Brief Introduction

I. The data in this chapter include main social and economic indicators of some provinces and municipalities,main statistical indicators of Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions and Taiwan Province of the People’s Republic of China, as well as main international statistical indicators.
     II. Data in Appendices A, B, C come from China Statistical Yearbook and China Statistical Abstract compiled by National Bureau of Statistics and published by China Statistics Press. Data in Appendix D come from International Statistical Yearbook compiled by National Bureau of Statistics and published by China Statistics Press.
     III. International organizations and their members included are as follows:
G7 includes the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has 30 members, i.e. Australia (1971), Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, France, Finland (1969), Canada, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the United States, Portugal, Japan (1964), Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Italy, New Zealand (1973), Turkey, the United Kingdom, Mexico (Mar. 24, 1994), Czech Republic (Nov. 28, 1995), Hungary (Mar. 29, 1996), Poland (Jul. 11, 1996), the Republic of Korea (Oct. 11, 1996) and Slovakia (Sep，2000).
     European Union (EU) has 27 members, i.e. France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg (1951), Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom (1973), Greece (1981), Spain, Portugal (1986), Austria, Finland, Sweden (1995), Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004), Bulgaria and Romania (2007).
     European Monetary Union (Euro Area) has 13 member countries: Germany, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Ireland, Finland, Greece and Slovenia. Since the launch of the euro on Jan. 1, 1999, the central rates have been fixed between the euro and the currencies of the member countries. One euro equals to 1.95583 Deutsch Mark, 40.3399 Belgium Francs, 40.3399 Luxembourg Francs, 166.386 Spanish Pesetas, 6.55967 French Francs, 0.787564 Irish Pounds, 1936.27 Italian Lire, 2.2037 Dutch Guilders, 13.7603 Austrian Schillings, 200.482 Portugal Escudos and 5.94873 Finnish Mark respectively. Greece joined Euro Area on January 1, 2001, adopting the euro as its currency, with a conversion factor of 340.750 drachmas per euro. Since January 1, 2002, the euro has formally substituted the former local currencies of the member countries.
     North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) was founded on January 1, 1994, with members unchanged hitherto, i.e. Canada, Mexico and the United States.
     Association of Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN) has 10 members, i.e. the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam (1984), Viet Nam (1995), Myanmar (1997), Lao People's Democratic Republic (1997) and Cambodia (1999).
     IV. Countries (territories) are classified as follows:
     Countries by income group: According to the criteria by the World Bank, countries and territories (referred to as economies) are classified into high income (higher than $10726), higher middle income (between $3466 and $10725), lower middle income (between $876 and $3465) and low income ($875 and below) groups by their per capita GNI in the year 2005.
     Developed and developing countries: According to the classification standard of the United Nations, developed countries include Canada, the United States, the member countries of the former European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel and South Africa while others are developing countries.
     V. Among the data of various provinces and municipalities in 2008, all come from flash annual reports except the data of Guangdong, which come from formal annual reports.
     VI. The data in this chapter are prepared and compiled by the Division of Comprehensive Statistics of Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Statistics.