Working Knowledge

China by numbers

Population

Foreign Direct Investment

Literacy rate for men

Literacy rate for women

Landline telephones

Mobile telephones

Amount of the world’s concrete that China imports for building purposes, along with 36% of the world’s steel

Beijing’s Olympic investment budget (London’s, though rising, is £9.35bn)

Architectural design enterprises – none of which are wholly foreign-owned. Their estimated revenues in 2002 were £5.55bn

Government targets for the creative industries’ year-on-year growth, (net 2% of GDP, 5% of urban consumer spending)

Individual members of the China Industrial Design Association, the Chinese equivalent of the UK’s Design Council

The length of the Donghai Bridge in China’s largest city, Shanghai

The size of the world’s biggest skatepark, also in Shanghai

Domestic films produced in China in 2006

Chinese design schools

China has 20 times more design schools today than it had in the 1980s. Although the infrastructure is being put in place for a Chinese design revolution, manufacturers are slower to come on board, and design graduates are having problems finding jobs.

1. Hunan University School of Design
2. Southern Yangtze University School of Design
3. Tsinghua University Academy of Arts and Design
4. Tongji University School of Design
5. Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing
6. Hong Kong Polytechnic
7. Dalian Polytechnic
8. Qinghua University Academy of Arts and Design
9. Shenzhen Polytechnic School of Art and Design
10. Shanghai University College of Digital Arts
11. Guangzhou University School of Art and Design
12. Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Media and Design
13. Zhejiang University
14. Guangdong University of Technology School of Design,
15. East China JiaoTong University School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
16. Qingdao Technological University School of Arts

Article first published in Design Council Magazine, Issue 3, Winter 2007