China still a "less developed country"

How far away is China from a modern society?

A research team with Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on Tuesday released a report on China's modernization.

After studying a great amount of data and charts experts discovered that China and other 60 countries are still less developed in terms of social development, reports People's Daily Overseas Edition.

In terms of the overall difference in social development, China in 2001 was more than 80 years behind countries like Britain, the United States, Germany, Sweden and France.

The gap with regard to social modernization is slightly narrower than that in economic modernization.

Researchers found that China's overall economy was over 100 years behind seven developed countries including the U.S. in 2001, with indicators such as GDP and agricultural labor proportion taken into account.

China was marked 73 in terms of first social modernization index in 2003, ranked the 57th among 109 countries. Its second social modernization index was 28, ranked the 59th. The country's overall social modernization index was 25, ranked the 60th. There is quite wide a gap between China and the world's advanced level in social development.

"China in 2003 was in the development stage of the first social modernization, about the mid of urbanization. China's social modernization level was lower than world average and the average level of middle-income countries", said He Chuanqi, a CAS research fellow who heads the research team.

Among the 90 indicators of social modernization, China has eight, including population growth, mortality rate, dependency ratio, primary school enrollment rate, youth literacy rate and employment rate, on a par with those of developed countries; it has 17 about the level of world medium with other indicators far behind international level. In most of the last 50 years, China's social modernization outpaced its economic modernization.

According to experts, calculated on the basis of the annual growth rate of the first social modernization index from 1980 to 2003 China needs about 15 years to complete the first social modernization.

The data used by the research team come from China Statistical Yearbook and international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank.

By People's Daily Online