Backgrounder: Basic facts about Myanmar

www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-20
BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived in Yangon Saturday for a visit to Myanmar.

The following are some basic facts about the country:

Myanmar is located in the western part of Indochina Peninsula, with common borders on land with China, India, Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand, and the Bay of Bengal to the southwest with the Andaman Sea defining its southern periphery.

With an area of nearly 677,000 square km, Myanmar has a population of about 57.5 million, consisting of 135 ethnic groups, with Myanmese accounting for about 65 percent of the total population.

The formation of the country dated back to 1044 A.D.. It was under the British and Japanese occupation from the 19th century to1948 when the country gained independence from the British Commonwealth.

In 1988 the Myanmar military took over state power and abolished the constitution. In May 2008, the country adopted its new constitution and established a presidential system in the country. Under the new constitution, Myanmar is to hold multi-party general elections in 2010.

Over 85 percent of Myanmar population believe in Buddhism which has existed in the country for more than 2,500 years. Large numbers of pagodas, temples and monks are considered the three distinctive features of Myanmar's Buddhist culture. With an estimated 100,000 pagodas across the country, Myanmar is also known as the "country of pagodas."

Myanmar is richly endowed by nature and has rich resources. The country, however, has lagged behind in economic development over the past years and is among the least developed nations in the world. Agriculture has been the pillar of its national economy, accounting for 40 percent of the GDP.

China and Myanmar are close neighbors, with their diplomatic ties dated back to 1950 when the People's Republic of China was just founded. In the past decades, the two nations have maintained good-neighborly relations and seen the steady growth of their bilateral relations. In 2008, the volume of bilateral trade reached 2.63 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 26.4 percent over the same period of the previous year.

Editor: Bi Mingxin