From 1921 to 2021, the Communist Party of China has led the country to create countless miracles. As China's overall national strength continues growing, the country has become the biggest engine to drive global economic growth.

China has become a mainstay of global economic growth

China has been the world's second largest economy for 11 consecutive years from 2010.

Under the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world in 2020, China's GDP reached 101.6 trillion yuan ($15.7 trillion), up 2.3 percent from a year earlier, making the country the only major economy in the world with positive growth. The GDP figure represented an increase of 1,500 times from 1952.

With a commitment to supply-side structural reform, China's economic structure has continued to improve, and new dynamism has been unleashed. In the past seven years, the tertiary industry, mainly including finance as well as science and technology, has steadily increased its contribution to China's GDP, and become a pillar industry of the national economy.

Foreign trade develops steadily and rapidly

From 1948 to 2020, China's total foreign trade volume surged from $907 billion to $4.65 trillion with an average annual growth rate of nearly 14 percent.

The country's total imports and exports of goods expanded 1.9 percent on a yearly basis in 2020, making China the world's only major economy to register positive growth amid the pandemic, which hurt global businesses.

In 2017, China's trade volume jumped to the first spot in the world from the 26th spot in 1978, and has remained No 1 for four years in a row up to 2020. Currently, the country has become the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer.

China's import and export trade has made a huge contribution to the world. In 2020, the country contributed 13.13 percent to the world's import and export trade volume, with the contribution growing 12 percentage points over 1948. Moreover, China's export contribution to the world surpassed 10 percent for 11 consecutive years, with the figure reaching a record high of nearly 15 percent in 2020.

Now, China's exports are shifting from low-end to high-end in the value chain.

Chinese people's per capita disposable income increased more than a hundredfold

Before 1986, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in China was less than 1,000 yuan. In 2005, the figure exceeded 10,000 yuan for the first time.

In 2020, the per capita disposable income grew by 2.1 percent year-on-year in real terms to 32,189 yuan, with the per capita disposable income of rural residents at 17,131 yuan, and at 43,834 yuan for urban residents. The per capita disposable income of urban residents surged more than a hundred times from 343.4 yuan in 1978.

China is among the countries with a relatively complete academic system

The number of scientific and technical personnel jumped from less than 50,000 in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China to over 5 million — the most in the world — in 2020.

In 2019, China surpassed the United States as the top source of international patent applications filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, and it stayed ahead with 68,720 applications in 2020.

The country's total expenditures on research and development in 2020 surpassed 2.4 trillion yuan, up 180 times over the 13 billion yuan in 1980.

Spending on basic research in 2020 has nearly doubled that of 2015 and will likely exceed 150 billion yuan in 2020. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), spending on basic research achieved an overall growth rate of 16.9 percent.

The contribution rate of scientific and technological progress is projected to reach 60 percent in 2020, and the proportion of the scientifically literate Chinese population has surpassed 10 percent.

In 2005, China surpassed the US to become the world's largest exporter in high-technology. By the end of 2019, the value of high-technology exports exceeded $700 billion, a figure 4.6 times that of the US, 6.88 times that of Japan and 9.16 times that of the UK.

China has realized the transformation from a country of population to a country of human resources

In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, 80 percent of Chinese people were illiterate, and the average amount of schooling was only 1.6 years. Moreover, the country only had 205 institutions of higher learning with less than 120,000 students in 1949, and the gross enrollment rate was only 0.26 percent. By 2020, the average amount of schooling rose to 10.8 years.

The net enrollment rate of primary schools nationwide increased from 20 percent in 1949 to 99.96 percent in 2020, and the gross enrollment rate of China's higher education rose from 0.26 percent in 1949 to 54.4 percent in 2020.

By the end of 2020, the number of general institutes of higher education reached 2,738 with 32.85 million students on campus, taking the first spot in the world.

China became Asia's largest stock market from 2015

The number of listed companies on A-share market reached 4,373, with the total market value hitting 93.75 trillion yuan. The average annual growth of the number of listed companies and the total market value has increased 31.32 percent and 24.3 percent, respectively from 1990.

With China's economic power rising, more Chinese companies are making a splash in the global market

China had more Fortune Global 500 companies than the United States for the first time in 2020, with 133 firms on the list.

China's fruits of economic development benefit all the people in the country

China has built the world's largest social security system in the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). The coverage rate of China's basic medical insurance program remained stable, covering more than 95 percent of the country's population by the end of 2020.

Since the beginning of reform and opening-up, China has lifted 770 million impoverished rural citizens out of poverty, accounting for more than 70 percent of the world's total while also meeting the goal of ending poverty, as established in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 10 years ahead of schedule.

In 2019, the average life expectancy of the Chinese people has increased to 77.3 years, up from just 35 years when the People's Republic of China was founded.

China's transportation development turns country into strong power

China's total train mileage in operation hit 146,000 kilometers by the end of 2020, and highways registered 5.20 million kilometers, expanding by seven and 64 times respectively compared to the early period of New China.

From 2016 to 2020, the nation continued to expand the network, with the length of high-speed lines nearly doubling to 37,900 km and bullet trains handling 9 billion passenger trips.

Road networks have been further improved, with wider coverage around the country. The country's expressway mileage took the first spot globally, with 161,000 km in operation by the end of last year.

As waterway transportation grows more mature, there were 22,142 production berths at ports in China by the end of 2020, among which 2,592 were over the 10,000-ton class, accounting for 11.7 percent of the total and ranking first in the world.