Assignment # 23- Chinada (China and Canada)

Tomorrow, our class is getting two new students from China and we have an assignment to compare and contrast China and Canada.

The first section that caught my eye when we were in the middle of the room was the religion section because I'm really interested in learning about different religions at the moment. This section, unlike literacy rate and the total fertility rate is quite a contrast from Canada's. In China the religion section said Taoist, Buddhist, Christian 3%-4%, Muslim and it says note: officially atheist. In Canada it says Roman Catholic 42.6%, Protestant 23.3% (Includes United Church, Anglican, Baptist), other Christians 4.4%, Muslim 1.9%, other or unspecified 11.8%, none 16%. I've found a lot of the categories to be very similar but this one is actually quite different. China seems to be mostly atheist while Canada is mainly Christianity (Roman Catholic) and China only has a small percentage of Christians. I guess being in a very multicultural school and going to a unitarian church makes me blind to the fact that there are majority religions. I find it interesting how many people from one area have the same religious views because of where they were born. If they were born somewhere else, would their religion be different?

The next section I chose to write about is literacy rate because I find reading very important and I think life would be extremely boring and confusing without being able to read. Unlike religion, literacy rate in Canada and China is very similar. In both countries it says age 15 and over can read. However, in Canada the literacy rate is both 99% for male and female yet in China the male literacy rate is 95.7% yet the female literacy rate is only 87.6 %. I find this interesting because girls go to school longer than boys do in China. Perhaps less girls actually go to school than boys.

The third one I chose was people living with HIV/AIDS because many, many countries have very high HIV/AIDS deaths which is very sad. (I chose people living with over the actual deaths because it's easier to compare) It's horrible how love can be deadly and how there is such a big HIV/AIDS stigma. Canada and China don't seem to be countries that would be ranked too high in the top because they are both very developed countries with good or at least decent health care. China has 740 000 people living with HIV/AIDS while Canada has less than 1000. However, we must keep in mind that China has a much larger population than we do. China is still significantly higher though, ranked as number 14 country comparison in the world and Canada is ranked as number 80. As I've realized many times in our unit thus far, we are so lucky and blessed to live in such a wonderful country with many, many benefits.

Cheers,

Hannah