In China, the number 8 has deep linguistic and cultural ties to wealth. Therefore great things are expected from China in 2008, the year Beijing will host the Olympic Games (which, unsurprisingly, have been scheduled to begin at eight o’clock on the eighth day of the eighth month).

It is also set to be another year of double digit economic growth, new record highs for the domestic stock markets and rising consumer spending.

There is little doubt that China and the Chinese are becoming richer – although some faster than others – and we turn to numbers as a means of quantifying this.

However, for all we rely on them, the headline economic indicators rarely offer a full picture. Indeed, many of China’s numbers are questionable – the population count could be a couple of hundred million askew; the sum of provincial economic growth data doesn’t equal the official national figure; and huge amounts of money are undoubtedly overlooked or unaccounted for.

These lapses can be put down, on one hand, to the difficulties in keeping track of things in such a large and fragmented country and, on the other, to dishonesty. The sacking this year of Qiu Xiaohua, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, for his involvement in a corruption scandal tied to Shanghai’s city pension fund, did China’s numerical credibility no favors.

China by Numbers is intended to guide you over this rocky statistical terrain. With nearly 500 tables and graphs – all with full source details – it chronicles the numbers behind the China development story, and provides you with numbers from different sources, so you can make the call as to which one might be more right. Whether you want to know how much gold the country is said to produce or how many cars are reported to be sold, this is the place to look.