trump, he was invited to the property to meet with county officials in September 1976 and arrested on site. Trump was released on $1,000 bail.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1987, when Donald's loan debt to his father exceeded $11 million, Fred invested $15.5 million in Trump Palace Condominiums; in 1991, he sold these shares to his son for $10,000, thus appearing to evade millions of dollars in gift taxes by masking a hidden donation, and also benefiting from a legally questionable write-off. In late 1990, when an $18.4 million bond payment for Trump's Castle was due, Fred used a bookkeeper to purchase $3.5 million in casino chips, placing no bet, helping Donald avoid defaulting on his bonds; this action, illegal in New Jersey, resulted in a $65,000 fine.


title: Fred Trump

text: Fred and Mary Trump supported medical charities by donating buildings. After Mary received medical care at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, they donated the Trump Pavilion; Fred was also a trustee of the hospital. The couple donated a two-building complex in Brooklyn as a home for "functionally retarded adults", a $4.75 million building in New Jersey to United Cerebral Palsy (which Donald took credit for), and other buildings to the National Kidney Foundation of New York and New Jersey. Fred reportedly also supported the Long Island Jewish Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.


title: Fred Trump

text: The Trumps were active in The Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Lighthouse for the Blind. Fred supported the private Kew-Forest School, where his children attended and he served on the board of directors. Trump backed both Jewish and Israeli causes, including Israel Bonds, donating the land for the Beach Haven Jewish Center in Flatbush, New York, and serving as the treasurer of an Israel benefit concert featuring American easy-listening performers.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump also made contributions to Democratic politicians in New York, giving $2,500 to the re-election campaign of Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. in 1961 (enabling the construction of Trump Village); together with Donald in the 1980s, Fred provided over $350,000 to New York politicians including Mayor Ed Koch.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 2018, "The New York Times" reported in an exposé on Trump's financial records that they had found no evidence that he had made any significant financial contributions to charities.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1976, Trump set up trust funds of $1 million ($ million in currency) for each of his five children and three grandchildren, which paid out yearly dividends. Trump appeared on the initial "Forbes" 400 list of richest Americans in 1982 with an estimated $200 million fortune split with his son Donald.


title: Fred Trump

text: In December 1990, Donald sought to amend his father's will, which according to Maryanne Trump Barry, "was basically taking the whole estate and giving it to Donald", allowing him to "sell, do anything he wants ... with the properties". "The Washington Post" wrote that this "was designed to protect Donald Trump's inheritance from efforts to seize it by creditors and Ivana", whom he divorced that month. Fred Trump rejected the proposal, and in 1991, composed his own final will, which made Donald, Maryanne, and Robert Trump co-executors of his estate. Trump's lawyer noted that Fred Jr.'s children, Fred III and Mary L. Trump, would be treated unequally because they would not receive their deceased father's share, and wrote to Trump that "Given the size of your estate, this is tantamount to disinheriting them. You may wish to increase their participation in your estate to avoid ill will in the future." In October 1991, Trump was diagnosed with "mild senile dementia", displaying symptoms such as forgetfulness.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease around 1993, by which time the anticipated shares of Trump's estate amounted to $35 million for each surviving child. In November 1997, Trump transferred ownership of most of his apartment buildings, valued at just $41.4 million, to his four surviving children. Trump finally fell ill with pneumonia in mid-1999. He was admitted to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where he died at age 93 on June 25. His funeral was held at the Marble Collegiate Church, and was attended by over 600 people. His body is buried in a family plot at the Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. Upon his death, Trump's estate was estimated by his family at $250 million to $300 million, though he had only $1.9 million in cash. His will divided over $20 million after taxes among his surviving children and grandchildren. His widow, Mary, died on August 7, 2000, in New Hyde Park, New York, at age 88. Her and Fred's combined estate was then valued at $51.8 million.


title: Fred Trump

text: Following Trump's death, Fred Jr.'s children contested their grandfather's will, citing his dementia and claiming that the will was "procured by fraud and undue influence" by Donald, Maryanne, and Robert Trump. These three had claimed in their legal depositions that Fred Trump was "sharp as a tack" until just before his death, with Donald specifically denying any knowledge of his father's mental decline, including his 1991 dementia diagnosis. Barry later privately admitted that she knew her father had dementia at the time. Mary L. Trump recounts that in later years her grandfather forgot people he had known for decades, including her, whom he referred to as "nice lady".


title: Fred Trump

text: In May 2004, Trump's four surviving children sold the apartments they acquired in 1997 (then valued at $41.4 million) for $737.9 million ($705.6 million of which was to Rubin Schron), more than 16 times their previously declared worth. Hundreds of millions in gift taxes were effectively dodged by undervaluing the assets. In October 2018, "The New York Times" published an exposé which shows that Fred and Mary provided their children with over $1 billion altogether, which should have been taxed at the rate of 55% for gifts and inheritances (over $550 million), but records show that a total of only $52.2 million (about 5%) was paid. New York State could prosecute individuals on the basis of intentional tax evasion if a fraudulent return form can be produced as evidence; the statute of limitations does not apply in such cases.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump met his future wife Mary Anne MacLeod, an immigrant from Tong, Lewis, Scotland, at a dance party in the early to mid-1930s. Trump told his mother the same evening that he had met his future wife. Trump, a Lutheran, married Mary, a Presbyterian, on January 11, 1936, at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church with George Arthur Buttrick officiating. A wedding reception was held at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, and they had a single-night honeymoon in Atlantic City. The couple settled in Jamaica, Queens, and had five children: Maryanne Trump Barry (born 1937; a federal judge until her retirement), Fred Trump Jr. (1938–1981; an airline pilot with Trans World Airlines), Elizabeth Trump Grau (born 1942; a retired executive of Chase Manhattan Bank), Donald Trump (born 1946; the 45th president of the United States), and Robert Trump (1948–2020; a top executive of his father's property management company until his retirement).


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump was a teetotaler and an authoritarian parent, maintaining curfews and forbidding cursing, lipstick, and snacking between meals. At the end of his day, Trump would receive a report from Mary on the children's actions and, if necessary, decide upon disciplinary actions. He took his children to building sites to collect empty bottles to return for the deposits. The boys had paper routes, and when weather conditions were poor, their father would let them make their deliveries in a limousine. According to Fred Jr.'s daughter, Mary L. Trump, Trump wanted his oldest son to be "invulnerable" in personality so he could take over the family business, but Fred Jr. was the opposite. Trump instead elevated Donald to become his business heir, teaching him to "be a killer", and telling him, "You are a king." Mary L. Trump states that Fred Sr. "dismantled [Fred Jr.] by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality" and mocked him for his decision to become an airline pilot. In 1981, Fred Jr. died at age 42 from complications due to his alcoholism.


title: Fred Trump

text: After Elizabeth's birth, and with the U.S. becoming more involved in World War II, Trump moved his family to Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 1944, as Trump's FHA funding lulled, they returned to Jamaica Estates, Queens, where Mary suffered a miscarriage. By 1946, they were living in a five-bedroom Tudor-style house Trump built in Jamaica Estates, and Trump purchased a neighboring half-acre lot, where he built a 23-room, 9-bathroom home. The family moved in during 1950–1951, and Fred and Mary remained there until their deaths. The couple was also given an apartment on the 63rd (in reality the 55th) floor of their son Donald's Trump Tower (), which they rarely used.


title: Fred Trump

text: Despite wearing a toothbrush moustache (which was made unfashionable by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler) until at least the late 1940s, from World War II until the 1980s Trump denied that he spoke German, and claimed he was of Swedish origin. In a 1973 interview with "The New York Times", he claimed to have been born in New Jersey. These false claims of his heritage were repeated in the 1980s by Donald Trump and the author of Donald's first biography. After Fred Trump's death, his nephew and family historian John Walter explained that "He had a lot of Jewish tenants and it wasn't a good thing to be German in those days." Trump's contributions to Jewish charities led some to believe that he belonged to the Jewish faith. During the 1980s, Trump became friends with future prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump had blue eyes. As a child, he had blond hair, which later darkened. As an adult, he stood about six feet tall. He donned a toothbrush mustache as late as . After Trump's death, journalist Philip Weiss wrote that Trump was a "vigorous and imposing man with a square chest and prominent cheekbones" and that it was said that "Fred would rise just a little on his toes" to look taller when taking pictures with Donald. Dwight Garner says of Trump as photographed by Fred W. McDarrah: "With ... his acutely white teeth and his tuxedo, Fred Trump resembles a cut-rate magician who's wandered into the Sherry-Netherland." Late in life, he wore a wig and dyed his hair, sometimes turning it red or magenta, most noticeably his eyebrows and mustache. Photographs of the elderly Fred show a depression in the side of his facepossibly betraying damage to his lower jaw.


title: Fred Trump

text: According to Nylon.com, the 2018 "New York Times" exposé on the Trumps' wealth "led people to know, perhaps for the first time, what Fred Trump looks like—and it turns out he bears resemblance to no shortage of fictional villains, which has inspired a wave of new memes to bless the internet".


title: Fred Trump

text: Singer Woody Guthrie was a tenant of Beach Haven Apartments from 1950 to 1951. In his unrecorded song "Old Man Trump", he complained about the rent and accused Trump of stirring up racial hate "in the bloodpot of human hearts", singing:


title: Fred Trump

text: Trump was indirectly claimed as a relative of Republican politician Fred J. Trump, a candidate in the 1956 Arizona gubernatorial election and correspondent of Richard Nixon during his 1960 presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy.


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1985, Trump received the Horatio Alger Award (for "distinguished Americans"), named for the 19th-century author of hundreds of rags-to-riches novels. Radio and television personality Art Linkletter introduced Trump at the ceremony. The award was presented by previous recipient Ruth Peale, the wife of Norman Vincent Peale (author of the 1952 book "The Power of Positive Thinking"). During his speech, Trump stated that the key to his success was enthusiasm for his work and that he "used to watch other successful people ... that did good and that did bad and ... followed the good qualities that they had". He then attributed to Shakespeare the saying "Never follow an empty wagon [pointing to his cranium] because nothing ever falls off." He went on to introduce his surviving nuclear family.


title: Fred Trump

text: Jerome Tuccille's 1985 biography of Donald Trump repeats Fred's fabrication that he was born in New Jersey and erroneously states that his middle name was Charles (not Christ). Donald's "The Art of the Deal" (1987) also alleges that Fred was born in New Jersey and further that he was the son of an immigrant from Sweden (not Germany). As U.S. president, Donald Trump stated at least three times that his father was born in Germany. According to the 2021 book "I Alone Can Fix It", by two "Washington Post" journalists, during his last year as president Donald once spoke disparagingly of the German Chancellor, stating, "I know the fucking krauts," and pointing to his father's portrait, continued, "I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all." "Kraut" is an ethnic slur for a German (particularly a soldier of either world war).


title: Fred Trump

text: In 1993, Harry Hurt III wrote in his book "Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump" that he overheard Fred Trump talking about Donald and his wife Marla Maples as they departed for a flight, saying, "I hope their plane crashes", because then "all my problems will be solved".


title: Fred Trump

text: During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, his father's 1927 arrest at a KKK march resurfaced. In May 2016, in an article about Donald Trump's pseudonyms, "Fortune" reported that his father had used the false name "Mr. Green" to anonymously inquire about property values. On October 7, 2016, in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI released a small file it had on Fred Trump. It includes a 1986 "New York Daily News" article on Trump Management's political donations; the bureau was also possibly concerned about ties to organized crime, but much of the relevant information is redacted. On October 11, 2016, Nell Scovell detailed her attempt to visit Trump's "unassuming gray stone marker" as pictured online. Despite the cemetery's website listing the grave as one it would show "upon request", Scovell was inexorably jawboned and told flatly to "Come back after the election," leading her to quip: "Were [Donald Trump's] tax returns etched on the back of the tombstone?"


title: Fred Trump

text: By February 2017, the FBI declassified 389 pages from its early 1970s investigation of alleged racial discrimination by Trump's company. In 2018, in response to the "New York Times" exposé on the Trumps, which revealed that Fred created 295 income streams for Donald, Jonathan Chait wrote for "New York" magazine that many of these were "illegal on their face", further arguing that "The English language has terms for people who make large sources of money from illegal activity: criminals."


title: Fred Trump

text: In October 2019, American journalist and conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen accused Fred Trump of being a Nazi sympathizer, citing the presence of the German American Bund in New York and asserting that Trump's Navy buildings were compromised by Nazi informants. In mid-2020, an online fact checker concluded that despite Nazi spies living in Trump's area, there was no evidence he was one.


title: Fred Trump

text: Mary L. Trump, in her 2020 book, "Too Much and Never Enough", recounts "the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump's favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's". In the book, Mary, a clinical psychologist, diagnoses Fred as a high-functioning sociopath. Mary has also asserted that Fred could have been a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer and claimed he was "quite anti-Semitic".


title: Fred Trump

text: In the 2011 "Comedy Central Roast" of Donald Trump, comedian Seth MacFarlane credited Donald's fortune to his father, mocking the former's "self-starter bullshit" and comparing their relationship to that of Jaden and Will Smith.


title: Fred Trump

text: A 2018 satirical piece in "McSweeney's" depicts someone who attempts to go back in time to kill Hitler as a baby, but arrives at the hospital room where Fred and Mary Trump are with the newborn Donald. Also in 2018, Fred Willard played Trump's ghost on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"; an animated Fred Trump appears in episodes of "Our Cartoon President" (2018–2020). A racist character apparently based on Trump appears in an episode of the 2019 HBO television series "Watchmen".


title: Fred Trump

text: The 2022 film "Armageddon Time" depicts Trump (played by John Diehl) as a financier of a fictional college-preparatory school, based on director James Gray's recollection of being chastised by Trump while a student at Kew-Forest School.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Napoleon Dynamite is a 2004 American comedy film produced by Jeremy Coon, Chris Wyatt and Sean Covel, written by Jared and Jerusha Hess and directed by Jared Hess. The film stars Jon Heder in the role of the titular character, a nerdy high-school student who deals with several dilemmas: befriending an immigrant who wants to be class president, awkwardly pursuing a romance with a fellow student, and living with his quirky family.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The film was Hess's first full-length movie and is partially adapted from his earlier short film, "Peluca". "Napoleon Dynamite" was acquired at the Sundance Film Festival by Fox Searchlight Pictures, who partnered up with MTV Films and Paramount Pictures for the release. Filming was done at Preston High School, and in different areas in Franklin County, Idaho, in the summer of 2003. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004. Most of the situations in the movie are loosely based on the life of Jared Hess. The film's total worldwide gross revenue was $46,122,713. The film has since developed a cult following and was voted at number 14 on Bravo's 100 funniest movies.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Napoleon Dynamite is a socially awkward and bullied 16-year-old from Preston, Idaho, who lives with his grandmother, Carlinda Dynamite, and his older brother, Kipland Ronald "Kip" Dynamite. Napoleon daydreams his way through school, reluctantly dealing with various bullies who torment him.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Napoleon's grandmother is injured in a quad-bike accident and asks their Uncle Rico to look after the boys while she recovers. Rico, a middle-aged and flirtatious former high-school athlete, who lives in a conversion van, treats Napoleon like a child. He uses the visiting opportunity to team up with Kip in a get-rich-quick scheme by selling items door-to-door. Kip wants money to pay for his internet girlfriend, LaFawnduh, to travel from Detroit to see him while Rico believes riches will help him get over his failed dreams of NFL stardom and the recent breakup with his girlfriend.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Napoleon becomes friends with two students at his school: Deb, a shy girl who runs various small businesses to raise money for college, and Pedro, a bold yet calm transfer student from Juarez, Mexico. Preparations begin for the high school dance. Pedro asks Summer Wheatley, a popular and snobby girl, to be his dance partner, but is rebuffed. He then asks Deb, who gladly accepts. Pedro encourages an upset Napoleon to find a date for himself, and he picks a popular classmate, Trisha, from the school yearbook. As a gift, he draws an unintentionally bad picture of her and delivers it to Trisha's mother, who is one of Rico's customers. Rico tells embarrassing stories about Napoleon to evoke sympathy from Trisha's mother, who buys his wares and forces Trisha to reluctantly accept Napoleon's invitation. Trisha appears at the dance with Napoleon but soon abandons him, causing Pedro to let Deb dance with Napoleon.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Pedro decides to run for class president, pitting him against Summer. The factions of the two candidates put up flyers and hand out trinkets to students to attract voters. To increase their respect by demonstrating "skills," Napoleon and Pedro enter a Future Farmers of America competition, grading milk and cow udders. They do well and win medals, but this does little for their popularity. Incidentally, Napoleon visits a thrift store and buys an instructional dance videotape called "D-Qwon's Dance Grooves".


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Kip's girlfriend, LaFawnduh, arrives from Detroit and gives him an urban makeover, outfitting him in hip-hop regalia. Seeing that he is learning to dance, LaFawnduh gives Napoleon a mixtape.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Rico's ongoing sales scheme causes friction with Napoleon as he continues to spread embarrassing rumors about him to prospective customers. Rico tries to sell Deb a breast-enhancement product, claiming it was Napoleon's suggestion, which causes her to break off their friendship. His scheme ends after his sales pitch to the wife of the town's martial arts instructor, Rex, goes awry: Rex assaults Rico after unexpectedly arriving during his demonstration of the breast-enhancement product.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Summer gives a speech before the student body on election day, and then presents a dance skit to "Larger than Life" by the Backstreet Boys with a school club. A despondent Pedro gives an unimpressive speech after discovering he is also required to perform a skit. To save Pedro's campaign, Napoleon gives the sound engineer LaFawnduh's mixtape and spontaneously performs an elaborate dance routine to "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai. Proving himself to be a skilled dancer, Napoleon's routine receives a standing ovation from students, stunning Summer, and her boyfriend, Don.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Pedro becomes the class president, Kip and LaFawnduh leave on a bus for Michigan, Rico reunites with his estranged girlfriend, Grandma returns from the hospital, and Napoleon and Deb reconcile and play tetherball.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: In a post-credits scene set two months later, Kip and Lafawnduh get married, and Napoleon appears with a horse which the bride and groom ride out on.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: In 2002, Brigham Young University film students Jon Heder and Jared Hess collaborated on a class project; the result was a 9-minute short movie shot on black-and-white 16mm film entitled "Peluca" about a nerdy high school student named Seth.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: "Peluca" was shown at the 2003 Slamdance Film Festival and was well received. Jeremy Coon convinced Hess to drop out of school and adapt it into a feature-length film, and he helped him to find investors for the project. Hess sent the short film and the script to a variety of different casting directors, many of whom thought that the idea was "too weird or they just didn't like the character," Hess explained. One casting director suggested Jake Gyllenhaal over unknown actor Jon Heder for the lead role but Hess believed Heder was the only actor to play the part. Jason Lee was offered the role of Uncle Rico while Brad Garrett auditioned for Rex and enjoyed the script, but decided not to commit. Heder was paid $1,000 for starring in the film, but successfully negotiated to receive more after the film became a runaway success.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Hess shot the film on location in Preston, in southeastern Idaho, located near the Utah border, in July 2003. Operating on a tight budget of $400,000, Hess cast many of his friends from school, including Heder and Aaron Ruell, and he relied on the generosity of Preston locals, who provided housing and food to crew members. Among the established actors in the cast was comedy veteran Diedrich Bader, who filmed his scenes as virile martial art instructor Rex in one day. He recalled in 2011 that "Napoleon Dynamite" "still to this day [is] one of the two top scripts I've ever read", alongside "Office Space" (1999), one of his most-recognized roles. "It was very, very hot," Hess recalled in a "Rolling Stone" interview. "But it was so much fun being in this rural farm town making a movie. We shot it in 23 days, so we were moving very, very fast; I just didn't have a lot of film to be able to do a lot of takes. It was a bunch of friends getting together to make a movie. It was like, 'Are people going to get this? Is it working?'"


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Hess describes the film as being "so autobiographical". "I grew up in a family of six boys in Preston, Idaho, and the character of Napoleon was a hybrid of all the most nerdy and awkward parts of me and my brothers growing up. Jerusha really was like Deb growing up. Her mom made her a dress when she was going to a middle school dance and she said, 'I hadn't really developed yet, so my mom overcompensated and made some very large, fluffy shoulders.' Some guy dancing with her patted the sleeves and actually said, 'I like your sleeves ... they're real big,"' Hess said in an interview with "Rolling Stone".


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The film is set during the 2004–2005 school year, as shown on Napoleon's student ID card in the title sequence. The film contains several culturally retroactive elements harkening back to the 1980s or 1990s. For example, Deb wears a side ponytail and Napoleon wears Moon Boots, both popular fashion trends of the 1980s. One scene is set at a school dance that plays only 1980s music such as Alphaville's "Forever Young," whereas an earlier scene features students performing a sign language rendition of "The Rose" (1980) sung by Bette Midler. Much of the technology in the film is also archaic; Napoleon uses a VCR and Walkman cassette player, Kip connects to the Internet via a pay-per-minute dial-up connection and Uncle Rico drives a 1975 Dodge Tradesman. The song Napoleon Dynamite dances to at the end of the film—"Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai—came out in 1999.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The film was originally made without opening titles. Audiences at test screenings were confused about when the film was set. Eight months after the film was completed, the title sequence was filmed in cinematographer Munn Powell's basement. Ruell, who played Kip, suggested the idea of the title sequence. The sequence shows a pair of hands placing and removing several objects on a table. Objects like plates of food had the credits written in condiments, while other objects like a Lemonheads box or a tube of ChapStick had the credits printed on them. Hess explains:


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The Hesses wrote the climactic dance scene because they knew Heder liked to dance. "Jared's wife was like, 'Jon, I hear you're pretty good dancer. I've seen you boogie; it's pretty sweet,'" recalled Heder. "And I was like, 'Well, I like to dabble.' I liked to mess around sometimes in front of friends and dance. But I did take pride in it. I won't be modest. I wasn't great but I did like to mess around ... Cut to two years later: after we had shot the short, they were like, 'Okay we're going to have you dancing in the movie as the climax. This is going to make or break the film.'"


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: When it came to shooting the dance scene for the final film, the producers scheduled to film it towards the end of the film. When they finally got to the scene, they were running out of money and film. They only had one roll of film (approximately 10.5 minutes) left to shoot.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: "It was a lot of pressure," Heder observed. "I was like, 'Oh, crap!' This isn't just a silly little scene. This is the moment where everything comes, and he's making the sacrifice for his friend. That's the whole theme of the movie. Everything leads up to this. Napoleon's been this loser. This has to be the moment where he lands a victory. He gets up there, and it's quiet: no reaction from the audience."


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The dance was spontaneously improvised by Heder, with some choreography help from Tina Majorino, and additional moves taken from "Saturday Night Fever", Michael Jackson, and "Soul Train". "They were like, 'No, Jon, just figure it out.' So I just winged it. I danced three times and they took the best pieces from each of those."


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: "When you're shooting in independent film, you don't know what you're going to get the rights to," Heder explained. "We thought Jamiroquai might be expensive. So we danced to three different songs. To that song and another Jamiroquai song, "Little L." We danced to Michael Jackson, something off of "Off the Wall". Just those three. And then we got the rights to Jamiroquai. And I think that was half our budget."


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Upon the film's release, it was noted that the name "Napoleon Dynamite" had originally been used by musician Elvis Costello, most visibly on his 1986 album "Blood & Chocolate", although he had used the pseudonym on a single B-side as early as 1982. Filmmaker Jared Hess states that he was not aware of Costello's use of the name until two days before the end of shooting, when he was informed by a teenage extra. He later said, "Had I known that name was used by anybody else prior to shooting the whole film, it definitely would have been changed ... I listen to hip-hop, dude. It's a pretty embarrassing coincidence." Hess claims that "Napoleon Dynamite" was the name of a man he met around 2000 on the streets of Cicero, Illinois, while doing missionary work for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Costello believes that Hess got the name from him, whether directly or indirectly. Costello said, "The guy just denies completely that I made the name up ... but I invented it. Maybe somebody told him the name and he truly feels that he came to it by chance. But it's two words that you're never going to hear together."


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: On August 30, 2011, Napoleon Pictures filed a lawsuit against Fox Searchlight for $10 million for underreporting royalties and taking improper revenue deductions. In its term sheet, Fox agreed to pay 31.66% of net profits on home video. The lawsuit said that a 2008 audit revealed that Fox was only paying net royalties on home videos at a 9.66% rate, and there were underreported royalties and improper deductions.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Napoleon Pictures also alleged that Fox had breached the agreement in multiple other respects, including underreporting pay television license fees, failing to report electronic sell-through revenue, charging residuals on home video sales, as well as overcharging residuals on home video sales, deducting a number of costs and charges Fox had no right to deduct and/or for which there is no supporting documentation.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: In May 2012, Fox went to trial after failing to win a summary judgment on the case. The trial began on June 19, 2012. On November 28, 2012, a 74-page decision sided with Fox on 9 of the 11 issues. Napoleon Pictures was awarded $150,000 based on Fox accounting irregularities.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: "Napoleon Dynamite" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 17, 2004, and was theatrically released on June 11, 2004, in the United States by Fox Searchlight Pictures, Paramount Pictures and MTV Films.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: On June 9, 2014, the film was screened at Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles to celebrate its 10th anniversary. In addition, a bronze statue of Napoleon Dynamite, complete with tetherball, was placed at the 20th Century Fox studio lot.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: "Napoleon Dynamite" was released on VHS and DVD on December 21, 2004, by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment in North America and by Paramount Home Entertainment in all other territories.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Despite a very limited initial release, "Napoleon Dynamite" was a commercial success. It was filmed on an estimated budget of a mere $400,000, and less than a year after its release, it had grossed $44,940,956.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" magazine complimented the film, saying, "Hess and his terrific cast – Heder is geek perfection – make their own kind of deadpan hilarity. You'll laugh till it hurts. Sweet." The "Christian Science Monitor" called the film "a refreshing new take on the overused teen-comedy genre" and said that the film "may not make you laugh out loud – it's too sly and subtle for that – but it will have you smiling every minute, and often grinning widely at its weirded-out charm."


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Michael Atkinson of "The Village Voice" praised the film as "an epic, magisterially observed pastiche on all-American geekhood, flooring the competition with a petulant shove." In a mixed review, "The New York Times" praised Heder's performance and the "film's most interesting quality, which is its stubborn, confident, altogether weird individuality", while criticizing the film's resolution that comes "too easily." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film one-and-a-half stars, writing that he felt that "the movie makes no attempt to make [Napoleon] likable" and that it contained "a kind of studied stupidity that sometimes passes as humor". At the time, "Entertainment Weekly" critics gave it a grade C and C− respectively. "Entertainment Weekly" later ranked Napoleon #88 on its 2010 list of The 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years, saying, "A high school misfit found a sweet spot, tapping into our inner dork." The film was on several year-end lists. "Rolling Stone" placed it at number 22 of the 25 Top DVDs of 2004.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, 72% of 175 surveyed critics gave "Napoleon Dynamite" a positive review, with an average rating of 6.40/10. The site's consensus reads, "A charming, quirky, and often funny comedy." On Metacritic it has a score of 64% based on reviews from 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: After nearly two decades of rumors, it was reported in September 2020, that a sequel to "Napoleon Dynamite" was in discussion. Heder stated that he is interested in a darker take on the film's characters instead of rehashing the original film's plot:


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: Ramirez improvised a script for a sequel in which Pedro is married to Summer Wheatley, has five kids and owns a bakery. In the same hypothetical script, Kip has fulfilled his dream to become a cage fighter, while Rico has ventured into a new business that he believes will make him rich.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: In April 2010, Fox announced that an animated series was in development, with the original cast reprising their roles. The series debuted on Sunday, January 15, 2012. Director Jared Hess, his co-screenwriter wife Jerusha, and Mike Scully produced the show in association with 20th Century Fox Television. On May 14, 2012, it was announced that Fox had canceled the series after 6 episodes. The complete series was released on DVD on November 4, 2014, by Olive Films.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The term "The Napoleon Dynamite Problem" has been used to describe the phenomenon where "quirky" films such as "Napoleon Dynamite", "Lost in Translation" and "I Heart Huckabees" prove difficult for researchers to create algorithms that are able to predict whether or not a particular viewer will like the film based on their ratings of previously viewed films.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: For several years the city of Preston held a "Napoleon Dynamite Festival" in the summer. Many of the featured festival themes related to events occurring during the film. For example: Tetherball Tournament, Tater Tot Eating Contest, Moon Boot Dance, Impersonation, Look-A-Like Contest, Football Throwing Contest and more. Fifteen years after the film came out fans continue to visit Preston, primarily as a side trip as they make their way to Yellowstone National Park.


title: Napoleon Dynamite

text: The success of "Napoleon Dynamite" led to other films set in small towns, such as "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Juno", which would have similar critical, popular, and financial success.


title: Economy of China

text: The People's Republic of China has an upper middle income developing mixed socialist market economy that incorporates economic planning through industrial policies and strategic five-year plans. Historically, China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. Many analysts assert that the Chinese economic model is one of the main examples of state capitalism in the 21st century. The economy consists of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and mixed-ownership enterprises, as well as a large domestic private sector and openness to foreign businesses in a system. China is one of the fastest-growing major economies since the 1978 economic reforms. It has the world's second largest economy when measured by nominal GDP, totaling around US$17.7 trillion (114.4 trillion yuan) in 2021, and the world's largest economy since 2016 when measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). It has been the second largest by nominal GDP since 2010, with data relying on fluctuating market exchange rates. It recently overtook the economy of the European Union in 2021. A forecast states that China will become the world's largest economy in nominal GDP by 2028. China account for 18.79% share of global economy in 2022 in PPP terms


title: Economy of China

text: China is the world's largest manufacturing economy and exporter of goods. It is also the world's fastest-growing consumer market and second-largest importer of goods. China is also the world's largest consumer of numerous commodities, and accounts for about half of global consumption of metals. China is a net importer of services products. It is the largest trading nation in the world and plays a prominent role in international trade. China is the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world as of 2020, receiving inflows of $163billion. It has the second largest outward foreign direct investment, at US$136.91 billion for 2019 alone, following Japan at US$226.65billion for the same period. As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionairesthere were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. According to the 2019 Global Wealth Report by Credit Suisse Group, China surpassed the US in the wealth of the top ten percent of the world's population. China has the world's largest foreign-exchange reserves worth $3.1trillion, but if the foreign assets of China's state-owned commercial banks are included, the value of China's reserves rises to nearly $4trillion.


title: Economy of China

text: With 778 million workers, the Chinese labor force was the world's largest as of 2020. It ranks 28th on the Global Competitiveness Report. Per the Global Innovation Index in 2022, China was ranked 11th, 3rd in Asia & Oceania region and 2nd for countries with a population of over 100 million. It is the only middle-income economy and the only newly industrialized economy in the top 30. China ranks No.1 globally in patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports. It also has two (Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Beijing in the 2nd and 3rd spots respectively) of the global top5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any other country. As of March 2022, China has over 500 million 5G users and 1.45 million base stations installed.


title: Economy of China

text: China has four of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers and three of the world's ten largest stock exchanges (both by market capitalization and by trade volume). China's economy is both a contributor to rising global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions causing climate change and severely affected by its adverse impacts. Although China is not the main source of historical cumulative emissions, it today accounts for 27 percent of annual global carbon dioxide and a third of the world’s greenhouse gases emissions. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its relatively carbon-intensive industrial economy will create economic transition risks but also open new opportunities for development. At the same time, large parts of China’s population and economic infrastructure are heavily exposed to climate risks.


title: Economy of China

text: Historically, China was one of the world's foremost economic powers for most of the two millennia from the 1st until the 19th century. China accounted for around one-quarter of the global GDP until the late 1700s and approximately one-third of the global GDP in 1820 as the Industrial Revolution was beginning in Great Britain. China's GDP in 1820 was six times as large as Britain's, the largest economy in Europeand almost twenty times the GDP of the nascent United States.


title: Economy of China

text: The government began its economic reforms in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. As a result, China has the world's fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% over 30 years. Since the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1982, the economy has been described as a "socialist market economy with Chinese Characteristics".


title: Economy of China

text: China has had the world's largest middle class population since 2015, and the middle class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018 and is projected to reach 1.2 billion by 2027, making up one fourth of the world total. As of 2018, China was first in the world in total number of billionaires and second in millionairesthere were 658 Chinese billionaires and 3.5 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of rich people in the world, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. In other words, as of 2019, a hundred million Chinese are in the top ten percent of the wealthiest individuals in the worldthose who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000. In 2020, China has the world's highest number of billionaires, which is more than the US and India combined, and as of March 2021, the number of billionaires in China reach 1,058 with the combined wealth of US$4.5trillion. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2021, China is home to six of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Hangzhou and Guangzhou in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country. As of January 2021, China had 85 female billionaires, two-thirds of the global total.


title: Economy of China

text: According to the IMF, on a per capita income basis, China ranked 59th by GDP (nominal) and 73rd by GDP (PPP) in 2020. China ranked 3rd by GDP per capita (nominal) and 5th by GDP per capita (PPP) among countries with a population of over 100 million.


title: Economy of China

text: State-owned enterprises accounted for over 60% of China's market capitalization in 2019 and generated 40% of China's GDP of US$15.98trillion dollars (101.36 trillion yuan) in 2020, with domestic and foreign private businesses and investment accounting for the remaining 60%. As of the end of 2019, the total assets of all China's SOEs, including those operating in the financial sector, reached US$58.97trillion In 2015. Ninety-one (91) of these SOEs belong to the 2020 Fortune Global 500 companies.


title: Economy of China

text: China's unequal transportation system, combined with important differences in the availability of natural and human resources and in industrial infrastructure, has produced significant variations in the regional economies of China.


title: Economy of China

text: Economic development has generally been more rapid in coastal provinces than in the interior and there are large disparities in per capita income between regions. The three wealthiest regions are the Yangtze River Delta in East China; the Pearl River Delta in South China; and Jingjinji region in North China. It is the rapid development of these areas that is expected to have the most significant effect on the Asian regional economy as a whole and Chinese government policy is designed to remove the obstacles to accelerated growth in these wealthier regions. By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.


title: Economy of China

text: In accordance with the One country, two systems policy, the economies of the former British colony of Hong Kong and Portuguese colony of Macau are separate from the rest of China and each other. Both Hong Kong and Macau are free to conduct and engage in economic negotiations with foreign countries, as well as participating as full members in various international economic organizations such as the World Customs Organization, the World Trade Organization and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, often under the names "Hong Kong, China" and "Macau, China".


title: Economy of China

text: The economic reforms implemented in 1978 helped to propel China into the ranks of the world's major economic powers. The economic development of Shenzhen has caused the city to be referred to as the world's next Silicon Valley. The provinces in the coastal regions of China tend to be more industrialized while regions in the hinterland are less developed.


title: Economy of China

text: To guide economic development, the Chinese central government adopts "five-year plans" that detail its economic priorities and essential policies. The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) is currently being implemented, placing an emphasis on consumption-driven growth and technological self-sufficiency while China transitions from being an upper middle-income economy to a high-income economy. The public sector plays a central role in China's economy. This development is also in line with the planning goals of the Chinese central government to achieve the "Two Centenaries", namely the material goal of China becoming a "moderately prosperous society in all respects" by 2021 and the modernization goal of China becoming a "fully developed nation" by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.


title: Economy of China

text: Like Japan and South Korea before it, China’s economy has grown rapidly, raising the income levels and living standards of its citizens while producing goods that are consumed globally. Between 1981 and 2019, the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty decreased from 88.1% to 0.2%. Its current account surplus increased by a factor of 53 between 1982 and 2015, from $5.7billion to $304billion. During this time, China also became an industrial powerhouse, moving beyond initial successes in low-wage sectors like clothing and footwear to the increasingly sophisticated production of computers, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles. China's factories generated $3.7trillion real manufacturing value added, more than the US, South Korea, Germany and the UK combined. China's manufacturing sector benefits from the world's largest domestic market, immense manufacturing scale, and highly developed manufacturing supply chains.


title: Economy of China

text: In mid-2014 China announced it was taking steps to boost the economy, which at the time was running at a rate 7.4% per annum, but was slowing. The measures included plans to build a multi-tier transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports, to create a new economic belt alongside the Yangtze River. In 2021, it was reported that China's GDP could continue to grow on an average of 5.9% annually until 2025, according to the Centre for Economic and Business Research, which also predicts that China will overtake the US economy by the end of the decade.


title: Economy of China

text: There exists disputes over reliability of official economic data. Foreign and some Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth. However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures. Others, such as the Economist Intelligence Unit, state that while there's evidence China's GDP data is "smoothed", they believe that China's nominal and real GDP data are broadly accurate.


title: Economy of China

text: Chinese provinces and cities have long been suspected of cooking their numbers, with the focus on local government officials, whose performance are often assessed based on how well their respective economies have performed. In recent years, China claimed growth numbers have come under increased scrutiny, with both domestic and international observers alleging the government has been inflating its economic output.


title: Economy of China

text: A survey by "The Wall Street Journal" of 64 select economists found that 96% of respondents think China's GDP estimates don't "accurately reflect the state of the Chinese economy." However, more than half the economists in the survey estimated that China's annual growth was somewhere in the 5% to 7% range, which represents robust growth.


title: Economy of China

text: Chinese premier Li Keqiang has said he is far from confident in the country's GDP estimates, calling them "man-made" and unreliable, according to a leaked document from 2007 obtained by WikiLeaks. He said government data releases, especially the GDP numbers, should be used "for reference only".


title: Economy of China

text: Analysts like Wilbur Ross and Donald Straszheim believe China's recent economic growth has been overstated, and estimate a growth rate at around 4% or less. According to Chang-Tai Hsieh, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Michael Zheng Song, an economics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and coauthors, China's economy was smaller than what the Chinese government stated in 2016. In their research paper, published by the Brookings Institution, they adjusted the historical GDP time series using value-added tax data, which they said are "highly resistant to fraud and tampering". They found that China's economic growth may have been overstated by 1.7 percent each year between 2008 and 2016, meaning that the government may have been overstating the size of the Chinese economy by 12-16 percent in 2016.


title: Economy of China

text: Several Western academics and institutions have supported the claim that China's economy is likely to be underestimated. A paper by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research claimed that China's economic growth may be higher than what is reported by official statistics. An article by Hunter Clarka, Maxim Pinkovskiya and Xavier Sala-i-Martin published by the Elsevier Science Direct in 2018 employs an innovative method of satellite-recorded nighttime lights, which the authors claim to be a best-unbiased predictor of the economic growth in Chinese cities. The results suggest that the Chinese economic growth rate is higher than the official reported data.


title: Economy of China

text: The Li Keqiang index is an alternative measurement of Chinese economic performance that uses three variables Li preferred. Satellite measurements of light pollution are used by some analysts to model Chinese economic growth and suggest recent growth rate numbers in Chinese official data are more reliable although are likely to be smoothed. According to an article by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, China's official statistics are of a high quality compared to other developing, middle-income and low-income countries. In 2016, China was at the 83rd percentile of middle and low-income countries, up from the 38th percentile in 2004. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that China's official GDP statistics are "significantly and positively correlated" with externally verifiable measures of economic activity such as import and export data from China's trade partners, suggesting that China's economic growth was no slower than the official figures indicated.


title: Economy of China

text: The study by Daniel Rosen and Beibei Bao, published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2015, showed that GDP in 2008 was actually 13-16 percent bigger than the official data, while 2013 GDP was accurately at $10.5trillion rather than the official figure at $9.5trillion. According to a research conducted by Arvind Subramanian, a former economist at the International Money Fund (IMF) and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the size of the Chinese economy by Purchasing Power Parity in 2010 was about $14.8 trillion rather than an official estimate at $10.1 trillion by IMF, meaning that China's GDP was underestimated by 47 percent.


title: Economy of China

text: These strategies are aimed at the relatively poorer regions in China in an attempt to prevent widening inequalities:


title: Economy of China

text: The "West-to-East Electricity Transmission", the "West-to-East Gas Transmission", and the "South–North Water Transfer Project" are the government's three key strategic projects, aimed at realigning overall of per year. Construction of the "South-to-North Water Diversion" project was officially launched on 2002 and completion of Phase I is scheduled for 2010; this will relieve serious water shortfall in northern China and realize a rational distribution of the water resources of the Yangtze, Yellow, Huaihe, and Haihe river valleys.


title: Economy of China

text: The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (with IMF staff stimtates in 2022–2027). Inflation below 5% is in green.


title: Economy of China

text: During the winter of 2007–2008, inflation ran about 7% on an annual basis, rising to 8.7% in statistics for February 2008, released in March 2008.


title: Economy of China

text: Shortages of gasoline and diesel fuel developed in the fall of 2007 due to reluctance of refineries to produce fuel at low prices set by the state. These prices were slightly increased in November 2007 with fuel selling for $2.65 a gallon, still slightly below world prices. Price controls were in effect on numerous basic products and services, but were ineffective with food, prices of which were rising at an annual rate of 18.2% in November 2007. The problem of inflation has caused concern at the highest levels of the Chinese government. On 9January 2008, the government issued the following statement on its official website: "The Chinese government decided on Wednesday to take further measures to stabilize market prices and increase the severity of punishments for those guilty of driving up prices through hoarding or cheating."


title: Economy of China

text: Pork is an important part of the Chinese economy with a per capita consumption of 90 grams per day. The worldwide rise in the price of animal feed associated with increased production of ethanol from corn resulted in steep rises in pork prices in China in 2007. Increased cost of production interacted badly with increased demand resulting from rapidly rising wages. The state responded by subsidizing pork prices for students and the urban poor and called for increased production. Release of pork from the nation's strategic pork reserve was considered.


title: Economy of China

text: By January 2008, the inflation rate rose to 7.1%, which BBC News described as the highest inflation rate since 1997, due to the winter storms that month. China's inflation rate jumped to a new decade high of 8.7 percent in February 2008 after severe winter storms disrupted the economy and worsened food shortages, the government said 11 March 2008. Throughout the summer and fall, however, inflation fell again to a low of 6.6% in October 2008.


title: Economy of China

text: By November 2010, the inflation rate rose up to 5.1%, driven by an 11.7% increase in food prices year on year. According to the bureau, industrial output went up 13.3 percent. As supplies have run short, prices for fuel and other commodities have risen.


title: Economy of China

text: Chinese investment has always been highly cyclical. Ever since the 1958 Great Leap Forward, growth in fixed capital formation has typically peaked about every five years. Recent peaks occurred in 1978, 1984, 1988, 1993, 2003 and 2009. The corresponding troughs were in 1981, 1986, 1989, 1997 and 2005.


title: Economy of China

text: In China, the majority of investment is carried out by entities that are at least partially state-owned. Most of these are under the control of local governments. Thus booms are primarily the result of perverse incentives at the local-government level. Unlike entrepreneurs in a free-enterprise economy, Chinese local officials are motivated primarily by political considerations. As their performance evaluations are based, to a large extent, on GDP growth within their jurisdictions, they have a strong incentive to promote large-scale investment projects. They also don't face any real bankruptcy risk. When localities get into trouble, they are invariably bailed out by state-owned banks. Under these circumstances, overinvestment is inevitable.


title: Economy of China

text: A typical cycle begins with a relaxation of central government credit and industrial policy. This allows local governments to push investment aggressively, both through state-sector entities they control directly and by offering investment-promotion incentives to private investors and enterprises outside their jurisdictions. The resulting boom puts upward pressure on prices and may also result in shortages of key inputs such as coal and electricity (as was the case in 2003). Once inflation has risen to a level at which it begins to threaten social stability, the central government will intervene by tightening enforcement of industrial and credit policy. Projects that went ahead without required approvals will be halted. Bank lending to particular types of investors will be restricted. Credit then becomes tight and investment growth begins to decline.


title: Economy of China

text: Eventually such centrally-imposed busts alleviate shortages and bring inflation down to acceptable levels. At that point, the central government yields to local-government demands for looser policy and the cycle begins again.


title: Economy of China

text: Over the years, large subsidies were built into the price structure of certain commodities and these subsidies grew substantially in the late 1970s and 1980s.


title: Economy of China

text: By 2010, rapidly rising wages and a general increase in the standard of living had put increased energy use on a collision course with the need to reduce carbon emissions in order to control global warming. There were diligent efforts to increase energy efficiency and increase use of renewable sources; over 1,000 inefficient power plants had been closed, but projections continued to show a dramatic rise in carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. Since the late 2010s, a reduction of state-backed subsidies has negatively impacted several Chinese companies, with BYD Auto being one of them.


title: Economy of China

text: While note the largest source of historical cumulative emissions China today accounts for one third of global greenhouse gas emissions. On a per capita basis, China’s emissions in 2019 (9 tonnes CO2-equivalent [tCO2e] per year) surpass those of the European Union (7.6 tCO2e) but remain slightly below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average (10.7 tCO2e) and well below the United States average (17.6 tCO2e). However, the carbon intensity of China’s GDP—the amount of carbon used to generate a unit of output—remains relatively high. To avoid the long-term socioeconomic cost of environmental pollution in China, it has been suggested by Nicholas Stern and Fergus Green of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment that the economy of China be shifted to more advanced industrial development with low carbon dioxide emissions and better allocation of national resources to innovation and R&D for sustainable economic growth in order to reduce the impact of China's heavy industry. This is in accord with the planning goals of the central government. Chinese leader and Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream is described as achieving the "Two Centenaries", namely the material goal of China becoming a "moderately prosperous society" by 2021, and the modernization goal of China becoming a fully developed nation by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.


title: Economy of China

text: In 2014, many analysts expressed concern over the overall size of China's government debt. At the end of 2014, the International Monetary Fund reported that China's general government gross debt-to-GDP ratio was 41.44 percent. In 2015, a report by the International Monetary Fund concluded that China's public debt is relatively low "and on a stable path in all standard stress tests except for the scenario with contingent liability shocks", such as "a large-scale bank recapitalization or financial system bailout to deal, for example, with a potential rise in NPLs from deleveraging".


title: Economy of China

text: Chinese authorities have dismissed analysts' worries, insisting "the country still has room to increase government debt." Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, earlier in 2016, commented that "the... debt pile facing China [is] an 'internal' problem, given the majority of the borrowings was issued in local currency. Many economists have expressed the same views as Bernanke. A 2019 survey by the OECD found that China's corporate debt is higher than other major countries.


title: Economy of China

text: As of 2020, China's total government debt stands at approximately 46 trillion ( 7.0 trillion), equivalent to about 45% of GDP. In comparison, the United States had a government debt of about 28 trillion at the end of 2020, approximately 128% of GDP.


title: Economy of China

text: Though China's economy has expanded rapidly, its regulatory environment has not kept pace. Since Deng Xiaoping's open market reforms, the growth of new businesses has outpaced the government's ability to regulate them. This has created a situation where businesses, faced with mounting competition and poor oversight, take drastic measures to increase profit margins, often at the expense of consumer safety. This issue became more prominent in 2007, with a number of restrictions being placed on problematic Chinese exports by the United States.


title: Economy of China

text: From the 1950s to the 1980s, the central government's revenues derived chiefly from the profits of the state enterprises, which were remitted to the state. Some government revenues also came from taxes, of which the most important was the general industrial and commercial tax.


title: Economy of China

text: The trend, however, has been for remitted profits of the state enterprises to be replaced with taxes on those profits. Initially, this tax system was adjusted so as to allow for differences in the market capitalization and pricing situations of various firms, but more-uniform tax schedules were introduced in the early 1990s. In addition, personal income and value-added taxes were implemented at that time.


title: Economy of China

text: Most of China's financial institutions are state-owned and governed. The chief instruments of financial and fiscal control are the People's Bank of China (PBC) and the Ministry of Finance, both under the authority of the State Council. The People's Bank of China replaced the Central Bank of China in 1950 and gradually took over private banks. It fulfills many of the functions of other central and commercial banks. It issues the currency, controls circulation, and plays an important role in disbursing budgetary expenditures. Additionally, it administers the accounts, payments, and receipts of government organizations and other bodies, which enables it to exert thorough supervision over their financial and general performances in consideration of the government's economic plans. The PBC is also responsible for international trade and other overseas transactions. Remittances by overseas Chinese are managed by the Bank of China (BOC), which has a number of branch offices in several countries.


title: Economy of China

text: Other financial institutions that are crucial, include the China Development Bank (CDB), which funds economic development and directs foreign investment; the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), which provides for the agricultural sector; the China Construction Bank (CCB), which is responsible for capitalizing a portion of overall investment and for providing capital funds for certain industrial and construction enterprises; and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which conducts ordinary commercial transactions and acts as a savings bank for the public. China initiated the founding of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015 and the Silk Road Fund in 2014, an investment fund of the Chinese government to foster increased investment and provide financial supports in countries along the One Belt, One Road.


title: Economy of China

text: China's economic reforms greatly increased the economic role of the banking system. In theory any enterprises or individuals can go to the banks to obtain loans outside the state plan, in practice, 75% of state bank loans go to State Owned Enterprises. (SOEs) Even though nearly all investment capital was previously provided on a grant basis according to the state plan, policy has since the start of the reform shifted to a loan basis through the various state-directed financial institutions. It is estimated that, as of 2011, 14 trillion Yuan in loans was outstanding to local governments. Much of that total is believed by outside observers to be nonperforming. Increasing amounts of funds are made available through the banks for economic and commercial purposes. Foreign sources of capital have also increased. China has received loans from the World Bank and several United Nations programs, as well as from countries (particularly Japan) and, to a lesser extent, commercial banks. Hong Kong has been a major conduit of this investment, as well as a source itself. On 23 February 2012, the PBC evinced its inclination to liberalise its capital markets when it circulated a telling ten-year timetable. Following on the heels of this development, Shenzhen banks were able to launch cross-border yuan remittances for individuals, a significant shift in the PBC's capital control strictures since Chinese nationals had been previously barred from transferring their yuan to overseas account.


title: Economy of China

text: China has four of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers (Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen), more than any other country. China has three of the world's ten largest stock exchanges (Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen), both by market capitalization and by trade volume. As of 12 October 2020, the total market capitalization of Mainland Chinese stock markets, consisting of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, topped US$10trillion, excluding the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with about US$5.9trillion.


title: Economy of China

text: As of the end of June 2020, foreign investors had bought a total of US$440billion in Chinese stocks, representing about 2.9% of the total value, and indicating that foreign investors scooped up a total of US$156.6billion in the stocks just in the first half of 2020. The total value of China's bond market topped US$15.4trillion, ranked above that of Japan and the U.K., and second only to that of the U.S. with US$40trillion, as of the beginning of September 2020. As of the end of September 2020, foreign holdings of Chinese bonds reached US$388billion, or 2.5%, of the total value, notwithstanding an increase by 44.66% year on year.


title: Economy of China

text: China has the world's largest total banking sector assets of around $45.838trillion (309.41trillion CNY) with $42.063trillion in total deposits and other liabilities.


title: Economy of China

text: As of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015, the financial industry had been providing about 1.5% of China's 7% annual growth rate.


title: Economy of China

text: Despite slowing of the economy, as of June 2015 the Chinese stock index, the CSI 300 Index, which is based on 300 stocks traded in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, had risen nearly 150% over the past twelve months. In an effort to forestall damage from collapse of a possible economic bubble fueled by margin trading the central government raised requirements for margin lending. Economic damage from a crash in 2007–2008 was limited due to margin lending being highly restricted. In early July, after a fall in the markets of nearly 30% from their 12 June highs, there were efforts by blue-chip, often state-owned, firms, the Chinese securities industry, and the central government to stabilize the market by buying back stock and increasing purchases of the stock of established firms; however, much of the volatility has been in smaller, less-established firms that had been heavily invested in by unsophisticated, often working class, investors who had purchased stock based solely on its rapid increase in valuation. 80% of Chinese stocks are owned by individual investors, many novices. As of 10 July 2015 efforts by the China Securities Finance Corporation, CFS, a firm created by China's commodities and stock exchanges to finance trades, had apparently stabilized the market. Major Chinese securities firms were required by the China Securities Regulatory Commission to buy, and hold, a substantial amount of securities affected by the downturn. Using funds supplied by the central bank and commercial banks the China Securities Finance Corporation purchased enough stocks to halt the slide acquiring as much as 5% of the stock in some firms. Lines of credit were extended by CFS to 21 securities firms, some of which also purchased up to 5% of some companies stocks. Some of the small cap stocks acquired may be overvalued.


title: Economy of China

text: Chinese stocks fell about 10% during the last week of July 2015 with record breaking losses on Monday.


title: Economy of China

text: The renminbi ("people's currency") is the currency of China, denominated as the yuan, subdivided into 10jiao or 100fen. The renminbi is issued by the People's Bank of China, the monetary authority of China. The ISO 4217 abbreviation is CNY, although also commonly abbreviated as "RMB". As of 2005, the yuan was generally considered by outside observers to be undervalued by about 30–40%. However, in 2017, the IMF stated that the yuan was correctly valued.


title: Economy of China

text: The renminbi is held in a floating exchange-rate system managed primarily against the US dollar. On 21 July 2005, China revalued its currency by 2.1% against the US dollar and, since then has moved to an exchange rate system that references a basket of currencies and has allowed the renminbi to fluctuate at a daily rate of up to half a percent.


title: Economy of China

text: The rate of exchange (Chinese yuan per US$1) on 31 July 2008, was RMB 6.846, in mid-2007 was RMB 7.45, while in early 2006 was RMB 8.07:US$1=8.2793 yuan (January 2000), 8.2783 (1999), 8.2790 (1998), 8.2898 (1997), 8.3142 (1996), 8.3514 (1995).


title: Economy of China

text: There is a complex relationship between China's balance of trade, inflation, measured by the consumer price index and the value of its currency. Despite allowing the value of the yuan to "float", China's central bank has decisive ability to control its value with relationship to other currencies. Inflation in 2007, reflecting sharply rising prices for meat and fuel, is probably related to the worldwide rise in commodities used as animal feed or as fuel. Thus rapid rises in the value of the yuan permitted in December 2007 are possibly related to efforts to mitigate inflation by permitting the renminbi to be worth more. An article published in International Review of Economics & Finance in 2010 by Mete Feridun (University of Greenwich Business School) and his colleagues provide empirical evidence that financial development fosters economic growth in China.


title: Economy of China

text: During the week of 10 August 2015, against the background of a slowing Chinese economy and appreciation of the U.S. dollar, the People's Bank of China devalued the renminbi by about 5%. The devaluation was accomplished by pegging the official rate to closing market rates. A market-based "representative" exchange rate against the U.S. dollar is one of the requirements for designation of a currency as one with Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of China's goals. Since the late-2000s, China has sought to internationalize the renminbi. As of 2013, the RMB is the 8th most widely traded currency in the world. In November 2015 in advance of G-20 and IMF meetings, IMF director Christine Lagarde announced her support for adding the yuan to the SDR currency basket. The announcement gave 'green-light' to official approval at 30 November IMF meeting. The internationalization of the Chinese economy continues to affect the standardized economic forecast officially launched in China by the Purchasing Managers Index in 2005. As China's economy grows, so does China's Renminbi, which undergoes the process needed for its internationalization.


title: Economy of China

text: Among the Fortune 500 companies in 2022, there are 136 in China. As of 2022, China was home to 351 largest listed companies measured by revenue in the Fortune Global 2000, ranking second globally. China is also home to more than two hundred privately held technology startups (tech unicorns), each with a valuation of over $1billion, the highest number in the world.


title: Economy of China

text: China is the world's largest producer and consumer of agricultural productsand some 300 million Chinese farm workers are in the industry, mostly laboring on pieces of land about the size of U.S farms. Virtually all arable land is used for food crops. China is the world's largest producer of rice and is among the principal sources of wheat, corn (maize), tobacco, soybeans, potatoes, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, oilseed, pork, and fish. Major non-food crops, including cotton, other fibers, and oilseeds, furnish China with a small proportion of its foreign trade revenue. Agricultural exports, such as vegetables and fruits, fish and shellfish, grain and meat products, are exported to Hong Kong. Yields are high because of intensive cultivation, for example, China's cropland area is only 75% of the U.S. total, but China still produces about 30% more crops and livestock than the United States. China hopes to further increase agricultural production through improved plant stocks, fertilizers, and technology.


title: Economy of China

text: According to the government statistics issued in 2005, after a drop in the yield of farm crops in 2000, output has been increasing annually.


title: Economy of China

text: According to the United Nations World Food Program, in 2003, China fed twenty percent of the world's population with only seven percent of the world's arable land. China ranks first worldwide in farm output, and, as a result of topographic and climatic factors, only about 10–15 percent of the total land area is suitable for cultivation. Of this, slightly more than half is unirrigated, and the remainder is divided roughly equally between paddy fields and irrigated areas. Nevertheless, about 60 percent of the population lives in the rural areas, and until the 1980s a high percentage of them made their living directly from farming. Since then, many have been encouraged to leave the fields and pursue other activities, such as light manufacturing, commerce, and transportation; and by the mid-1980s farming accounted for less than half of the value of rural output. Today, agriculture contributes only 13% of China's GDP.


title: Economy of China

text: Animal husbandry constitutes the second most important component of agricultural production. China is the world's leading producer of pigs, chickens, and eggs, and it also has sizable herds of sheep and cattle. Since the mid-1970s, greater emphasis has been placed on increasing the livestock output. China has a long tradition of ocean and freshwater fishing and of aquaculture. Pond raising has always been important and has been increasingly emphasized to supplement coastal and inland fisheries threatened by overfishing and to provide such valuable export commodities as prawns. China is also unmatched in the size and reach of its fishing armada with anywhere from 200,000 to 800,000 boats, some as far afield as Argentina. Fueled primarily by government subsidies, its growth and activities have largely gone unchecked.


title: Economy of China

text: Environmental problems such as floods, drought, and erosion pose serious threats to farming in many parts of the country. The wholesale destruction of forests gave way to an energetic reforestation program that proved inadequate, and forest resources are still fairly meagre. The principal forests are found in the Qin Mountains and the central mountains and on the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Because they are inaccessible, the Qinling forests are not worked extensively, and much of the country's timber comes from Heilongjiang, Jilin, Sichuan, and Yunnan.


title: Economy of China

text: Western China, comprising Tibet, Xinjiang, and Qinghai, has little agricultural significance except for areas of floriculture and cattle raising. Rice, China's most important crop, is dominant in the southern provinces and many of the farms here yield two harvests a year. In the north, wheat is of the greatest importance, while in central China wheat and rice vie with each other for the top place. Millet and kaoliang (a variety of grain sorghum) are grown mainly in the northeast and some central provinces, which, together with some northern areas, also provide considerable quantities of barley. Most of the soybean crop is derived from the north and the northeast; corn (maize) is grown in the center and the north, while tea comes mainly from the warm and humid hilly areas of the south. Cotton is grown extensively in the central provinces, but it is also found to a lesser extent in the southeast and in the north. Tobacco comes from the center and parts of the south. Other important crops are potatoes, sugar beets, and oilseeds.


title: Economy of China

text: In the past decade, the government has been encouraging agricultural mechanization and land consolidation to raise yields and compensate for the loss of rural workers who have migrated to the cities. According to the most recent statistics by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the annual growth rate of agricultural mechanization in China is 6.38 percent. By 2014, the integrated mechanization rate had risen to nearly 60 percent, with the rate for wheat surpassing 90 percent and that for maize approaching 80 percent. In addition to standard agricultural equipment like tractors, China's agriculture cooperatives have begun using high-tech equipment, including unmanned aerial vehicles, which are used to spay crops with pesticides. Good progress has been made in increasing water conservancy, and about half the cultivated land is under irrigation.


title: Economy of China

text: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, economic reforms were introduced. First of all this began with the shift of farming work to a system of household responsibility and a phasing out of collectivized agriculture. Later this expanded to include a gradual liberalization of price controls; fiscal decentralization; massive privatization of state enterprises, thereby allowing a wide variety of private enterprises in the services and light manufacturing; the foundation of a diversified banking system (but with large amounts of state control); the development of a stock market; and the opening of the economy to increased foreign trade and foreign investment.


title: Economy of China

text: The real estate industry is about 20% of the Chinese economy. Compared to other nations, investing in stock markets and other assets is harder due to currency controls within the country. As a result, many Chinese citizens own multiple properties, as they are one of the few ways in which it is comparatively easy to grow and preserve wealth. Due to this, many economists have speculated about a property bubble within the Chinese economy On 16 July 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that the housing market within the Chinese economy had grown to US$52 trillion, eclipsing the US 2008 housing market before the Financial Crisis.


title: Economy of China

text: Despite the possibility of a housing bubble, many people still choose to invest their assets in real estate market. On 19 December 2021, according to a report by McKinsey Global Institute, China's net worth reached $120 trillion in 2020 to overtake the U.S.'s $89 trillion as a red-hot real estate market drove up property value.


title: Economy of China

text: Since 1980, China's energy production has grown dramatically, as has the proportion allocated to domestic consumption. Some 80 percent of all power is generated from fossil fuel at thermal plants, with about 17 percent at hydroelectric installations; only about two percent is from nuclear energy, mainly from plants located in Guangdong and Zhejiang. Though China has rich overall energy potential, most have yet to be developed. In addition, the geographical distribution of energy puts most of these resources relatively far from their major industrial users. Basically the northeast is rich in coal and oil, the central part of north China has abundant coal, and the southwest has immense hydroelectric potential. But the industrialized regions around Guangzhou and the Lower Yangtze region around Shanghai have too little energy, while there is relatively little heavy industry located near major energy resource areas other than in the southern part of the northeast.


title: Economy of China

text: Due in large part to environmental concerns, China has wanted to shift China's current energy mix from a heavy reliance on coal, which accounts for 70–75% of China's energy, toward greater reliance on oil, natural gas, renewable energy, and nuclear power. China has closed thousands of coal mines over the past five to ten years to cut overproduction. According to Chinese statistics, this has reduced coal production by over 25%.