China is surrounded by the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea, North Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Vietnam.

 

China in the world

 

Official Political Name of the Country: People's Republic of China
Area: 9.6 million square kilometers (3.70656 square miles)
Population: 1.3 Billion
Capital: Bejing
Ethnical Composition: 56 Nationalities (Han-Chinese 93 %, in addition: Mongols, Zhuang, Manchu, Uyghur, etc.)
Language: Putonghua (Mandarin is the official language)
Religions: Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism
Government of Peoples Republic of China: The National People's Congress of the P. R. of China is the highest organ of state power.

Head of State: Hu Jintao

 

Chinese Flag

 

China is situated in East Asia on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean. The southern portion of the country faces the ocean, while the northwest extends deep into the Eurasian Continent. From north to south, it streches from Mihe Town on the Heilong River on the northern border of Heilongjiang Province to the Zengmu Reef of the Nansha Islands, a total distance of 5,500 kilo,eters. From east to west, it streches from the Pamir Plateau in the west to the confluence of the Heilong and Wusuli rivers in the east, a distance of 5,200 kilometers.

 

The Han Chinese makes up the majority of the country's total population of 1.3 bilion. The combined total of her 55 known ethnic minorities is 106.43 milion or 8.41 percent of the national total according to the 5th national population census conducted on November 1,2000. Small as their population is, they live widely scattered across the country and the areas where most of these people live cover 62 percent of the country's territory.

The country is divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions (the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang Uugur Autonomous Region, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the Ninxia Hui Autonomous Region, and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) and four municipalities directly under the central government (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjing, and Chongqing). Both Hong Kong and Macao are special administrative regions of China.

Geographically, China slopes upward from the eastern seaboard to the high plateaus and moutains of Tibet and Qinghai in the far west, where the average elevation is 4,500 meters and mountain peaks of 6,000 and 7,000 meters are common. It is the rain and snow in these western highlands that feed China's great rivers.

 

In addition to having one of the oldest continuous civilizations, China is also huge in size, encompassing a total of 9.6 million square kilometers in area. China has common borders with more countries than any other nation - 15 in all. The land border is 22,800 kilometers and the coastline is 18,000 kilometers long. China is bordered on the east by the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the Bohai Sea, on the north by the high plains of Mongolia, on the west by the Gobi Desert, on the southwest by the great Tibetan upthrust, and on the south by the jungle-clad mountains.

 

Notwithstanding its huge physical size, China is land poor. Some 80 percent of the landmass is made up of uninhabitable mountains and desert. With only about seven percent of the earth's cultivated land, China has to feed 22 percent of the world's population.