President: Nguyen Minh Triet Secretary-general of the Communist Party : Nguyen Phu Trong
Population
63,047,162
91,519,289
Life Expectancy
80.170 years
72.410 years
Capital City
London
Hanoi
Largest city
London (population: 7,421,210)
Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh (population: 3,467,330)
Human Development Index
0.942
0.718
GDP per capita
$36,600 US
$3,400 US
Literacy Rate
99%
90.3%
Corruption Perception Index
7.7
2.7
Percentage of Women in Parliament
19.6%
25.8%
Wealthiest Citizens
Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor & family ($11.0bn US)
NA
Unemployment Rate
8.100%
2.300%
Death Penalty
Abolished
Legal
Political System
constitutional monarchy
Communist state
Independence date
England has existed as a unified entity since the 10th century; the union between England and Wales, begun in 1284 with the Statute of Rhuddlan, was not formalized until 1536 with an Act of Union; in another Act of Union in 1707, England and Scotland agreed to permanently join as Great Britain; the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was implemented in 1801, with the adoption of the name the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 formalized a partition of Ireland; six northern Irish counties remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland and the current name of the country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was adopted in 1927
2 September 1945 (from France)
Religions
Christian (Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist) 71.6%, Muslim 2.7%, Hindu 1%, other 1.6%, unspecified or none 23.1% (2001 census)
Buddhist 9.3%, Catholic 6.7%, Hoa Hao 1.5%, Cao Dai 1.1%, Protestant 0.5%, Muslim 0.1%, none 80.8% (1999 census)
Languages
English, Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales), Scottish form of Gaelic (about 60,000 in Scotland)
Vietnamese (official), English (increasingly favored as a second language), some French, Chinese, and Khmer; mountain area languages (Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian)
British pounds (GBP) per US dollar - 0.5302 (2008 est.), 0.4993 (2007), 0.5418 (2006), 0.5493 (2005), 0.5462 (2004)
dong (VND) per US dollar - 16,548.3 (2008 est.), 16,119 (2007), 15,983 (2006), 15,746 (2005), NA (2004)
Military Budget as percentage of GDP
2.700%
2.500%
Beijing Olympics Medal Count
47
1
Location
Western Europe, islands including the northern one-sixth of the island of Ireland between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, northwest of France
Southeastern Asia, bordering the Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin, and South China Sea, alongside China, Laos, and Cambodia
Area
243,610 km sq
331,210 km sq
Coastline
12,429 km
3,444 km
Climate
temperate; moderated by prevailing southwest winds over the North Atlantic Current; more than one-half of the days are overcast
tropical in south; monsoonal in north with hot, rainy season (May to September) and warm, dry season (October to March)
