Three Gorges Dam
EnergyThe world's largest hydropower station by installed capacity, at 22.5 GW, and the main flood-control structure on the Yangtze.
Yichang, Hubei
Although sighted by Christopher COLUMBUS in 1493 and claimed for Spain, it was the Dutch who occupied the island in 1631 and set about exploiting its salt deposits. The Spanish retook the island in 1633, but continued to be harassed by the Dutch. The Spanish finally relinquished the island of Saint Martin to the French and Dutch, who divided it amongst themselves in 1648. The establishment of cotton, tobacco, and sugar plantations dramatically expanded African slavery on the island in the 18th and 19th centuries; the practice was not abolished in the Dutch half until 1863. The island's economy declined until 1939 when it became a free port; the tourism industry was dramatically expanded beginning in the 1950s. …
The National Infrastructure Index maps the physical assets national life runs on — power stations and grids, water systems, ports, railways and airports, data networks, payment systems and launch sites. Each asset is placed in a Strategic Infrastructure capability group, so it can be read against the ratings in the National Capability index above.
Assets are chosen for how much of the economy and state depends on them and how hard they would be to replace. Each card records what the asset is, the category it belongs to, what it does and where it is.
Example assets. These twenty cards are modelled on China's most critical infrastructure and show on every nation page until each nation's own assets are mapped.
The world's largest hydropower station by installed capacity, at 22.5 GW, and the main flood-control structure on the Yangtze.
A 16 GW dam on the Jinsha River, built around sixteen 1 GW turbines, the largest single units in service.
A ±1,100 kV direct-current line carrying 12 GW more than 3,000 km from Xinjiang's power bases to the eastern grid.
China's first large commercial nuclear plant, in service since 1994, with much of its output sold to Hong Kong.
A canal carrying Yangtze basin water more than 1,400 km north from the Danjiangkou Reservoir to Beijing and Tianjin.
The 1,318 km trunk line between the two largest cities, opened in 2011 and one of the busiest high-speed routes in the world.
The world's busiest container port since 2010, including the automated Yangshan deep-water terminals.
The world's largest port by cargo tonnage, handling iron ore, crude oil and coal for the eastern industrial belt.
The capital's second international hub, opened in 2019 around one of the largest single terminal buildings in the world.
A 55 km bridge and undersea tunnel system linking the western and eastern shores of the Pearl River Delta, opened in 2018.
The 1,956 km line from Xining to Lhasa, crossing the Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m, the highest railway in the world.
One of eight national data centre hubs under the East Data, West Computing programme, hosting major cloud providers.
A 2,000 km quantum key distribution trunk line through Jinan and Hefei, completed in 2017 for secure government and bank links.
CIPS clears and settles cross-border payments in renminbi, launched in 2015 to extend the currency's international reach.
The coastal launch site for Long March 5 heavy-lift rockets, used for the Tiangong station modules and lunar and Mars missions.
China's first launch site, founded in 1958 in the Gobi Desert, and the base for every crewed Shenzhou mission.
The national satellite navigation system, providing global positioning and timing since 2020 from its Beijing control segment.
The world's largest known rare-earth deposit and the core of China's rare-earth mining and refining supply chain.
A weir and channel system built around 256 BC that still irrigates much of the Chengdu Plain's farmland.
China's leading maker of 3D NAND flash memory, central to the drive for a domestic semiconductor supply.
The National Development Index tracks the events that move a nation's capability — policy decisions, technological milestones, economic turns and external shocks — and places each one on the record with the date it happened and what followed from it. It is the narrative counterpart to the indices: where a rating says where Sint Maarten stands, the index says how it arrived there.
Recent developments cover the current cycle, close enough that their consequences are still unfolding. Historical developments are the inflection points behind the present position — the decisions and events a reader needs in order to read the ratings above in context.
Archaeological finds point to human presence on Sint Maarten as early as 2000 BC, with settlers most likely migrating from South America. Arawak people are thought to have settled around 800 BC to 300 BC, forming the earliest identified group.
Around 1300 to 1400 AD the Kalinago arrived and began to displace the earlier Arawak inhabitants. This reshaped the island's Indigenous society on the eve of European contact.
On 11 November 1493, the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours, Columbus anchored off the island now called Nevis and gave it the saint's name. Poor charting of the Leeward Islands meant the name was accidentally transferred to present-day Saint-Martin/Sint Maarten, fixing the island's enduring name.
Although sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and claimed for Spain, it was the Dutch who occupied the island in 1631, constructing Fort Amsterdam with Jan Claeszen van Campen as first governor while the Dutch West India Company began salt mining. This established the first sustained Dutch economic and military presence on the island; the Spanish retook it in 1633 but continued to be harassed by the Dutch.
Amid the Eighty Years' War, Spanish forces seized the island in 1633 and drove off the Dutch settlers, building the Old Spanish Fort at Point Blanche to secure it. A Dutch attempt under Peter Stuyvesant to retake the island in 1644 was repulsed.
The Spanish finally relinquished Saint Martin in 1648, and rather than fight an all-out war Dutch settlers from St Eustatius and French settlers from St Kitts agreed to partition the island under the Treaty of Concordia, with a French fleet offshore used to bargain for more territory. The partition endures today, though the border shifted sixteen times between 1648 and 1816, ending with 53 km2 French and 34 km2 Dutch.
From 1795, when the Netherlands became a puppet state of the French Empire, the entire island came under effective French control until 1815. Dutch administration resumed thereafter under the partition arrangement.
France abolished slavery in its colonies including the French side of St. Martin in 1848; enslaved people on the Dutch side protested and threatened to flee for asylum, prompting local Dutch authorities to free them. The decree was respected locally though not legally binding.
The establishment of cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations had dramatically expanded African slavery on the island in the 18th and 19th centuries; in 1863 the Dutch legally abolished slavery throughout their island colonies, giving formal freedom to the enslaved population of Sint Maarten. The subsequent decline of plantation culture damaged the island's economy for decades.
The 1939 declaration of duty-free port status gave the depressed post-plantation economy a major boost. It laid a foundation for the island's later commercial and tourism-based economy.
In 1941 Sint Maarten was shelled by a German submarine as part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic. The incident brought the Second World War directly to the island.
The island's economy had declined until it became a free port in 1939; from the 1950s tourism was developed on a large scale and became the mainstay of the economy, with Princess Juliana International Airport becoming one of the busiest in the Eastern Caribbean. Population rose from around 5,000 to some 60,000 by the mid-1990s, with immigration turning the native-born into a minority.
In 1954 Sint Maarten and several other Dutch Caribbean possessions were incorporated into the Kingdom of the Netherlands as the Netherlands Antilles.
Founded on 23 December 1959, the station was heard in neighbouring islands as well as at home. Television followed in May 1963 in the Philipsburg area, relayed from Puerto Rico via a station at Fort Willem.
On 17 August 1976 MPC opened, merging the government John Phillips School with the Catholic Pastoor Nieuwen Huis School. It was governed by the neutral foundation Stichting Voortgezet Onderwijs van de Bovenwindse Eilanden, established on 20 February 1974.
In 1978 the Netherlands Antilles government set up a committee to investigate claims of corruption in the Sint Maarten island government. It marked the start of decades of scrutiny of governance on the island.
In 1983 Sint Maarten was detached from the island territory of the Windward Islands, which it had shared with Saba and Sint Eustatius, and became an island territory in its own right. This conferred considerable autonomy under the Island Regulation, with an island council, executive council and Crown-appointed lieutenant governor.
The Netherlands Antillean guilder was formally withdrawn as legal tender and replaced by the Caribbean guilder on 31 March 2025. The two currencies co-circulated during the transition, completing the monetary separation from the defunct Netherlands Antilles.
The coalition formed after the January 2024 elections collapsed shortly after forming, forcing snap elections in August 2024. The result eventually produced the administration of Prime Minister Luc Mercelina.
The Department of Civil Registry registered 58,477 persons in 2023, up from 40,535 in the 2017 census and 33,609 in the 2011 Netherlands Antilles census. The population descends from over 120 nationalities, with more than two-thirds foreign born.
From 2020 the relationship between Sint Maarten and the Netherlands has been defined by the Landspakket, which ties Dutch pandemic financial support to structural reform. It reshaped the terms of autonomy within the Kingdom.
A 2019 report revealed that the island's GDP had dropped by 4.7% with rising inflation, reflecting the severe economic impact of the 2017 hurricane. Tourism and hotel capacity losses drove the contraction.
On 10 October 2017 the airport recommenced commercial services from temporary facilities pending full repairs. By 2018 cruise traffic had recovered to more than one million passengers, and major reconstruction including the airport was largely completed in 2024.
After King Willem-Alexander visited the devastated island and called for support, the EU allocated €2 billion in emergency disaster relief to restore drinking water, sanitation and other essentials. The Red Cross, the Dutch government and Dutch citizens also raised funds for recovery.
The Category 5 hurricane struck on 6 and 7 September 2017, killing four and seriously injuring 11, with nearly a third of buildings destroyed and over 90% damaged. Princess Juliana Airport was wrecked, looting spread, and a state of emergency was declared as 230 Dutch soldiers deployed to restore order.
In 2016 Mullet Pond gained protection under the Ramsar Treaty as a wetland of international ecological significance. Broader plans for natural parks on the island remained unrealised as of 2020.
Having been assigned the ISO 3166-1 codes SXM and SX after attaining country status, Sint Maarten saw its .sx ccTLD become available for registration on 15 November 2012. This gave the new country distinct digital identity infrastructure.
On 10 October 2010 Sint Maarten ceased to be an island territory of the dissolved Netherlands Antilles and became a constituent country, a constitutional equal of Aruba, Curaçao and the Netherlands proper. Constitution Day on 10 October is celebrated annually as a public holiday.
On 21 July 2010 the island council adopted the territory's own constitution ahead of the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles. Elections for a new island council followed on 17 September 2010, with seats increased from 11 to 15.
Founded in 1978 on Montserrat, AUC moved its campus to Sint Maarten following the 1995 eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano, completing a permanent campus at Cupecoy in 1998. The University of Sint Eustatius School of Medicine later moved to Cole Bay in September 2013.
Hurricane Luis struck in late August and early September 1995, devastating the island and killing 12 people. It exposed the vulnerability of the island's tourism-dependent infrastructure to major storms.
The 1994 treaty allowed joint Franco-Dutch controls on so-called risk flights across the divided island. It was ratified in the Netherlands in November 2006 and entered into force on 1 August 2007, though its working group remained uninstalled.
In early 1993 a General Measure of Kingdom Administration put the island government under direct supervision of the Kingdom after findings of maladministration. Intended for one year, the Order-in-Council was extended until 1 March 1996.
In August 1990 prosecutors began investigating alleged links between the Sint Maarten island government and the Sicilian Mafia. In 1991 the Court of Audit concluded the island government was ailing, and the Pourier Commission was installed in December 1991.
Although sighted by Christopher COLUMBUS in 1493 and claimed for Spain, it was the Dutch who occupied the island in 1631 and set about exploiting its salt deposits. The Spanish retook the island in 1633, but continued to be harassed by the Dutch. The Spanish finally relinquished the island of Saint Martin to the French and Dutch, who divided it amongst themselves in 1648. The establishment of cotton, tobacco, and sugar plantations dramatically expanded African slavery on the island in the 18th and 19th centuries; the practice was not abolished in the Dutch half until 1863. The island's economy declined until 1939 when it became a free port; the tourism industry was dramatically expanded beginning in the 1950s. In 1954, Sint Maarten and several other Dutch Caribbean possessions became part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands as the Netherlands Antilles. In a 2000 referendum, the citizens of Sint Maarten voted to become a self-governing country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The change in status became effective in October of 2010 with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles.
none (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands)
Queen's Day (Birthday of Queen-Mother JULIANA and accession to the throne of her oldest daughter BEATRIX), 30 April (1909 and 1980)
Caribbean, located in the Leeward Islands (northern) group; Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean Sea; Sint Maarten lies east of the US Virgin Islands
18 4 N, 63 4 W
Central America and the Caribbean
one-fifth the size of Washington, DC
364 km
low, hilly terrain, volcanic origin
fish, salt
NA
subject to hurricanes from July to November
the northern border is shared with the French overseas collectivity of Saint Martin; together, these two entities make up the smallest landmass in the world shared by two self-governing states
NA
tropical marine climate, ameliorated by northeast trade winds, results in moderate temperatures; average rainfall of 1500 mm/year; hurricane season stretches from July to November
Capability-group ratings for Critical Technology are part of the GINC National Capability Framework rather than the country factbook. They are published in the National Capability index, and the per-capability detail lives on the capability pages.
1 (2013)
NA
.sx; note - IANA has designated .sx for Sint Maarten, but has not yet assigned it to a sponsoring organization
304.3 million kWh (2008 est.)
NA
defense is the responsibility of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
no regular military forces (2012)
39,689 (July 2013 est.)
1.51% (2013 est.)
13 births/1,000 population (2013 est.)
4.51 deaths/1,000 population (2013 est.)
2.09 children born/woman (2013 est.)
6.63 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2013 est.)
NA
NA
NA
parliamentary
none (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands)
Staatsregeling, 10 October 2010; revised Kingdom Charter pending previous 1947, 1955; latest adopted 21 July 2010, entered into force 10 October 2010 (regulates governance of Sint Maarten but is subordinate to the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands); note - in October 2010, with the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles, Sint Maarten became a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands (2013)
18 years of age; universal
based on Dutch civil law system with some English common law influence
unicameral parliament or Staten (15 seats; members elected by popular vote for four-year term)
constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands; full autonomy in internal affairs granted in 2010; Dutch Government responsible for defense and foreign affairs
Democratic Party or DP [Sarah WESCOTT-WILLIAMS]//National Alliance or NA [William MARLIN]//United People's Party or UPP [Theodore HEYLIGER]//Concordia Political Alliance or CPA [Jeffery RICHARDSON]
two equal horizontal bands of red (top) and blue with a white isosceles triangle based on the hoist side; the center of the triangle displays the Sint Maarten coat of arms; the arms consist of an orange-bordered blue shield prominently displaying the white court house in Philipsburg, as well as a bouquet of yellow sage (the national flower) in the upper left, and the silhouette of a Dutch-French friendship monument in the upper right; the shield is surmounted by a yellow rising sun in front of which is a Brown Pelican in flight; a yellow scroll below the shield bears the motto: SEMPER PROGREDIENS (Always Progressing); the three main colors are identical to those on the Dutch flag
English (official) 67.5%, Spanish 12.9%, Creole 8.2%, Dutch (official) 4.2%, Papiamento (a Spanish-Portuguese-Dutch-English dialect) 2.2%, French 1.5%, other 3.5% (2001 census)
Roman Catholic 39%, Protestant 44.8% (Pentecostal 11.6%, Seventh-Day Adventist 6.2%, other Protestant 27%), none 6.7%, other 5.4%, Jewish 3.4%, not reported 0.7% (2001 census)
none (represented by the Kingdom of the Netherlands)
the US does not have an embassy in Sint Maarten; the Consul General to Curacao, currently Consul General James R. Moore, is accredited to Sint Maarten
4% (2012 est.)//0.7% (2009 est.)
Netherlands Antillean guilders (ANG) per US dollar -//1.79 (2012)//1.79 (2011)//1.79 (2009)//1.79 (2008)//1.79 (2007)
$794.7 million (2008)
tourism, light industry
23,200 (2008 est.)
12% (2012 est.)//10.6% (2008 est.)
The economy of Sint Maarten centers around tourism with nearly four-fifths of the labor force engaged in this sector. Nearly 1.8 million visitors came to the island by cruise ship and roughly 500,000 visitors arrived through Princess Juliana International Airport in 2013. Cruise ships and yachts also call on Sint Maarten's numerous ports and harbors. Limited agriculture and local fishing means that almost all food must be imported. Energy resources and manufactured goods are also imported. Sint Maarten had the highest per capita income among the five islands that formerly comprised the Netherlands Antilles.
$798.3 million (2010 est.)//$794.7 million (2008 est.)//$748.9 million (2007 est.)
4% (2012 est.)//1.6% (2008 est.)//4.5% (2007 est.)
$15,400 (2008 est.)
sugar
sugar