Facts And Figures About China,

Facts And Figures About China,
officially the People's Republic of China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo), country in East Asia, the world’s largest country by population and one of the largest by area, measuring about the same size as the United States. The Chinese call their country Zhongguo, which means “Central Country” or “Middle Kingdom.” The name China was given to it by foreigners and is probably based on a corruption of Qin (pronounced “chin”), a Chinese dynasty that ruled during the 3rd century bc.


China proper centers on the agricultural regions drained by three major rivers—the Huang He (Yellow River) in the north, the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) in central China, and the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River) in the south. The country’s varied terrain includes vast deserts, towering mountains, high plateaus, and broad plains. Beijing, located in the north, is China’s capital and its cultural, economic, and communications center. Shanghai, located near the Yangtze, is the most populous urban center, the largest industrial and commercial city, and mainland China’s leading port.

More than one-fifth of the world’s population—1.3 billion people—live in China. More than 90 percent of these are ethnic Han Chinese, but China also recognizes 55 national minorities, including Tibetans, Mongols, Uighurs, Zhuang, Miao, Yi, and many smaller groups. Even among the ethnic Han, there are regional linguistic differences. Although a common language called Putonghua is taught in schools and used by the mass media, local spoken languages are often mutually incomprehensible. However, the logographic writing system, which uses characters that represent words rather than pronunciation, makes it possible for all Chinese dialects to be written in the same way; this greatly aids communication across China.


In ancient times, China was East Asia’s dominant civilization. Other societies—notably the Japanese, Koreans, Tibetans, and Vietnamese—were strongly influenced by China, adopting features of Chinese art, food, material culture, philosophy, government, technology, and written language. For many centuries, especially from the 7th through the 14th century ad, China had the world’s most advanced civilization. Inventions such as paper, printing, gunpowder, porcelain, silk, and the compass originated in China and then spread to other parts of the world.


China’s political strength became threatened when European empires expanded into East Asia. Macao, a small territory on China’s southeastern coast, came under Portuguese control in the mid-16th century, and Hong Kong, nearby, became a British dependency in the 1840s. In the 19th century internal revolts and foreign encroachment weakened China’s last dynasty, the Qing, which was finally overthrown by Chinese Nationalists in 1911. Over the course of several decades, the country was torn apart by warlords, Japanese invasion, and a civil war between the Communists and the Nationalist regime of the Kuomintang, which established the Republic of China in 1928.

In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland. The Kuomintang fled to the island province of Taiwan, where it reestablished the Nationalist government. The Nationalist government controlled only Taiwan and a few outlying islands but initially retained wide international recognition as the rightful government of all of China. Today, most countries recognize the PRC on the mainland as the official government of China. However, Taiwan and mainland China remain separated by different administrations and economies. Therefore, Taiwan is treated separately in Encarta Encyclopedia. In general, statistics in this article apply only to the area under the control of the PRC.

After coming to power in 1949, the Communist government began placing agriculture and industry under state control. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, the government implemented economic reforms that reversed some of the earlier policies and encouraged foreign investment. Although China remains a poor country by world standards, the economy has grown dramatically as a result of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1997 Hong Kong was transferred from Britain to China under an agreement that gave the region considerable autonomy. Portugal recognized Macao as Chinese territory in the late 1970s and later negotiated the transfer of Macao’s administration from Portugal to China. Macao, too, was guaranteed a special degree of autonomy.

II  LAND AND RESOURCES, 

The total area of China is 9,571,300 sq km (3,695,500 sq mi) including inland waters. The country stretches across East Asia in a broad arc that has a maximum east-west extent of about 5,000 km (about 3,000 mi). From the country’s northernmost point to the southern tip of Hainan Island, the north-south extent is about 4,000 km (about 2,500 mi). China borders Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea on the north; Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan on the west; India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Vietnam on the south; and the Pacific Ocean and its extensions on the east.

China’s vast territory encompasses a great diversity of landscapes. Generally speaking, the land forms three giant steps that descend from high mountains, plateaus, and great basins in the west to a central band of lower mountains, hills, and plateaus, then to lowlands, plains, and foothills near the eastern coast. Deserts and steppes lie across the northwest and north central parts of China.

A  Natural Regions, 

According to a Chinese geographic classification scheme, the country may be divided into seven large natural regions: Northeast China, North China, Subtropical East Central China, Tropical South China, Inner Mongolian Grassland, Northwest China, and the Tibetan Plateau (Qing Zang Gaoyuan).



Agriculture,
China has 7 percent of the world’s arable land with which to support more than 20 percent of the world’s population. Over the centuries, the Chinese have built irrigation projects to the extent that almost half of cultivated land is now irrigated. China long had a food deficit, but as a result of new irrigation projects, improved farming techniques since 1949, and agricultural reforms since the late 1970s, China now produces enough grain to provide a basic diet for its large population. In lean years, however, the country occasionally must import grains. China's agriculture is also a major source of raw materials for the country’s industries. Chinese cotton, for example, is a key material supplied to the garment industry.

In 1998 China produced the world’s largest share of grains, meats, cotton, and peanuts. China ranked second in production of tea, sugar cane, and rapeseed (used to make lubricants and cooking oil) and fourth in the production of soybeans. The country also produced most of the world’s mulberry silk cocoons.

Organization of Agricultural Activity, 
In the 1950s the Communist government organized 800 million rural people into about 52,000 people's communes. The communes received production targets from the state and ensured that these targets were met. Each commune was divided into about 16 production brigades, which were further divided into about 7 production teams usually consisting of 100 to 250 people. Each level above the individual could hold land, tools, and other production materials under communal ownership, and each carried out a range of production activities.

Under the commune system, it was possible to conduct large-scale experimentation with scientific farming, to plant crops in areas with the most favorable soil and other natural conditions, and to develop irrigation and drainage on an efficient scale. Although land was collectively owned, each rural household usually had access to a small private plot, which it was free to use as it pleased. Both production teams and individual households were also given autonomy to market products after official targets were met.

In the early 1980s, in an effort to increase agricultural production, the government restructured the agricultural sector. The system of communes and production brigades was largely dismantled, and the household became the principal unit of agricultural production. Under the so-called household contracting and responsibility system, each household, after contracting with local authorities to produce its quota of specified crops, was free to sell any additional output on the free market. A major limitation of this system is its difficulty in achieving economies of scale. This refers to the economic principle that an individual household produces a smaller amount than a larger farm, but has some of the same basic expenses (for plows, for example) and therefore has a higher relative production cost. On a voluntary basis, some households have organized themselves into groups for product processing, marketing, and regional cooperation.