Word: million
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Have you ever found an incident of corruption involving a Grameen Bank loan? Rudi Toruan, Samarinda, Indonesia We have cases of corruption, but Grameen Bank now has 28,000 staff, 8 million borrowers and 2,600 branches. We lend out over $100 million each month and have a similar amount coming back each month, handling this physically in the villages. It's very easy to put money in your pocket. But the amazing thing is that cases of corruption are so rare...
...Three decades later, Chinese society has fully blossomed. Chinese today experience a wide variety of personal freedoms in daily life that they and their ancestors had never known. Chinese state and society have also reconnected with the past, emphasizing Confucian and Buddhist values. More than 200 million people have been lifted out of poverty and the members of a growing middle class with disposable income travel abroad, invest in the stock market, dine out and decorate their stylish apartments with furniture purchased from stores like Ikea. Access to education has become far more widespread. Some 21 million students attend university...
...With economic growth have come demographic shifts and life improvements. Live expectancy has shot up while infant mortality has plummeted. In 1949 more than 90% of the population lived in rural areas; given the expansion of urban areas, slightly more than half (721 million) do today, according to official statistics. But China's increasing urbanization and spreading industrialization have resulted in a considerable loss of arable land and forcible evictions, sparking much resentment against local officials...
...many blemishes. Treatment of ethnic minorities - particularly Tibetans and Uighurs - is the Achilles' heel of the regime, as violent riots last year and in recent months have clearly demonstrated. Crime and corruption remain serious problems, while cities struggle to provide basic services to the huge "floating population" of 100 million or so migrants. Income disparities (as measured by the Gini coefficient) are now approaching the highest in the world. China has again become a stratified society - just what Mao sought to eliminate. Still, given the unprecedented scale and nature of China's socioeconomic change over the past 30 years...
...while much of the structure and essential nature of the system remains largely the same, the substance and process of politics has changed quite a lot. The leadership and the 76 million party members are better educated and their recruitment and promotion is much more meritocratic. Competence is now rewarded. In the past, there existed only two exit paths from officialdom: purges and death. Now mandatory retirement is firmly implemented. Instead of being a totalitarian party dominated by a single leader, the CCP today is an authoritarian party with a collective leadership. The leaders themselves - at least those I have...