Country comparison: China / Japan

This country comparison is a concise, tabular overview of numerous data from our respective country pages for China and Japan. There, we provide many explanations and details per country that go far beyond this comparison.

General information

	China	Japan
Region:	East Asia	East Asia
Area:	9,562,910 km²	377,970 km²
National language:	Chinese	Japanese
Government form:	People's republic (communist one-party system)	Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Independent since:	1523 BC	660 BC
Capital:	Beijing	Tokyo

Population

Details for China and Japan

	China	Japan
Population:	1,425,671,000	125,682,000
Inhabitants/km²:	149.1	332.5
Life expectancy males:	Ø 75 years	Ø 81 years
Life expectancy females:	Ø 81 years	Ø 88 years
Average age:	Ø 38.4 years	Ø 48.6 years
Birth rate:	7.52 ‰	6.60 ‰
Death rate:	7.18 ‰	11.70 ‰
Migrationrate:	-0.11 ‰	0.74 ‰

Quality of life

Values from 0 (bad) to 100 (very good)
See also: Explanations and country ranking on quality of life

	China	Japan
Political stability:	69	86
Civil rights:	37	88
Health:	69	92
Climate:	54	54
Cost of Living:	38	29
Popularity:	72	41

Economy

Details for China and Japan

	China	Japan
Currency:	Renminbi yuan (1 CNY = 100 Fen)	Japanese yen (1 JPY =100 Sen)
Unemployment rate:	4.9 %	2.6 %
Inflation rate:	1.97 %	2.50 %
Cost of Living: (USA = 100%)	57.58 %	89.82 %
Commercial taxes and contributions:	59.20 %	46.70 %
Average income:	11,880 US$	42,650 US$
Government debt (% of GDP):	71.48 %	262.49 %
Corruption index:	55 (bad)	27 (good)

	CHN: total	per 1000 inh.	JPN: total	per 1000 inh.
Gross domestic product:	17,734,063 M US$	12.44 M US$	4,940,878 M US$	39.31 M US$
Gross national product:	16,785,119 M US$	11.77 M US$	5,360,684 M US$	42.65 M US$
Exported goods:	3,554,296 M US$	2.49 M US$	919,158 M US$	7.31 M US$
Imported goods:	3,091,488 M US$	2.17 M US$	941,671 M US$	7.49 M US$

Infrastructure

Details for China and Japan

	CHN: total	per 1000 inh.	JPN: total	per 1000 inh.
Roadways:	5,200,000 km	3.65 km	1,218,772 km	9.70 km
Railways:	68,141 km	0.05 km	27,311 km	0.22 km
Waterways:	110,000 km	0.08 km	1,770 km	0.01 km
Harbours:	6,662	0.0047	5,201	0.0414
Passenger airports:	214	0.0002	80	0.0006

Energy balance

Details for China and Japan

	CHN: total	per 1000 inh.	JPN: total	per 1000 inh.
Production capacity:	19.429 tn kWh	13.63 m kWh	3.054 tn kWh	24.30 m kWh
Energy consumption:	6.875 tn kWh	4.82 m kWh	903.70 bn kWh	7.19 m kWh
Energy production:	7.225 tn kWh	5.07 m kWh	947.79 bn kWh	7.54 m kWh
Energy export:	21.66 bn kWh	15,189.34 kWh	0.00 kWh	0.00 kWh
Energy imports:	4.86 bn kWh	3,407.52 kWh	0.00 kWh	0.00 kWh
CO2 emissions:	10.71 bn t	7,510.30 t	1.08 bn t	8,605.65 t

Telecommunication

Details for China and Japan

	China	Japan
International dialing:	+86	+81
Internet domain:	.cn	.jp

	CHN total	CHN per 1000 inh.	JPN total	JPN per 1000 inh.
Landlines:	180,700,500	127	61,583,600	490
Mobile cellulars:	1,732,661,400	1215	200,478,808	1595
Internet server:	20,602,000	14	64,453,000	513
Internet users:	1,041,498,877	731	113,389,252	902
Broadband Internet:	535,786,600	376	45,168,114	359

Healthcare system

Details for China and Japan

	China	Japan
Hospital beds per 1000 inh.:	4.31	12.98
Physicians per 1000 inh.:	1.79	2.41
Diabetes:	9.2 %	5.6 %
Tuberculosis:	0.55 ‰	0.11 ‰
Tuberculosis cure rate:	95.0 %	65.0 %
Smokers:	25.6 %	20.1 %

Climate

We also provide a more detailed climate comparison of both countries.
The data for each country can be found here: China and Japan

	China	Japan
Daytime temperatures:	19.2 °C	19.2 °C
Nighttime temperatures:	9.4 °C	11.5 °C
Water temperature:	17.9 °C	18.0 °C
Rel. humidity:	69 %	69 %
Rain days:	6.4	10.0
Sunshine hours per day:	5.9	5.3

Maximum daily temperatures in comparison
Japan
China

Native languages

	China	Japan
Japanese:	n/a	99.1 %
Chinese:	92.0 %	0.2 %
Hakka:	1.8 %	n/a
Zhuang:	1.4 %	n/a
Mantšu:	0.9 %	n/a
Hui:	0.8 %	n/a
Uighur:	0.6 %	n/a
Yi:	0.6 %	n/a
Korean:	n/a	0.5 %
Tujia:	0.5 %	n/a
Tibetan:	0.4 %	n/a
Mongolian:	0.4 %	n/a
Puyi:	0.2 %	n/a
Dong:	0.2 %	n/a
Tagalog:	n/a	0.1 %
English:	n/a	0.1 %
other:	0.2 %	0.0 %

Religions

	China	Japan
Shinto:	n/a	79.2 %
Buddhism:	6.2 %	66.8 %
Nondenominational:	58.5 %	n/a
Local chinese beliefs:	17.5 %	n/a
Taoism:	4.4 %	n/a
Christianity:	2.3 %	1.5 %
Islam:	1.7 %	n/a
Hinduism:	0.1 %	n/a
other:	9.3 %	-47.5 %

Data inventory and updates

A country comparison like this can be based on several hundred individual data items from dozens of different sources. All data are based on the most recent data available to us. Most of them refer to the previous year and are updated around March of the following year. If a country has not yet published data for the most recent or penultimate year, we present the most recent official data. Updates are made on an ongoing basis depending on the subject area or source, so there is no single "cutoff date" for this comparison. Sources for almost all data can be found on our respective country pages.

China	Japan
All information: China	All information: Japan
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