Though China now plays a vital role in the global economy, just ten years ago it was a small emerging market. It has now transformed into a geopolitical giant, but there are some things that are plain scary:

China's GDP per capita is the 91st-lowest in the world, below Bosnia & Herzegovina. More than 134 million people in China live on less than $1 a day. China's economy grew 7 times as fast as America's over the past decade (316% growth vs. 43%).
If a person spent his entire Annual Income on housing, the average Beijing resident could purchase only 10 square feet of residential property (approximately the size of a small bedroom).

China has 150 percent more soldiers than America, besides having a high tech 'kill weapon capable of destroying U.S.A. aircraft carriers. It is thought that the missile can travel at mach 10 and arrive at its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.

The new train between Shanghai and Beijing travels twice the speed of the United States fastest high speed train (150 mph vs 302 mph). Expanding at 1,400 square miles every year, because of water source depletion, over-foresting and over-grazing, China's huge Gobi Desert is the size of Peru.

The high levels of pollution in Linfen, named the most polluted city on earth, take a serious toll on human health, with clinics reporting ever increasing cases of bronchitis, pneumonia and lung cancer.

China grows half a billion pigs, which is more than the following 43 pork producing nations together.

There are more cell phones in China than people in the U.S.A.
In China the world's largest shopping mall has been 99% empty since 2005.
85 percent of the world's artificial Christmas trees are Chinese manufactured, as are 80 percent of toys of the world.

China is the source of over 77% of U.S.A.s pirated goods.
40% of small businesses in China went bankrupt during the global financial crisis.

By 2025, China will build sufficient skyscrapers to make up 10 New York-sized cities, yet China has 64 million unused homes, including whole empty cities. Build and populate later is China's policy, as can be seen also in Las Vegas and Spain.
By 2030, China will add more new city-dwellers than the entire U.S.A. population.

Chinese consume 50,000 cigarettes every second.
Only 75% of the Chinese population believes in the 'one-child ‘policy. China is on track to becoming the largest center of Christianity in the world with an estimated 54 million Christians in the country. China has more Christians than in the whole of Italy. 74 percent of Chinese believe in evolution, which is more than Mexico (69%), Great Britain and (68%) Argentina (68%).

Around 10,000 Chinese citizens disappear annually into unregistered 'black jails'. China carried out at least 1,718 executions in 2008, three times as many as the rest of the world, according to Amnesty International. Some analysts place the annual figure nearer 6,000. Many of the condemned are injected, as executions take place on the roadside, in specially designed vehicles.