General Economy

Gross domestic product (GDP)

GDP for 2004 was 288.351 billion yuan, up 12.9% from the previous year.

GDP ratio (primary, secondary and tertiary industries)

The primary industry yielded a value added of 39.498 billion yuan, 9.8% more than that of the previous year; the secondary industry, 141.682 billion yuan, a growth of 16.8%; the tertiary industry, 107.171 billion yuan, a growth of 9.5%.

Revenue and expenditure

Provincial revenue was 41.55 billion yuan, an increase of 27.1% over the previous year. Provincial expenditure was 51.02 billion yuan, a growth of 17.1%.

Consumer price index (CPI)

CPI was up 3.1% from the previous year.

Investment in fixed assets

Fixed asset investment was valued at 154.389 billion yuan, up 20.7% from the previous year.

Major Industries

Agriculture

The total agricultural output value was 66.15 billion yuan, up 9.8% from the previous year.

Industry

The industrial added value totaled 87.071 billion yuan, an increase of 22.9%.

Construction

Its added value was 52.501 billion yuan, up 19.2%.

Transportation

The annual volume of goods handled by various modes of transportation was 405 million tons, up 9.7%, while annual passenger flow reached 357 million, up 14.1%.

Postal services

The annual turnover of postal operations totaled 1.38 billion yuan, 7.7% up from the previous year.

Telecommunications

The annual turnover of telecom services was 11.143 billion yuan, up 18.7%.

Retail

The annual turnover from retail sales reached 96.649 billion yuan, an increase of 10.5% from the previous year.

Tourism

Foreign exchange earnings from tourism totaled US$360 million, up 81.8%. Revenue from the domestic tourists totaled 18.5 billion yuan, up 28.8%.

Continued Effects of Market Reform

Imports & exports

The annual value of imports and exports totaled US$3.643 billion, an increase of 30.9% from the previous year.

Economic and technological cooperation

Business turnover from overseas project and labor contracts for the year totaled US$127 million, an increase of 10.4% from the previous year.

Foreign investment

By the end of 2004, the province had approved a total of 4,111 foreign direct investment projects. The investment realized in monetary terms was US$4.78 billion.

Urban Construction and Management

Road transport

The year 2004 saw the construction of 751.61 km of highways, including 31.7 km of express highways, and the renovation of 2,106 km of existing highways.

Social Undertakings

Science and technology

A total of 2,467 technological contracts were signed during the year, with the business turnover standing at 3.55 billion yuan.

Education

There were 62 institutions of higher learning at the year-end. The number of students enrolled in postgraduate schools and institutions of higher learning during the year stood at 19,300 and 199,800 respectively.

Culture

The province had a total of 118 professional performing organizations, 111 cultural centers, 88 museums and 111 public libraries.

Public health

There were a total of 5,138 medical and healthcare institutions equipped with 103,000 beds and staffed with some 163,900 medical professionals and technicians at the year-end. About 82.79% of the villages had set up medical or healthcare institutions.

Sports

At the year-end there were a total of 19,178 sports facilities in the province, covering a floor area of 3.28 million square meters. The annual sales of sports lottery stood at 290 million yuan.

Welfare and aid

Various welfare units across the province at the end of 2004 were equipped with 16,000 beds and put up 12,000 homeless and vagrant people during the year. There were 7,791 urban community service facilities at the end of the year. A total of 779,500 urban residents have been covered by the minimum living guarantee system while 715,000 rural residents have been covered by the rural poverty relief fund.

Poverty relief

A poverty relief project covering 1,000 villages was launched during the year, relocating 100,000 peasants living in extreme poverty. In addition, 400,000 poor rural people began to have enough to eat and wear.

Population, Employment, Social Security and Living Standards

Population

The year 2004 saw births of 391,500, or a birth rate of 10.59‰, and deaths of 234,000, or a mortality rate of 6.33‰. The natural growth rate of the population stood at 4.26‰. At the end of the year, the total population stood at 37.052 million.

Employment

The employed urban population stood at 3.316 million at the end of 2004, an increase of 12,900, or 0.4%, than the 2003 figure. About 103,800 laid-off workers got re-employed during the year.

Registered unemployment rate

The registered urban unemployment rate was 3.77%.

Social security

In 2004, insurance plans for unemployment, endowments and medical treatment covered a population of 3.255 million, 3.695 million and 3.23 million respectively.

Residents' income

The disposable income of urban residents was 7,493 yuan per capita, up 6.9% from 2003. Rural residents' per capita net income was 1,867 yuan, a growth of 6.3% from the previous year.

Residents' consumption

Urban residents' per capita expenditure was 6,233 yuan, up 6.8% from the previous year, while rural residents' per capita expenditure was 1,618 yuan, up 5.6%.

Geography and Natural Conditions

Elevation extremes

The province has three distinctive landforms from north to south. The Loess Plateau in the north has an elevation of 800-1,300 meters, and accounts for 45% of the total area of the province. The Central Shaanxi Plain in the middle averages an elevation of 520 meters. The Qinling and Daba mountainous areas in the south include the Qinling Mountains, Daba Mountains, and Hanjiang River Valley, accounting for 36% of the total area of the province. The Qinling Mountains measures 1,000-3,000 meters in elevation and the Daba Mountains in the southernmost of the province, 1,500-2,000 meters.

Natural resources

Minerals:
So far, 91 kinds of minerals have been found in the province, 58 of which have deposits ranking among the top ten in China. The reserves and output of gold rank fifth and fourth respectively. The output of molybdenum amounts to half of the country's total. The proved deposits of coal, the most abundant mineral in the province, come to 161.8 billion tons. The Shenmu-Fugu Coalfield in northern Shaanxi has reserves of 134 billion tons. It is one of the best fields in the world because of its thick coal layer and easy access and exploitation. In addition, northern Shaanxi has a gas field with proved reserves of 350 billion cubic meters.

Hydropower:
North of the Qinling Mountains is the Yellow River system, composed of the Weihe, Jinghe, Luohe, and Wuding rivers. South of the mountains is the Yangtze River system consisting of the Hanjiang, Danjiang, and Jialing rivers. The Hanjiang River, the largest river in the province, provides more than half of the province's total water runoff. Shaanxi has an annual water runoff of 42.6 billion cubic meters, which has a power-generation potential of 14 million kw.

Animals:
Shaanxi has more than 750 species of wild vertebrates, 79 of them rare. It is home to 12 species of animals and birds under state protection including the giant panda, snub-nosed monkey, and clouded leopard.

Plants:
The province has 5.93 million ha of forest in the Qinling, Daba, Guanshan, Huanglong, and Qiaoshan mountainous areas. It has a 28.8% rate of forest coverage. It has 3,300-plus species of wild plants, 37 of them rare. The province has 800 species of medicinal plants of great economic value including sea-buckthorn and gynostemma pentaphylla. It leads the country in the output and quality of raw lacquer. The traditional exports of the province are dates, walnut meat, and tung oil.

Tourism resources

Dispersed in Shaanxi are 72 imperial mausoleums, witness to the ancient economy and culture. The province is best known for ten scenic spots including the Mausoleum of Huang Di, the Qin terra-cotta warriors and horses, the Xi'an Forest of Stone Tablets, the Shaanxi Museum of History, and the city gate and wall of Xi'an. The Qin terra-cotta warriors and horses are often called the Eighth Wonder of the World and have been included by UNESCO in the list of World Cultural Heritages.