Numbers of the Week 4.3 million The number of China's registered small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has exceeded 4.3 million and these SMEs contribute to 58.5 percent of the gross domestic product, statistics from the China International Cooperation Association of Small and Medium Enterprises show. More than 95 percent of these SMEs are privately owned. 88.7 billion yuan China's rural population shrank to 56 percent of the national total at the end of 2006, down 8 percentage points from what it stood at in 2001, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. China recorded a total population of 1.3 billion and the rural population has been shrinking each year due to the country's urbanization efforts.