China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea and ...
. It is the world's
most populous country, with a
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. China spans the equivalent of five
time zones
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
and
borders fourteen countries by land, the
most of any country in the world, tied with
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third
largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22
provinces, five
autonomous regions
An autonomous administrative division (also referred to as an autonomous area, entity, unit, region, subdivision, or territory) is a subnational administrative division or internal territory of a sovereign state that has a degree of autonomy— ...
, four
municipalities
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...
, and two
Special Administrative Regions
The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...
(
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
). The national capital is
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
, and the
most populous city and
financial center
A financial centre ( BE), financial center ( AE), or financial hub, is a location with a concentration of participants in banking, asset management, insurance or financial markets with venues and supporting services for these activities to t ...
is
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
.
Modern Chinese trace their origins to a
cradle of civilization
A cradle of civilization is a location and a culture where civilization was created by mankind independent of other civilizations in other locations. The formation of urban settlements (cities) is the primary characteristic of a society that c ...
in the fertile basin of the
Yellow River
The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...
in the
North China Plain
The North China Plain or Huang-Huai-Hai Plain () is a large-scale downfaulted rift basin formed in the late Paleogene and Neogene and then modified by the deposits of the Yellow River. It is the largest alluvial plain of China. The plain is bord ...
. The semi-legendary
Xia dynasty
The Xia dynasty () is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, the Xia dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great, after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors, gave the throne to him. In tradi ...
in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested
Shang
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and f ...
and
Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or
dynasties.
Chinese writing
Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally r ...
,
Chinese classic literature, and the
Hundred Schools of Thought
The Hundred Schools of Thought () were philosophies and schools that flourished from the 6th century BC to 221 BC during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period of ancient China.
An era of substantial discrimination in China, ...
emerged during this period and influenced
China and its neighbors for centuries to come. In the third century BCE,
Qin's wars of unification
Qin's wars of unification were a series of military campaigns launched in the late 3rd century BC by the Qin state against the other six major Chinese states — Han, Zhao, Yan, Wei, Chu and Qi.
Between 247 BC and 221 BC, Qin had emerged as ...
created the first Chinese empire, the short-lived
Qin dynasty
The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first Dynasties in Chinese history, dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin (state), ...
. The Qin was followed by the more stable
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
(206 BCE – 220 CE), which established a model for nearly two millennia in which the Chinese empire was one of the world's
foremost economic powers. The empire expanded, fractured and re-unified, was conquered and reestablished, absorbed foreign religions and ideas, and made world-leading scientific advances, such as the
Four Great Inventions
The Four Great Inventions () are inventions from ancient China that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as symbols of ancient China's advanced science and technology. They are the compass, History of gunpowder, ...
:
gunpowder
Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). ...
,
paper
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...
, the
compass
A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with ...
, and
printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
. After centuries of disunion following
the fall of the Han, the
Sui (581–618) and
Tang
Tang or TANG most often refers to:
* Tang dynasty
* Tang (drink mix)
Tang or TANG may also refer to:
Chinese states and dynasties
* Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...
(618–907) dynasties reunified the empire. The multi-ethnic Tang welcomed foreign trade and culture that came over the
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
and adapted
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
to Chinese needs. The
early modern Song dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...
(960–1279) became increasingly urban and commercial. The civilian
scholar-official or literati used the
examination system and the doctrines of
Neo-Confucianism
Neo-Confucianism (, often shortened to ''lǐxué'' 理學, literally "School of Principle") is a moral, ethical, and metaphysical Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period () and Wa ...
to replace the military aristocrats of earlier dynasties. The
Mongol invasion
The Mongol invasions and conquests took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, creating history's largest contiguous empire: the Mongol Empire ( 1206- 1368), which by 1300 covered large parts of Eurasia. Historians regard the Mongol devastati ...
established the
Yuan dynasty
The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...
in 1279, but the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
(1368–1644) re-established Han Chinese control. The
Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
-led
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
nearly doubled the empire's territory and established a multi-ethnic state that was the basis of the modern Chinese nation, but
suffered
Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, may be an experience of unpleasantness or aversion, possibly associated with the perception of harm or threat of harm in an individual. Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of a ...
heavy
losses to foreign
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
in the 19th century.
The
Chinese monarchy collapsed in 1912 with the
Xinhai Revolution
The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a d ...
, when the
Republic of China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...
(ROC) replaced the Qing dynasty. In its
early years as a republic, the country underwent a period of instability known as the
Warlord Era before mostly
reunifying in 1928 under a
Nationalist government. A
civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
between the nationalist
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
(KMT) and the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
(CCP) began in 1927.
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
invaded China in 1937, starting the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
and temporarily halting the civil war. The surrender and expulsion of Japanese forces from China in 1945 left a
power vacuum
In political science and political history, the term power vacuum, also known as a power void, is an analogy between a physical vacuum to the political condition "when someone in a place of power, has lost control of something and no one has repla ...
in the country, which led to
renewed fighting between the CCP and the Kuomintang. The civil war ended in 1949 with the
division of Chinese territory; the CCP
established the People's Republic of China on the
mainland while the Kuomintang-led ROC government
retreated to the island of
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
. Both claim to be
the sole legitimate government of China, although the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
has
recognized the PRC as the sole representation since 1971. From 1959 to 1961, the PRC implemented an economic and social campaign called the
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruc ...
, that resulted in a sharp economic decline and
an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths, mostly through man-made famine. From 1966 to 1976, the turbulent period of political and social chaos within China known as the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...
led to greater economic and educational decline, with millions being
purged
In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...
or subjected to either
persecution
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these term ...
or
politicide based on
political categories. Since then, the Chinese government has rebuked some of the earlier
Maoist
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
policies, conducting a series of political and
economic reforms since 1978, which has greatly raised Chinese standards of living, and increased life expectancies.
China is currently governed as a
unitary
Unitary may refer to:
Mathematics
* Unitary divisor
* Unitary element
* Unitary group
* Unitary matrix
* Unitary morphism
* Unitary operator
* Unitary transformation
* Unitary representation
* Unitarity (physics)
* ''E''-unitary inverse semigroup ...
Marxist–Leninist
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialect ...
one-party socialist republic
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ec ...
by the CCP. China is a
permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
and a founding member of several multilateral and regional cooperation organizations such as the
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a multilateral development bank that aims to improve economic and social outcomes in Asia. The bank currently has 105 members, including 14 prospective members from around the world. The br ...
, the
Silk Road Fund, the
New Development Bank
The New Development Bank (NDB), formerly referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, is a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS Sovereign state, states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). According to the Agreemen ...
, the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the
RCEP
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP ) is a free trade agreement among the Asia-Pacific nations of Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Sin ...
, and is a member of the
BRICS
BRICS is an acronym for five leading emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The first four were initially grouped as "BRIC" (or "the BRICs") in 2001 by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill, who coined the ter ...
, the
G8+5, the
G20
The G20 or Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union (EU). It works to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation, ...
, the
APEC
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC ) is an inter-governmental forum for 21 member economies in the Pacific Rim that promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region. , and the
East Asia Summit
The East Asia Summit (EAS) is a regional forum held annually by leaders of, initially, 16 countries in the East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian and Oceanian regions, based on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations#ASEAN Plus Three and A ...
. It
ranks among the lowest in measurements of
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
,
civil liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...
,
government transparency,
freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic News media, media, especially publication, published materials, should be conside ...
,
freedom of religion and ethnic minorities. The Chinese authorities have been criticized by human rights activists and non-governmental organizations for
human rights abuses
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hum ...
, including
political repression
Political repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a society, thereb ...
,
mass censorship,
mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
of their citizens, and violent suppression of protests.
Making up around one-fifth of the world economy, China is the world's
largest economy by GDP by
purchasing power parity
Purchasing power parity (PPP) is the measurement of prices in different countries that uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currency, currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of ...
, the
second-largest economy by nominal GDP, and the
second-wealthiest country. The country is one of the
fastest growing major economies and is the world's largest
manufacturer
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a ran ...
and
exporter, as well as the
second-largest importer. China is a
recognized nuclear-weapon state with the world's
largest standing army by military personnel and
second-largest defense budget. China is considered to be a
potential superpower
A potential superpower is a state or a political and economic entity that is speculated to be—or to have the potential to soon become—a superpower.
Currently, only the United States fulfills the criteria to be considered a superpower. How ...
due to its large markets, high innovation, economic potential, growing military strength, and influence in international affairs.
Etymology
The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not a word used by the Chinese themselves during this period. Its origin has been traced through
Portuguese,
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
, and
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
back to the
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
word ''Chīna'', used in
ancient India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...
.
"China" appears in
Richard Eden Richard Eden may refer to:
* Richard Eden (translator)
Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576) was an English alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographical works of other writers helped to foster enthusiasm for overseas exploration in Tud ...
's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the
Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa.).
Barbosa's usage was derived from
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
''Chīn'' (), which was in turn derived from Sanskrit ''
Cīna'' ().
[China]
. ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'' (2000). Boston and New York: Houghton-Mifflin. ''Cīna'' was first used in early
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
scripture, including the ''
Mahābhārata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kuruk ...
'' (5th century BCE) and the ''
Laws of Manu
The ''Manusmṛiti'' ( sa, मनुस्मृति), also known as the ''Mānava-Dharmaśāstra'' or Laws of Manu, is one of the many legal texts and constitution among the many ' of Hinduism. In ancient India, the Rishi, sages often wrot ...
'' (2nd century BCE).
[Wade, Geoff.]
The Polity of Yelang and the Origin of the Name 'China'
. ''Sino-Platonic Papers
''Sino-Platonic Papers'' is a scholarly monographic series published by the University of Pennsylvania. The chief focus of the series is on the intercultural relations of China and Central Asia with other peoples. The journal was established in 19 ...
'', No. 188, May 2009, p. 20. In 1655,
Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the
Qin dynasty
The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first Dynasties in Chinese history, dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin (state), ...
(221–206 BCE).
[Martino, Martin, ''Novus Atlas Sinensis'', Vienna 1655, Preface, p. 2.] Although usage in Indian sources precedes this dynasty, this derivation is still given in various sources.
The origin of the Sanskrit word is a matter of debate, according to the ''Oxford English Dictionary''.
Alternative suggestions include the names for
Yelang
Yelang, also Zangke, was an ancient political entity first described in the 3rd century BC in what is now western Guizhou province, China. It was active for over 200 years. The state is known to modern Chinese from the idiom, "Yelang thinks too ...
and the
Jing or Chu state.
The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (). The shorter form is "China" ' () from ' ("central") and ' ("state"), a term which developed under the
Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its
royal demesne
Crown land (sometimes spelled crownland), also known as royal domain, is a territorial area belonging to the monarch, who personifies the Crown. It is the equivalent of an entailed estate and passes with the monarchy, being inseparable from it ...
. It was then applied to the area around
Luoyi
Luoyang is a city located in the confluence area of Luo River and Yellow River in the west of Henan province. Governed as a prefecture-level city, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang ...
(present-day Luoyang) during the
Eastern Zhou and then to China's
Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the
Qing
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
.
It was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the
Huaxia
''Huaxia'' (華夏, ) is a historical concept representing the Chinese nation, and came from the self-awareness of a common cultural ancestry by the various confederations of pre-Qin ethnic ancestors of Han people.
Etymology
The earliest ext ...
people from
perceived "barbarians".
The name ''Zhongguo'' is also translated as in English. China (PRC) is sometimes referred to as
the Mainland when distinguishing the
ROC from the PRC.
History
Prehistory
China is regarded as one of the world's oldest civilisations.
Archaeological evidence
The archaeological record is the body of physical (not written) evidence about the past. It is one of the core concepts in archaeology, the academic discipline concerned with documenting and interpreting the archaeological record. Archaeological ...
suggests that early
hominids inhabited the country 2.25 million years ago. The hominid fossils of
Peking Man, a ''
Homo erectus
''Homo erectus'' (; meaning "upright man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Several human species, such as '' H. heidelbergensis'' and '' H. antecessor' ...
'' who
used fire, were discovered in a cave at
Zhoukoudian
Zhoukoudian Area () is a town and an area located on the east Fangshan District, Beijing, China. It borders Nanjiao and Fozizhuang Townships to its north, Xiangyang, Chengguan and Yingfeng Subdistricts to its east, Shilou and Hangcunhe Towns to ...
near
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
; they have been dated to between 680,000 and 780,000
years ago
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hour ...
.
The fossilized teeth of ''Homo sapiens'' (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) have been discovered in
Fuyan Cave
Fuyan Cave () is a complex of limestone caves in Tangbei village, Lefutang town, Daoxian, Hunan province, south central China famous for the discovery of the oldest evidence for unambiguously fully modern humans outside Africa. 47 human teeth, dat ...
in
Dao County,
Hunan
Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...
. Chinese
proto-writing
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in Eastern Europe and China. They used ideograph ...
existed in
Jiahu
Jiahu () was the site of a Neolithic settlement based in the central plain of ancient China, near the Yellow River. It is located between the floodplains of the Ni River to the north, and the Sha River to the south, north of the modern city ...
around 6600 BCE,
at
Damaidi
Damaidi (; ''literally: Big wheat field''), is the location of 3,172 sets of early Chinese petroglyphs, carved into the cliffs which feature 8,453 individual figures. Cliff carving expert Li Xiangshi stated that "The pictographs are similar to ...
around 6000 BCE,
Dadiwan
The Dadiwan culture (c. 7900–7200 BP) was a Neolithic culture located primarily in the eastern portion of Gansu and Shaanxi provinces in modern China. The culture takes its name from the deepest cultural layer found during the original excavat ...
from 5800 to 5400 BCE, and
Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE. Some scholars have suggested that the
Jiahu symbols
The Jiahu symbols () consist of 16 distinct markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Jiahu, a neolithic Peiligang culture site found in Henan, China, and excavated in 1989. The Jiahu symbols are dated to around 6000 BC. The archaeologis ...
(7th millennium BCE) constituted the earliest Chinese writing system.
Early dynastic rule
According to Chinese tradition, the
first dynasty was the
Xia
Xia (Hsia in Wade–Giles) may refer to:
Chinese history
* Xia dynasty (c. 2070 – c. 1600 BC), the first orthodox dynasty in Chinese history
* Xia (Sixteen Kingdoms) (407–431), a Xiongnu-led dynasty
* Xia (617–621), a state founded by Dou Ji ...
, which emerged around 2100 BCE. The Xia dynasty marked the beginning of China's political system based on hereditary monarchies, or
dynasties, which lasted for a millennium. The Xia dynasty was considered
mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
sites at
Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period. The succeeding
Shang dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and ...
is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the
Yellow River
The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...
in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE. Their
oracle bone script
Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or Turtle shell#Plastron, turtle plastrons used in pyromancy, pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millen ...
(from BCE) represents the oldest form of Chinese writing yet found and is a direct ancestor of modern
Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
.
The Shang was conquered by the
Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries BCE, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords. Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king, and continually waged war with each other during the 300-year
Spring and Autumn period
The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from approximately 770 to 476 BC (or according to some authorities until 403 BC) which corresponds roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou period. The period's name derives fr ...
. By the time of the
Warring States period
The Warring States period () was an era in History of China#Ancient China, ancient Chinese history characterized by warfare, as well as bureaucratic and military reforms and consolidation. It followed the Spring and Autumn period and concluded ...
of the 5th–3rd centuries BCE, there were only seven powerful states left.
Imperial China
The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE after the
state of Qin
Qin () was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. Traditionally dated to 897 BC, it took its origin in a reconquest of western lands previously lost to the Rong; its position at the western edge of Chinese civilization permitted ex ...
conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of
autocracy
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perh ...
.
King Zheng of Qin
Qin Shi Huang (, ; 259–210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. Rather than maintain the title of "king" ( ''wáng'') borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Emperor ( ...
proclaimed himself the
First Emperor
Qin Shi Huang (, ; 259–210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. Rather than maintain the title of "king" ( ''wáng'') borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Emperor ( ...
of the
Qin dynasty
The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first Dynasties in Chinese history, dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin (state), ...
. He enacted Qin's
legalist
Legalist, Inc. is an investment firm that specializes in alternative assets in the private credit industry. Today the firm manages approximately $750 million across three separate strategies: litigation finance, bankruptcy (debtor-in-possession or ...
reforms throughout China, notably the forced standardization of
Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
,
measurements
Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events.
In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared t ...
, road widths (i.e., the cart axles' length), and
currency
A currency, "in circulation", from la, currens, -entis, literally meaning "running" or "traversing" is a standardization of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example banknotes and coins.
A more general def ...
. His dynasty also
conquered the Yue tribes in
Guangxi
Guangxi (; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the People's Republic ...
,
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
, and
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
. The Qin dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.
[Bodde, Derk. (1986). "The State and Empire of Ch'in", in ''The Cambridge History of China: Volume I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220''. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .]
Following a
widespread civil war during which the imperial library at
Xianyang
Xianyang () is a prefecture-level city in central Shaanxi province, situated on the Wei River a few kilometers upstream (west) from the provincial capital of Xi'an. Once the capital of the Qin dynasty, it is now integrated into the Xi'an metrop ...
was burned, the
Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and CE 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive va ...
.
The Han
expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching
Central Asia, Mongolia,
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
, and
Yunnan
Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...
, and the
recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from
Nanyue. Han involvement in Central Asia and
Sogdia
Sogdia (Sogdian language, Sogdian: ) or Sogdiana was an ancient Iranian peoples, Iranian civilization between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, and in present-day Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was also ...
helped establish the land route of the
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
, replacing the earlier path over the
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...
to India. Han China gradually became the largest economy of the ancient world. Despite the Han's initial decentralization and the official abandonment of the Qin philosophy of
Legalism in favor of
Confucianism
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
, Qin's legalist institutions and policies continued to be employed by the Han government and its successors.
After the
end of the Han dynasty
The end of the Han dynasty was the period of Chinese history from 189 to 220 CE, roughly coinciding with the tumultuous reign of the Han dynasty's last ruler, Emperor Xian. During this period, the country was thrown into turmoil by the Yellow ...
, a period of strife known as
Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Han dynasty#Eastern Han, Eastern Han dynasty and wa ...
followed, whose central figures were later immortalized in
one
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
of the
Four Classics
Classic Chinese Novels () are the best-known novels of pre-modern Chinese literature. These are among the world's longest and oldest novels. They represented a new complexity in structure and sophistication in language that helped to establish t ...
of
Chinese literature. At its end,
Wei
Wei or WEI may refer to:
States
* Wey (state) (衛, 1040–209 BC), Wei in pinyin, but spelled Wey to distinguish from the bigger Wei of the Warring States
* Wei (state) (魏, 403–225 BC), one of the seven major states of the Warring States per ...
was swiftly overthrown by the
Jin dynasty. The Jin fell to
civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
upon the ascension of a
developmentally disabled emperor; the
Five Barbarians then
invaded
An invasion is a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing con ...
and ruled northern China as the
Sixteen States. The
Xianbei unified them as the
Northern Wei
Wei (), known in historiography as the Northern Wei (), Tuoba Wei (), Yuan Wei () and Later Wei (), was founded by the Tuoba (Tabgach) clan of the Xianbei. The first of the Northern and Southern dynasties#Northern dynasties, Northern dynasties ...
, whose
Emperor Xiaowen
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother (empr ...
reversed his predecessors' apartheid policies and
enforced a drastic sinification on his subjects, largely integrating them into Chinese culture. In the south, the general
Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of the
Liu Song. The various successors of these states became known as the
Northern and Southern dynasties
The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as ...
, with the two areas finally reunited by the
Sui in 581. The Sui restored the Han to power through China, reformed its agriculture, economy and
imperial examination
The imperial examination (; lit. "subject recommendation") refers to a civil-service examination system in Imperial China, administered for the purpose of selecting candidates for the state bureaucracy. The concept of choosing bureaucrats by ...
system, constructed the
Grand Canal, and patronized
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
. However, they fell quickly when their conscription for public works and a
failed war in
northern Korea
North Korea is located in East Asia in the Northern half of Korea, partially on the Korean Peninsula. It borders three countries: China along the Yalu (Amnok) River, Russia along the Tumen River, and South Korea to the south.
Topography and dra ...
provoked widespread unrest.
Under the succeeding
Tang
Tang or TANG most often refers to:
* Tang dynasty
* Tang (drink mix)
Tang or TANG may also refer to:
Chinese states and dynasties
* Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...
and
Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
dynasties, Chinese economy, technology, and culture entered a golden age. The
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
retained control of the
Western Regions and the Silk Road, which brought traders to as far as
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
and the
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
, and made the capital
Chang'an
Chang'an (; ) is the traditional name of Xi'an. The site had been settled since Neolithic times, during which the Yangshao culture was established in Banpo, in the city's suburbs. Furthermore, in the northern vicinity of modern Xi'an, Qin Shi ...
a cosmopolitan urban center. However, it was devastated and weakened by the
An Lushan Rebellion
The An Lushan Rebellion was an uprising against the Tang dynasty of China towards the mid-point of the dynasty (from 755 to 763), with an attempt to replace it with the Yan dynasty. The rebellion was originally led by An Lushan, a general office ...
in the 8th century. In 907, the Tang disintegrated completely when the local military governors became ungovernable. The Song dynasty ended the
separatist situation in 960, leading to a balance of power between the Song and
Khitan Liao
The Liao dynasty (; Khitan: ''Mos Jælud''; ), also known as the Khitan Empire (Khitan: ''Mos diau-d kitai huldʒi gur''), officially the Great Liao (), was an imperial dynasty of China that existed between 916 and 1125, ruled by the Yelü ...
. The Song was the first government in world history to issue paper money and the first Chinese
polity
A polity is an identifiable Politics, political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of Institutionalisation, institutionalized social relation, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize ...
to establish a permanent standing navy which was supported by the developed shipbuilding industry along with the sea trade.
Between the 10th and 11th centuries, the population of China doubled in size to around 100 million people, mostly because of the expansion of rice cultivation in central and southern China, and the production of abundant food surpluses. The Song dynasty also saw a
revival of Confucianism, in response to the growth of Buddhism during the Tang, and a flourishing of philosophy and the arts, as
landscape art
Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compos ...
and
porcelain
Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...
were brought to new levels of maturity and complexity. However, the military weakness of the Song army was observed by the
Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1127,
Emperor Huizong of Song
Emperor Huizong of Song (7 June 1082 – 4 June 1135), personal name Zhao Ji, was the eighth emperor of the Northern Song dynasty of China. He was also a very well-known calligrapher. Born as the 11th son of Emperor Shenzong, he ascended the ...
and the capital
Bianjing
Kaifeng () is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is best known for having been the Chinese capital during the Nort ...
were captured during the
Jin–Song Wars. The remnants of the Song retreated to
southern China.
The
Mongol conquest of China
The Mongol conquest of China was a series of major military efforts by the Mongol Empire to conquer various empires ruling over China. It spanned six decades in the 13th century and involved the defeat of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), Jin ...
began in 1205 with the
gradual conquest of
Western Xia
The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (), officially the Great Xia (), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as ''Mi-nyak''Stein (1972), pp. 70–71. to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led Buddhist imperial dynasty of China tha ...
by
Genghis Khan
''Chinggis Khaan'' ͡ʃʰiŋɡɪs xaːŋbr />Mongol script: ''Chinggis Qa(gh)an/ Chinggis Khagan''
, birth_name = Temüjin
, successor = Tolui (as regent)Ögedei Khan
, spouse =
, issue =
, house = Borjigin
, ...
, who also
invaded Jin territories. In 1271, the
Mongol
The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal member of ...
leader
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets vi ...
Kublai Khan
Kublai ; Mongolian script: ; (23 September 1215 – 18 February 1294), also known by his temple name as the Emperor Shizu of Yuan and his regnal name Setsen Khan, was the founder of the Yuan dynasty of China and the fifth khagan-emperor of th ...
established the
Yuan dynasty
The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...
, which
conquered the last remnant of the Song dynasty in 1279. Before the Mongol invasion, the population of Song China was 120 million citizens; this was reduced to 60 million by the time of the census in 1300. A peasant named Zhu Yuanzhang
led a rebellion that overthrew the Yuan in 1368 and founded the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
as the
Hongwu Emperor
The Hongwu Emperor (21 October 1328 – 24 June 1398), personal name Zhu Yuanzhang (), courtesy name Guorui (), was the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty of China, reigning from 1368 to 1398.
As famine, plagues and peasant revolts in ...
. Under the Ming dynasty, China enjoyed another golden age, developing one of the strongest navies in the world and a rich and prosperous economy amid a flourishing of art and culture. It was during this period that admiral
Zheng He
Zheng He (; 1371–1433 or 1435) was a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during China's early Ming dynasty. He was originally born as Ma He in a Muslim family and later adopted the surname Zheng conferred ...
led the
Ming treasure voyages throughout the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...
, reaching as far as
East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa:
Due to the historical ...
.
In the early years of the Ming dynasty, China's capital was moved from
Nanjing
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
to Beijing. With the budding of capitalism, philosophers such as
Wang Yangming further critiqued and expanded Neo-Confucianism with concepts of
individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...
and equality of
four occupations
The four occupations () or "four categories of the people" ()Hansson, pp. 20-21Brook, 72. was an occupation classification used in ancient China by either Confucian or Legalist scholars as far back as the late Zhou dynasty and is considered a c ...
. The
scholar-official
The scholar-officials, also known as literati, scholar-gentlemen or scholar-bureaucrats (), were government officials and prestigious scholars in Chinese society, forming a distinct social class.
Scholar-officials were politicians and governmen ...
stratum became a supporting force of industry and commerce in the tax boycott movements, which, together with the famines and defense against
Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598)
The Japanese invasions of Korea of 1592–1598 involved two separate yet linked invasions: an initial invasion in 1592 (), a brief truce in 1596, and a second invasion in 1597 (). The conflict ended in 1598 with the withdrawal of Japanese force ...
and
Manchu invasions led to an exhausted treasury. In 1644, Beijing was captured by a coalition of peasant rebel forces led by
Li Zicheng
Li Zicheng (22 September 1606 – 1645), born Li Hongji, also known by the nickname, Dashing King, was a Chinese peasant rebel leader who overthrew the Ming dynasty in 1644 and ruled over northern China briefly as the emperor of the short-li ...
. The
Chongzhen Emperor
The Chongzhen Emperor (; 6 February 1611 – 25 April 1644), personal name Zhu Youjian (), courtesy name Deyue (),Wang Yuan (王源),''Ju ye tang wen ji'' (《居業堂文集》), vol. 19. "聞之張景蔚親見烈皇帝神主題御諱字德 ...
committed suicide when the city fell. The Manchu
Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
, then allied with Ming dynasty general
Wu Sangui
Wu Sangui (; 8 June 1612 – 2 October 1678), courtesy name Changbai () or Changbo (), was a notorious Ming Dynasty military officer who played a key role in the fall of the Ming dynasty and the founding of the Qing dynasty in China. In Chinese ...
, overthrew Li's short-lived
Shun dynasty and subsequently seized control of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qing dynasty.
The Qing dynasty, which lasted from 1644 until 1912, was the last imperial dynasty of China. Its
conquest of the Ming (1618–1683) cost 25 million lives and the
economy of China shrank drastically. After the
Southern Ming ended, the further conquest of the
Dzungar Khanate added Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang to the empire. The centralized autocracy was strengthened to suppress
anti-Qing sentiment
Anti-Qing sentiment () refers to a sentiment principally held in China against the rule of the Manchu people, Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1636–1912), which was criticized by opponents as being "barbaric". The Qing was accused of destroying traditi ...
with the policy of valuing agriculture and restraining commerce, the ''
Haijin'' ("sea ban"), and ideological control as represented by the
literary inquisition, causing social and technological stagnation.
Fall of the Qing dynasty
In the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty experienced Western imperialism in the
Opium Wars
The Opium Wars () were two conflicts waged between China and Western powers during the mid-19th century. The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and the United Kingdom, and was triggered by the Chinese government's cam ...
with Britain and
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. China was forced to pay compensation, open treaty ports, allow
extraterritoriality
In international law, extraterritoriality is the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations.
Historically, this primarily applied to individuals, as jurisdiction was usually cla ...
for foreign nationals, and cede
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
to the British under the 1842
Treaty of Nanking, the first of the
Unequal Treaties. The
First Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the po ...
(1894–1895) resulted in Qing China's loss of influence in the
Korean Peninsula
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
, as well as the
cession of Taiwan to
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
.
The Qing dynasty also began experiencing
internal unrest in which tens of millions of people died, especially in the
White Lotus Rebellion
The White Lotus Rebellion (, 1794–1804) was a rebellion initiated by followers of the White Lotus movement during the Qing dynasty of China. Motivated by Millenarianism, millenarian Buddhists who promised the immediate return of the Buddha, it e ...
, the failed
Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion, also known as the Taiping Civil War or the Taiping Revolution, was a massive rebellion and civil war that was waged in China between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Han, Hakka-led Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. It lasted fr ...
that ravaged southern China in the 1850s and 1860s and the
Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The initial success of the
Self-Strengthening Movement
The Self-Strengthening Movement, also known as the Westernization or Western Affairs Movement (–1895), was a period of radical institutional reforms initiated in China during the late Qing dynasty following the military disasters of the Opium ...
of the 1860s was frustrated by a series of military defeats in the 1880s and 1890s.
In the 19th century, the great
Chinese diaspora
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.
Terminology
() or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refe ...
began. Losses due to emigration were added to by conflicts and catastrophes such as the
Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, in which between 9 and 13 million people died. The
Guangxu Emperor drafted a
reform plan in 1898 to establish a modern
constitutional monarchy
A constitutional monarchy, parliamentary monarchy, or democratic monarchy is a form of monarchy in which the monarch exercises their authority in accordance with a constitution and is not alone in decision making. Constitutional monarchies dif ...
, but these plans were thwarted by the
Empress Dowager Cixi. The ill-fated anti-foreign
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...
of 1899–1901 further weakened the dynasty. Although Cixi sponsored a program of reforms, the
Xinhai Revolution
The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a d ...
of 1911–1912 brought an end to the Qing dynasty and established the
Republic of China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...
.
[Li, Xiaobing. ]007
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
(2007). ''A History of the Modern Chinese Army''. University Press of Kentucky. , . pp. 13, 26–27. Puyi, the last Emperor of China, abdicated in 1912.
Establishment of the Republic and World War II
On 1 January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen (; also known by several other names; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925)Singtao daily. Saturday edition. 23 October 2010. section A18. Sun Yat-sen Xinhai revolution 100th anniversary edition . was a Chinese politician who serve ...
of the
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
(the KMT or Nationalist Party) was proclaimed provisional president. On 12 February 1912,
regent
A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
Empress Dowager Longyu
Jingfen (; 28 January 1868 – 22 February 1913), of the Manchu Bordered Yellow Banner Yehe Nara clan, was the wife and empress consort of Zaitian, the Guangxu Emperor. She was Empress consort of Qing from 1889 until her husband's death in 19 ...
sealed the
imperial abdication decree on behalf of 4 year old
Puyi, the last emperor of China, ending 5,000 years of
monarchy in China. In March 1912, the presidency was given to
Yuan Shikai
Yuan Shikai (; 16 September 1859 – 6 June 1916) was a Chinese military and government official who rose to power during the late Qing dynasty and eventually ended the Qing dynasty rule of China in 1912, later becoming the Emperor of China. H ...
, a former Qing general who in 1915 proclaimed himself
Emperor of China
''Huangdi'' (), translated into English as Emperor, was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heave ...
. In the face of popular condemnation and opposition from his own
Beiyang Army
The Beiyang Army (), named after the Beiyang region,Hong Zhang (2019)"Yuan Shikai and the Significance of his Troop Training at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, 1895–1899" ''The Chinese Historical Review'' 26(1) was a large, Western-style Imperial Chinese Ar ...
, he was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic in 1916.
After Yuan Shikai's death in 1916, China was politically fragmented. Its Beijing-based government was internationally recognized but virtually powerless; regional warlords controlled most of its territory. In the late 1920s, the Kuomintang under
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...
, the then Principal of the
Republic of China Military Academy
The Republic of China Military Academy () is the service academy for the army of the Republic of China, located in Fengshan District, Kaohsiung. Previously known as the the military academy produced commanders who fought in many of China's ...
, was able to reunify the country under its own control with a series of deft military and political maneuverings, known collectively as the
Northern Expedition
The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as the "Chinese Nationalist Party", against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The ...
. The Kuomintang moved the nation's capital to
Nanjing
Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
and implemented "political tutelage", an intermediate stage of political development outlined in Sun Yat-sen's
San-min program for transforming China into a modern democratic state. The
political division
Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...
in China made it difficult for Chiang to battle the
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
-led
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five service branches: the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, ...
(PLA), against whom the Kuomintang had been warring since 1927 in the
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...
. This war continued successfully for the Kuomintang, especially after the PLA retreated in the
Long March
The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Red Army, Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Revolut ...
, until Japanese aggression and the 1936
Xi'an Incident forced Chiang to confront
Imperial Japan.
The
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
(1937–1945), a
theater
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...
of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, forced an uneasy alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists. Japanese forces committed numerous
war atrocities against the civilian population; in all, as many as 20 million Chinese civilians died. An estimated 40,000 to 300,000 Chinese
were massacred in the city of Nanjing alone during the Japanese occupation. During the war, China, along with the UK, the United States, and the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, were referred to as "trusteeship of the powerful"
and were recognized as the Allied "
Big Four Big Four or Big 4 may refer to:
Groups of companies
* Big Four accounting firms: Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PwC
* Big Four (airlines) in the U.S. in the 20th century: American, Eastern, TWA, United
* Big Four (banking), several groupings ...
" in the
Declaration by United Nations. Along with the other three great powers, China was one of the four major
Allies of World War II
The Allies, formally referred to as the United Nations from 1942, were an international military coalition formed during the Second World War (1939–1945) to oppose the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. ...
, and was later considered one of the primary victors in the war. After the
surrender of Japan
The surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, bringing the war's hostilities to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy ...
in 1945, Taiwan, including the
Pescadores, was
handed over to Chinese control. However, the validity of this handover is controversial, in that whether Taiwan's sovereignty was legally transferred and whether China is a legitimate recipient, due to complex issues that arose from the handling of Japan's surrender, resulting in the unresolved
political status of Taiwan
The controversy surrounding the political status of Taiwan or the Taiwan issue is a result of World War II, the second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and the Cold War.
The basic issue hinges on who the islands of Taiwan, Peng ...
, which is a flashpoint of potential war between China and Taiwan. China emerged victorious but war-ravaged and financially drained. The continued distrust between the Kuomintang and the Communists led to the resumption of civil war. Constitutional rule was established in 1947, but because of the ongoing unrest, many provisions of the
ROC constitution
The Constitution of the Republic of China is the fifth and current constitution of the Republic of China (ROC), ratified by the Kuomintang during the session on 25 December 1946, in Nanjing, and adopted on 25 December 1947. The constitution, ...
were never implemented in mainland China.
Civil War and the People's Republic
Before the existence of the People's Republic, the CCP had declared
several areas of the country as the
Chinese Soviet Republic
The Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) was an East Asian proto-state in China, proclaimed on 7 November 1931 by Chinese communist leaders Mao Zedong and Zhu De in the early stages of the Chinese Civil War. The discontiguous territories of the CSR ...
(Jiangxi Soviet), a predecessor state to the PRC, in November 1931 in
Ruijin
Ruijin () is a county-level city of Ganzhou in the mountains bordering Fujian Province in the south-eastern part of Jiangxi Province. Formerly a county, Ruijin became a county-level city on May 18, 1994.
It was an early center of Chinese commun ...
,
Jiangxi
Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...
. The Jiangxi Soviet was
wiped out by the KMT armies in 1934 and was relocated to
Yan'an
Yan'an (; ), alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several counties, including Zhidan (formerly Bao'an ...
in
Shaanxi
Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see #Name, § Name) is a landlocked Provinces of China, province of China. Officially part of Northwest China, it borders the province-level divisions of Shanxi (NE, E), Henan (E), Hubei (SE), Chongqing (S), Sichu ...
where the
Long March
The Long March (, lit. ''Long Expedition'') was a military retreat undertaken by the Chinese Red Army, Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Revolut ...
concluded in 1935. It would be the base of the communists before major combat in the
Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...
ended in 1949. Afterwards, the CCP took control of most of
mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
, and the
Kuomintang retreating offshore to Taiwan, reducing its territory to only
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
,
Hainan
Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...
, and their surrounding islands.
On 1 October 1949,
CCP Chairman Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
formally
proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at the new nation's founding ceremony and inaugural military parade in
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square (; 天安门广场; Pinyin: ''Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng''; Wade–Giles: ''Tʻien1-an1-mên2 Kuang3-chʻang3'') is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananmen (" ...
, Beijing. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army
captured Hainan from the ROC and
annexed Tibet. However, remaining Kuomintang forces continued to wage
an insurgency in western China throughout the 1950s.
The government consolidated its popularity among the peasants through land reform, which included the
execution of between 1 and 2 million landlords. China developed an independent industrial system and
its own nuclear weapons. The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950 to 900 million in 1974. However, the
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruc ...
, an idealistic massive reform project, resulted in
an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths between 1959 and 1961, mostly from starvation.
In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...
, sparking a decade of political recrimination and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. In October 1971, the PRC
replaced the Republic of China in the United Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council. This UN action also created the problem of the
political status of Taiwan
The controversy surrounding the political status of Taiwan or the Taiwan issue is a result of World War II, the second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and the Cold War.
The basic issue hinges on who the islands of Taiwan, Peng ...
and the
Two Chinas
The term "Two Chinas" refers to the geopolitical situation where two political entities exist under the name "China".
Background
In 1912, the Xuantong Emperor abdicated as a result of the Xinhai Revolution, and the Republic of China was est ...
issue. See
Cross-Strait relations and "
Taiwan, China
"Taiwan, China", "Taiwan, Province of China", and "Taipei, China" are political terms that claim Taiwan and its associated territories as a province or territory of "China".
The term "Taiwan, China" () is used by Chinese state media even ...
".
Reforms and contemporary history
After Mao's death, the
Gang of Four
The Gang of Four () was a Maoist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The gang ...
was quickly arrested by
Hua Guofeng
Hua Guofeng (; born Su Zhu; 16 February 1921 – 20 August 2008), alternatively spelled as Hua Kuo-feng, was a Chinese politician who served as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and Premier of the People's Republic of China. The design ...
and held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CC ...
took power in 1978, and instituted significant
economic reforms
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the p ...
. The CCP loosened governmental control over citizens' personal lives, and the
communes were gradually disbanded in favor of working contracted to households. This marked China's transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an
increasingly open-market environment.
[Hart-Landsberg, Martin; and Burkett, Pau]
"China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle"
Monthly Review
The ''Monthly Review'', established in 1949, is an independent socialist magazine published monthly in New York City. The publication is the longest continuously published socialist magazine in the United States.
History Establishment
Following ...
Retrieved 30 October 2008 China adopted its current
constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.
When ...
on 4 December 1982. In 1989, the
suppression of
student protests in Tiananmen Square brought condemnations and sanctions against the Chinese government from various foreign countries.
Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin (17 August 1926 – 30 November 2022) was a Chinese politician who served as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 to 2002, as chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2004, and as pres ...
,
Li Peng and
Zhu Rongji
Zhu Rongji (; IPA: ; born 23 October 1928) is a retired Chinese politician who served as Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1998 to 2003 and CCP Politburo Standing Committee member from 1992 to 2002 along with the Chinese Communist ...
led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China's economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.
British Hong Kong
Hong Kong was a colony and later a dependent territory of the British Empire from 1841 to 1997, apart from a period of occupation under the Japanese Empire from 1941 to 1945 during the Pacific War. The colonial period began with the Briti ...
and
Portuguese Macau
Portuguese Macau (officially the Province of Macau until 1976, and then the Autonomous Region of Macau from 1976 to 1999) was a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colony that existed from the first official Portuguese settlement in 1557 to the ...
returned to China in
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
and
1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...
, respectively, as the
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
special administrative regions
The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...
under the principle of
One country, two systems
"One country, two systems" is a constitutional principle of the People's Republic of China (PRC) describing the governance of the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
The constitutional principle was formulated in the early ...
. The country joined the
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation
in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...
in 2001, and maintained its high rate of economic growth under
Hu Jintao
Hu Jintao (born 21 December 1942) is a Chinese politician who served as the 16–17th general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, the 6th president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 2003 to 2013, an ...
and
Wen Jiabao
Wen Jiabao (born 15 September 1942) is a retired Chinese politician who served as the Premier of the State Council from 2003 to 2013. In his capacity as head of government, Wen was regarded as the leading figure behind China's economic policy ...
's leadership in the 2000s. However, the growth also severely impacted the country's resources and environment, and caused
major social displacement.
[''China: Migrants, Students, Taiwan''](_blank)
UC Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
Migration News January 2006
CCP general secretary
The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party () is the Party leader, head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Since 1989, the CCP general secr ...
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, s ...
has ruled since 2012 and has pursued large-scale efforts to reform China's economy
(which has suffered from structural instabilities and slowing growth), and has also reformed the
one-child policy
The term one-child policy () refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. That initiative was part of a much bro ...
and
penal system,
as well as instituting a vast
anti-corruption crackdown. In 2013, China initiated the
Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), formerly known as One Belt One Road ( zh, link=no, 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 150 ...
, a global infrastructure investment project. Since 2017, the Chinese government has been engaged in a
harsh crackdown in Xinjiang, with an estimated one million people, mostly
Uyghurs
The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghur ...
but including other ethnic and religious minorities, in internment camps.
The National People's Congress in 2018 altered the country's constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting the current leader,
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, s ...
, to remain president of China (and general secretary of the CCP) for an unlimited time, earning criticism for creating
dictator
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in times ...
ial governance.
In 2020, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) passed a
national security law in Hong Kong that gave the
Hong Kong government
The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government, refers to the Executive (government), executive authorities of Hong Kong Special administrative regions of China, ...
wide-ranging tools to crack down on dissent.
The global
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
originated in
Wuhan
Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province in the China, People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the List of cities in China ...
and was first identified from an outbreak in December 2019. The
Chinese government response has included a
zero-COVID
Zero-COVID, also known as COVID-Zero and "Find, Test, Trace, Isolate, and Support" (FTTIS), is a public health policy that has been implemented by some countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.Anna Llupià, Rodríguez-Giralt, Anna Fité, Lola Ála ...
strategy, making it one of few countries to pursue this approach. The country's economy continued to broaden recovery from the recession during the pandemic, with stable job creation and record international trade growth, although retail consumption was still slower than predicted. These Zero-COVID strategies have led to a variety of
protests across China against them starting in November 2022.
Geography
China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from the
Gobi
The Gobi Desert (Chinese: 戈壁 (沙漠), Mongolian: Говь (ᠭᠣᠪᠢ)) () is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, and is the sixth largest desert in the world.
Geography
The Gobi measures from southwest to northeast an ...
and
Taklamakan Desert
The Taklimakan or Taklamakan Desert (; zh, s=塔克拉玛干沙漠, p=Tǎkèlāmǎgān Shāmò, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Такәламаган Шамә; ug, تەكلىماكان قۇملۇقى, Täklimakan qumluqi; also spelled Taklimakan and Te ...
s in the arid north to the
subtropical
The subtropical zones or subtropics are geographical zone, geographical and Köppen climate classification, climate zones to the Northern Hemisphere, north and Southern Hemisphere, south of the tropics. Geographically part of the Geographical z ...
forests in the wetter south. The
Himalaya
The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...
,
Karakoram
The Karakoram is a mountain range in Kashmir region spanning the borders of Pakistan, China, and India, with the northwest extremity of the range extending to Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Most of the Karakoram mountain range falls under the ...
,
Pamir and
Tian Shan
The Tian Shan,, , otk, 𐰴𐰣 𐱅𐰭𐰼𐰃, , tr, Tanrı Dağı, mn, Тэнгэр уул, , ug, تەڭرىتاغ, , , kk, Тәңіртауы / Алатау, , , ky, Теңир-Тоо / Ала-Тоо, , , uz, Tyan-Shan / Tangritog‘ ...
mountain ranges separate China from much of
South
South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...
and
Central Asia
Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
. The
Yangtze
The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...
and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, respectively, run from the
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...
to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
is long and is bounded by the
Bohai,
Yellow
Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In the R ...
,
East China
East China () is a geographical and a loosely defined cultural region that covers the eastern coastal area of China.
A concept abolished in 1978, for economical purposes the region was defined from 1949 to 1961 by the Chinese Central Governme ...
and
South China
South China () is a geographical and cultural region that covers the southernmost part of China. Its precise meaning varies with context. A notable feature of South China in comparison to the rest of China is that most of its citizens are not n ...
seas. China connects through the Kazakh border to the
Eurasian Steppe
The Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Transnistri ...
which has been an artery of communication between East and West since the Neolithic through the
Steppe Route
The Steppe Route was an ancient overland route through the Eurasian Steppe that was an active precursor of the Silk Road. Silk and horses were traded as key commodities; secondary trade included furs, weapons, musical instruments, precious stones ...
– the ancestor of the terrestrial
Silk Road
The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...
(s).
The territory of China lies between
latitude
In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...
s
18° and
54° N, and
longitude
Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek letter l ...
s
73° and
135° E. The
geographical center of China is marked by the Center of the Country Monument at . China's landscapes vary significantly across its vast territory. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, there are extensive and densely populated
alluvial plains
An alluvial plain is a largely flat landform created by the deposition of sediment over a long period of time by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A floodplain is part of the process, being the smal ...
, while on the edges of the Inner Mongolian plateau in the north, broad
grassland
A grassland is an area where the vegetation is dominated by grasses (Poaceae). However, sedge (Cyperaceae) and rush (Juncaceae) can also be found along with variable proportions of legumes, like clover, and other herbs. Grasslands occur natur ...
s predominate. Southern China is dominated by hills and low mountain ranges, while the central-east hosts the
deltas
A river delta is a landform shaped like a triangle, created by deposition of sediment that is carried by a river and enters slower-moving or stagnant water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, or (more rarel ...
of China's two major rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. Other major rivers include the
Xi,
Mekong
The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's List of rivers by length, twelfth longest river and List of longest rivers of Asia, the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , ...
,
Brahmaputra
The Brahmaputra is a trans-boundary river which flows through Tibet, northeast India, and Bangladesh. It is also known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan, the Siang/Dihang River in Arunachali, Luit in Assamese, and Jamuna River in Bangla. It ...
and
Amur
The Amur (russian: река́ Аму́р, ), or Heilong Jiang (, "Black Dragon River", ), is the world's List of longest rivers, tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeast China, Northeastern China (Inne ...
. To the west sit major mountain ranges, most notably the Himalayas. High
plateau
In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ha ...
s feature among the more arid landscapes of the north, such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. The world's highest point,
Mount Everest
Mount Everest (; Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation (snow heig ...
(8,848 m), lies on the Sino-Nepalese border. The country's lowest point, and the world's third-lowest, is the dried lake bed of
Ayding Lake (−154 m) in the
Turpan Depression.
Climate
China's climate is mainly dominated by
dry season
The dry season is a yearly period of low rainfall, especially in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which moves from the northern to the southern tropics and back over the course of the year. The te ...
s and wet
monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist.
A major environmental issue in China is the continued
expansion of its deserts, particularly the Gobi Desert. Although barrier tree lines planted since the 1970s have reduced the frequency of
sandstorms
A dust storm, also called a sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transporte ...
, prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices have resulted in
dust storms plaguing northern China each spring, which then spread to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Korea. China's environmental watchdog,
SEPA, stated in 2007 that China is losing per year to desertification. Water quality,
erosion
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...
, and
pollution control have become important issues in China's relations with other countries. Melting
glaciers
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...
in the Himalayas could potentially lead to
water shortage
Water scarcity (closely related to water stress or water crisis) is the lack of fresh water resources to meet the standard water demand. There are two types of water scarcity: physical or economic water scarcity. Physical water scarcity is where ...
s for hundreds of millions of people.
According to academics, in order to limit
climate change in China
Climate change is having major effects on the Chinese economy, society and the environment. China is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, through an energy infrastructure heavily focused on coal. Other industries, such as a burgeoning constr ...
to electricity generation from
coal in China
China is the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world. It is also the largest user of coal-generated electricity, with over a thousand coal-fired power stations. The share of coal in the energy mix declined during the 2010s, falli ...
without
carbon capture must be phased out by 2045. Official government statistics about Chinese agricultural productivity are considered unreliable, due to exaggeration of production at subsidiary government levels. Much of China has a climate very suitable for agriculture and the country has been the world's largest producer of
rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima
''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...
, wheat, tomatoes, eggplant, grapes, watermelon, spinach, and many other crops.
Biodiversity
China is one of 17
megadiverse countries,
lying in two of the world's major
biogeographic realm
A biogeographic realm or ecozone is the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms. They are subdivided into bioregions, which are further subdivided into ecoregions.
De ...
s: the
Palearctic
The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa.
The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...
and the
Indomalayan. By one measure, China has over 34,687 species of animals and vascular plants, making it the third-most biodiverse country in the world, after
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
. The country signed the
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
Convention on Biological Diversity on 11 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 5 January 1993. It later produced a Biodiversity action plan, National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, with one revision that was received by the convention on 21 September 2010.
China is home to at least 551 species of List of mammals of China, mammals (the third-highest such number in the world), 1,221 species of birds (eighth), 424 species of reptiles (seventh) and 333 species of amphibians (seventh). Wildlife in China shares habitat with, and bears acute pressure from, the world's largest population of humans. At least 840 List of endangered and protected species of China, animal species are threatened, vulnerable or in danger of local extinction in China, due mainly to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution and poaching for food, fur and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine. Endangered wildlife is protected by law, and , the country has over 2,349 Protected areas of China, nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area. Most wild animals have been eliminated from the core agricultural regions of east and central China, but they have fared better in the mountainous south and west. The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.
China has over 32,000 species of vascular plants, and is home to a variety of forest types. Cold coniferous forests predominate in the north of the country, supporting animal species such as moose and Asian black bear, along with over 120 bird species.
The understory of moist conifer forests may contain thickets of bamboo. In higher Montane ecosystems, montane stands of juniper and taxus, yew, the bamboo is replaced by rhododendrons. Subtropical forests, which are predominate in central and southern China, support a high density of plant species including numerous rare endemics. Tropical and seasonal rainforests, though confined to Yunnan and Hainan Island, contain a quarter of all the animal and plant species found in China.
China has over 10,000 recorded species of fungi, and of them, nearly 6,000 are higher fungi.
Environment
In the early 2000s, China has suffered from environmental issues in China, environmental deterioration and pollution due to its rapid pace of industrialization.
While regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, they are poorly enforced, as they are frequently disregarded by local communities and government officials in favor of rapid economic development. China is the country with the second highest death toll because of air pollution, after Environmental issues in India, India. There are approximately 1 million deaths caused by exposure to ambient air pollution. Although China ranks as the highest List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions, CO
2 emitting country in the world, it only emits 8 tons of List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita, CO
2 per capita, significantly lower than developed countries such as the United States (16.1), Australia (16.8) and South Korea (13.6).
In recent years, China has clamped down on pollution. In March 2014, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping "declared war" on pollution during the opening of the National People's Congress.
After extensive debate lasting nearly two years, the parliament approved a new environmental law in April. The new law empowers environmental enforcement agencies with great punitive power and large fines for offenders, defines areas which require extra protection, and gives independent environmental groups more ability to operate in the country. In 2020, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping announced that China aims to peak emissions before 2030 and go carbon-neutral by 2060 in accordance with the Paris climate accord. According to Climate Action Tracker, if accomplished it would lower the expected rise in global temperature by 0.2 – 0.3 degrees – "the biggest single reduction ever estimated by the Climate Action Tracker". In September 2021 Xi Jinping announced that China will not build "coal-fired power projects abroad". The decision can be "pivotal" in reducing emissions. The
Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), formerly known as One Belt One Road ( zh, link=no, 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 150 ...
did not include financing such projects already in the first half of 2021.
The country also had significant water pollution problems: 8.2% of China's rivers had been polluted by industrial and agricultural waste in 2019. China had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.14/10, ranking it 53rd globally out of 172 countries.
In 2020, a sweeping law was passed by the Chinese government to protect the ecology of the Yangtze River. The new laws include strengthening ecological protection rules for hydropower projects along the river, banning chemical plants within 1 kilometer of the river, relocating polluting industries, severely restricting sand mining as well as a complete fishing ban on all the natural waterways of the river, including all its major tributaries and lakes.
China is also the world's leading investor in renewable energy and Renewable energy commercialization, its commercialization, with US$, $52 billion invested in 2011 alone;
it is a major manufacturer of renewable energy technologies and invests heavily in local-scale renewable energy projects.
By 2015, over 24% of China's energy was derived from renewable sources, while most notably from hydroelectric power: a total installed capacity of 197 Gigawatt, GW makes China the Hydroelectricity#World hydroelectric capacity, largest hydroelectric power producer in the world.
China also has the largest power capacity of Solar power by country, installed solar photovoltaics system and Wind power by country, wind power system in the world.
[2016 Snapshot of Global Photovoltaic Markets](_blank)
p.7, International Energy Agency, 2017 Greenhouse gas emissions by China are the List of countries by greenhouse gas emissions, world's largest,
as is renewable energy in China. Despite its emphasis on renewables, China remains deeply connected to global oil markets and next to India, has been the largest importer of Russian crude oil in 2022.
Political geography
The People's Republic of China is the List of countries and dependencies by area, second-largest country in the world by land area after
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. China's total area is generally stated as being approximately . Specific area figures range from according to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', to according to the ''UN Demographic Yearbook'',
and the ''CIA World Factbook''.
China has the List of land border lengths, longest combined land border in the world, measuring and its Coastline of China, coastline covers approximately from the mouth of the Yalu River (Amnok River) to the Gulf of Tonkin.
China Borders of China, borders 14 nations and covers the bulk of East Asia, bordering
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
, Laos, and Myanmar in Southeast Asia;
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in South Asia; Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Russia, Mongolia, and North Korea in Inner Asia and Northeast Asia. It is narrowly separated from Bangladesh and Thailand to the southwest and south, and has several maritime neighbors such as Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Politics
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Chinese constitution states that the People's Republic of China "is a socialist state governed by a people's democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state institutions "shall practice the principle of democratic centralism."
The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states Ideology of the Communist Party of China, governed by a communist party. The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as Authoritarianism, authoritarian and Corporatism, corporatist, with amongst the heaviest restrictions worldwide in many areas, most notably against Internet censorship in China, free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, reproductive rights, the right to have children, NGO, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion.
Although the Chinese Communist Party describes China as a "socialist consultative democracy", the country is commonly described as an authoritarian one-party state, one-party surveillance state and a dictatorship. China has consistently been ranked amongst the lowest as an "authoritarian regime" by the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index, ranking at 148th out of 167 countries in 2021. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as a "Democracy in China, whole-process people's democracy" "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.
Political concerns in China include the growing gap between rich and poor and government corruption. Nonetheless, the level of public support for the government and its management of the nation is high, with 80–95% of Chinese citizens expressing satisfaction with the central government, according to a 2011 Harvard University survey. A 2020 survey from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research also had most Chinese expressing satisfaction with the government on information dissemination and delivery of daily necessities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chinese Communist Party
The main body of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, Chinese constitution declares that "the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)."
China is a one-party
Marxist–Leninist
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialect ...
state, wherein the
CCP general secretary
The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party () is the Party leader, head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Since 1989, the CCP general secr ...
(Leader of the Chinese Communist Party, party leader) holds ultimate power and authority over state and government and serves as the informal paramount leader. The current general secretary is
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, s ...
, who took office on 15 November 2012, and was re-elected on 25 October 2017. According to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, CCP constitution, its highest body is the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, National Congress held every five years.
The National Congress elects the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Central Committee, who then elects the party's Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Politburo Standing Committee and general secretary, the top leadership of the country.
At the local level, the Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary, secretary of the CCP committee of a subdivision outranks the local government level; CCP committee secretary of a provincial division outranks the governor while the CCP committee secretary of a city outranks the mayor.
Since both the CCP and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) promote according to seniority, it is possible to discern distinct generations of Chinese leadership.
[The landmark study of military generations and factions is William Whitson's ''The Chinese High Command,'' Praeger, 1973] In official discourse, each group of leadership is identified with a distinct extension of the ideology of the party. Historians have studied various periods in the development of the government of the People's Republic of China by reference to these "generations".
Government
The nearly 3,000 member National People's Congress (NPC) is constitutionally the "highest state organ of power",
though it has been also described as a "rubber stamp (politics), rubber stamp" body.
The NPC meets annually, while the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, NPC Standing Committee, around 150 member body elected from NPC delegates, meets every couple of months.
In what China calls the "people's congress system", local people's congresses at the lowest level are officially directly elected, with all the higher-level people's congresses up to the NPC being elected by the level one below.
However, the elections are not pluralistic, with nominations at all levels being controlled by the CCP.
The NPC is dominated by the CCP, with another List of political parties in China, eight minor parties having nominal representation in the condition of upholding CCP leadership.
The President of the People's Republic of China, president is the ceremonial head of state, elected by the NPC. The incumbent president is Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the CCP and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him China's Paramount leader (China), paramount leader. The Premier of the People's Republic of China, premier is the head of government, with Li Keqiang being the incumbent premier. The premier is officially nominated by the president and then elected by the NPC, and has generally been either the second or third-ranking member of the PSC. The premier presides over the State Council of the People's Republic of China, State Council, China's cabinet, composed of four vice premiers and the heads of ministries and commissions.
The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is a political advisory body that is critical in China's "United Front (China), united front" system, which aims to gather non-CCP voices to support the CCP. Similar to the people's congresses, CPPCC's exist at various division, with the National Committee of the CPPCC being chaired by Wang Yang (politician), Wang Yang, one of China's top leaders.
Administrative divisions
The People's Republic of China is constitutionally a unitary state officially divided into 23 Provinces of China, provinces, five Autonomous regions of China, autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), and four Direct-controlled municipality of China, municipalities—collectively referred to as "
mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
"—as well as the
special administrative regions
The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of the provincial-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Co ...
(SARs) of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
. The PRC considers Taiwan to be Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China, its 23rd province, although it is governed by the Republic of China (ROC), which claims to be the legitimate representative of China and its territory, though it has downplayed this claim since its democratization. Geographically, all 31 provincial divisions of mainland China can be grouped into six regions: North China, Northeast China, East China, South Central China, Southwest China, and Northwest China.
Foreign relations
The PRC has List of diplomatic missions in China, diplomatic relations with 175 countries and maintains List of diplomatic missions of the People's Republic of China, embassies in 162. In 2019, China had the largest diplomatic network in the world.
Its legitimacy (political), legitimacy is disputed by the Republic of China and a few other countries; it is thus the largest and most populous List of states with limited recognition, state with limited recognition, with a population of more than 1.4 billion. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
.
[Chang, Eddy (22 August 2004)]
''Perseverance will pay off at the UN''
, ''The Taipei Times''. China was also a former member and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, and still considers itself an advocate for developing countries.
Along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, China is a member of the
BRICS
BRICS is an acronym for five leading emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The first four were initially grouped as "BRIC" (or "the BRICs") in 2001 by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill, who coined the ter ...
group of emerging major economies and hosted the group's 2011 BRICS summit, third official summit at Sanya,
Hainan
Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...
in April 2011.
Under the One China, One-China principle, Beijing has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to Taiwan and severs official ties with the government of the Republic of China. Chinese officials have protested on numerous occasions when foreign countries have made diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, especially in the matter of armament sales.
Much of current Chinese foreign policy is reportedly based on Premier Zhou Enlai's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and is also driven by the concept of "harmony without uniformity", which encourages diplomatic relations between states despite ideological differences.
This policy may have led China to support states that are rogue state, regarded as dangerous or repressive by Western nations, such as China–Zimbabwe relations, Zimbabwe, China–North Korea relations, North Korea and China–Iran relations, Iran. China has a Sino-Russian relations since 1991, close economic and military relationship with Russia, and the two states often vote in unison in the
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
.
Trade relations
China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013 as measured by the sum of imports and exports, as well as the world's largest commodity importer. comprising roughly 45% of maritime's Shipping markets, dry-bulk market.
By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 other countries. China is the largest trading partner for the ASEAN nations, with a total trade value of $345.8 billion in 2015 accounting for 15.2% of ASEAN's total trade. ASEAN is also China's largest trading partner. In 2020, China became the largest trading partner of the European Union for goods, with the total value of goods trade reaching nearly $700 billion.
China, along with ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, is a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free-trade area covering 30% of the world's population and economic output. China became a member of the
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation
in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...
(WTO) in 2001. In 2004, it proposed an entirely new
East Asia Summit
The East Asia Summit (EAS) is a regional forum held annually by leaders of, initially, 16 countries in the East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian and Oceanian regions, based on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations#ASEAN Plus Three and A ...
(EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues.
[Dillon, Dana; and Tkacik, John, Jr.]
''China's Quest for Asia''
''Policy Review''. December 2005 and January 2006. Issue No. 134. Retrieved 22 April 2006. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005.
China has had a long and complex trade relationship with the United States. In 2000, the United States Congress approved "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, allowing Chinese exports in at the same low tariffs as goods from most other countries. China has a significant trade surplus with the United States, its most important export market. Economists have argued that the renminbi is undervalued, due to currency intervention from the Chinese government, giving China an unfair trade advantage. In August 2019, the United States Department of the Treasury designated China as a "currency manipulator", later reversing the decision in January 2020. The US and other foreign governments have also alleged that China doesn't respect intellectual property (IP) rights and Allegations of intellectual property theft by China, steals IP through espionage operations, with the United States Department of Justice, US Department of Justice saying that 80% of all the prosecutions related to economic espionage it brings were about conduct to benefit the Chinese state.
Since the turn of the century, China has followed a policy of Involvement of the People's Republic of China in Africa, engaging with African nations for trade and bilateral co-operation; in 2019, Sino-African trade totalled $208 billion, having grown 20 times over two decades. According to Madison Condon "China finances more infrastructure projects in Africa than the World Bank and provides billions of dollars in low-interest loans to the continent's emerging economies." China maintains extensive and highly diversified trade links with the European Union.
China has furthermore strengthened its trade ties with major South American economies, and is the largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, and several others.
China's
Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), formerly known as One Belt One Road ( zh, link=no, 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 150 ...
has expanded significantly over the last six years and, as of April 2020, includes 138 countries and 30 international organizations. In addition to intensifying foreign policy relations, the focus here is particularly on building efficient transport routes. The focus is particularly on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, maritime Silk Road with its connections to East Africa and Europe and there are Chinese investments or related declarations of intent at numerous ports such as Gwadar, Kuantan, Hambantota, Piraeus and Trieste. However many of these loans made under the Belt and Road program are unsustainable and China has faced a number of calls for debt relief from debtor nations.
Territorial disputes
= Taiwan
=
Ever since its establishment after the Chinese Civil War, the PRC has claimed Free area of the Republic of China, the territories governed by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity today commonly known as Taiwan, as a part of its territory. It regards the island of Taiwan as its Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China, Taiwan Province, Kinmen and Matsu Islands, Matsu as a part of Fujian Province and islands the ROC controls in the South China Sea as a part of Hainan Province and Guangdong Province. These claims are controversial because of the complicated
Cross-Strait relations, with the PRC treating the One-China Principle as one of its most important diplomatic principles.
= Land border disputes
=
China has resolved its land borders with 12 out of 14 neighboring countries, having pursued substantial compromises in most of them. As of 2022, China currently has a disputed land border with
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
and Bhutan.
= Maritime border disputes
=
China is additionally involved in maritime disputes with multiple countries over the ownership of several small islands in the East and South China Seas, such as Socotra Rock, the Senkaku Islands dispute, Senkaku Islands and the entirety of South China Sea Islands, along with the East China Sea EEZ disputes, EEZ disputes over East China Sea.
Sociopolitical issues and human rights
China uses a massive espionage network of cameras, facial recognition software, sensors, and surveillance of personal technology as a means of social control of persons living in the country. The Democracy movements of China, Chinese democracy movement, social activists, and some members of the CCP believe in the need for social and political reform. While economic and social controls have been significantly relaxed in China since the 1970s, political freedom is still tightly restricted. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that the "fundamental rights" of citizens include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, universal suffrage, and property, property rights. However, in practice, these provisions do not afford significant protection against criminal prosecution by the state.
Although some criticisms of government policies and the ruling CCP are tolerated, censorship of political speech and information, most notably on the Internet,
are routinely used to prevent collective action.
A number of foreign governments, foreign press agencies, and non-governmental organizations have criticized Human rights in China, China's human rights record, alleging widespread civil rights violations such as detention without trial, forced abortions, forced confessions, torture, restrictions of fundamental rights,
and Capital punishment in the People's Republic of China, excessive use of the death penalty.
The government suppresses popular protests and demonstrations that it considers a potential threat to "social stability", as was the case with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
China is regularly accused of large-scale repression and human rights abuses in Human rights in Tibet, Tibet and Uyghur genocide, Xinjiang, including violent police crackdowns and religious suppression. In Xinjiang, At least one million
Uyghurs
The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghur ...
and other ethnic and religion minorities have been detained in Xinjiang internment camps, internment camps, officially termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers", aimed at changing the political thinking of detainees, their identities, and their religious beliefs.
According to the United States Department of State, U.S. Department of State, actions including political indoctrination, torture, Physical abuse, physical and Psychological abuse, psychological abuse, Compulsory sterilization, forced sterilization, sexual abuse, and Unfree labour, forced labor are common in these facilities. The state has also sought to control offshore reporting of tensions in Xinjiang, intimidating foreign-based reporters by detaining their family members. According to a 2020 report, China's treatment of Uyghurs meets the UN definition of genocide, and several groups called for a UN investigation. Several countries have recognized China's actions in Xinjiang as a genocide.
Global studies from Pew Research Center in 2014 and 2017 ranked the Chinese government's restrictions on religion as among the highest in the world, despite low to moderate rankings for religious-related social hostilities in the country. The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern Slavery in China, slavery", or 0.25% of the population, including victims of human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, child labor, and state-imposed forced labor. The state-imposed forced system was formally abolished in 2013, but it is not clear to which extent its various practices have stopped. The Chinese penal system includes labor prison factories, detention centers, and re-education camps, collectively known as ''laogai'' ("reform through labor"). The Laogai Research Foundation in the United States estimated that there were over a thousand slave labor prisons and camps in China.
In 2019, a study called for the mass retraction of more than 400 scientific papers on Organ transplantation in China, organ transplantation, because of fears the organs were obtained unethically from Chinese prisoners. While the government says 10,000 transplants occur each year, a report by the Falun Gong-linked IETAC alleged that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year and claimed that this gap was being made up by executed prisoners of conscience.
Military
With nearly 2.2 million active troops, the
People's Liberation Army
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the principal military force of the People's Republic of China and the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The PLA consists of five service branches: the Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, ...
(PLA) is the largest standing military force in the world.
China has the second-largest military reserve force, only behind North Korea.
The PLA is considered one of the world's most powerful militaries, and has rapidly modernized in the recent decades. The PLA consists of the People's Liberation Army Ground Force, Ground Force (PLAGF), the People's Liberation Army Navy, Navy (PLAN), the People's Liberation Army Air Force, Air Force (PLAAF), the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, Rocket Force (PLARF) and the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force, Strategic Support Force (PLASSF). The PLA holds the world's China and weapons of mass destruction, third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the world's second-largest navy by tonnage. According to the Chinese government, military budget for 2022 totalled US$230 billion (1.45 trillion Yuan), the List of countries by military expenditures, second-largest in the world. However, SIPRI had previously estimated in 2014 that the country's total spending could be as high as 50% more than its publicized number that year.
The PLA is commanded by the Central Military Commission (China), Central Military Commission (CMC) of the party and the state; though officially two separate organizations, the two CMCs have identical membership except during leadership transition periods and effectively function as one organization. The Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the CMC is the commander-in-chief of the PLA, with the officeholder also generally being the CCP general secretary, making them the paramount leader of China.
Economy
Since 2010, China has had List of countries by GDP (nominal), the world's second-largest economy in terms of nominal GDP, totaling approximately US$18 trillion (114.3 trillion Yuan) as of 2021.
In terms of
purchasing power parity
Purchasing power parity (PPP) is the measurement of prices in different countries that uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currency, currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of ...
(GDP PPP), China's economy has been the largest in the world since 2017, according to the World Bank. As of 2021, China accounts for 18% of the world economy by GDP nominal.
China is one of the world's List of countries by real GDP growth rate, fastest-growing major economies, with its economic growth having been consistently above 6% since the introduction of Chinese economic reform, economic reforms in 1978. China is also the world's List of countries by exports, largest exporter and
second-largest importer of goods.
Of the world's Fortune Global 500, 500 largest companies, 145 are headquartered in China.
China had one of the Economic history of China before 1912, largest economies in the world for most of the Pax Sinica, past two thousand years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since economic reforms began in 1978, China has developed into a highly diversified economy and one of the most consequential players in international trade. Major sectors of competitive strength include manufacturing, retail, mining, steel, textiles, automobiles, energy generation, green energy, banking, electronics, telecommunications, real estate, e-commerce, and tourism. China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shanghai, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion, as of October 2020. China has four (
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
,
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
,
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
, and Shenzhen) out of the world's top ten most competitive financial centers, which is more than any country in the 2020 Global Financial Centres Index.
By 2035, China's four cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) are projected to be among the global top ten largest cities by nominal GDP according to a report by Oxford Economics.
Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership,
and is considered an example of state capitalism or party-state capitalism.
The state dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industry, heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008.
[John Lee]
"Putting Democracy in China on Hold"
The Center for Independent Studies. 26 July 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2013. In 2018, private enterprises in China accounted for 60% of GDP, 80% of urban employment and 90% of new jobs.
China has been the world's No. 1 manufacturer since 2010, after overtaking the US, which had been No. 1 for the previous hundred years. China has also been No. 2 in high-tech manufacturing since 2012, according to US National Science Foundation. China is the second largest retail market in the world, next to the United States. China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for 40% of the global market share in 2016 and more than 50% of the global market share in 2019. China is the world's leader in electric vehicles, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars (BEV and PHEV) in the world in 2018. China is also the leading producer of batteries for electric vehicles as well as several key raw materials for batteries. China had 174 GW of installed solar capacity by the end of 2018, which amounts to more than 40% of the global solar capacity.
In 2015, IMF included the Chinese Yuan (currency), yuan in its basket of reserve currency. The move legitimised Yuan (currency), yuan as a global reserve currency alongside US dollar, Euro, Pound sterling and yen In 2022, the Chinese yuan was fifth most traded currency by global foreign exchange turnover.
Foreign and some Chinese sources have claimed that official Chinese government statistics overstate China's economic growth.
However, several Western academics and institutions have stated that China's economic growth is higher than indicated by official figures.
Others, such as the Economist Intelligence Unit, state that while there's evidence China's GDP data is "smoothed", they believe that China's nominal and real GDP data are broadly accurate.
China has a large Informal economy of China, informal economy, which arose as a result of the country's economic opening. The informal economy is a source of employment and income for workers, but it is unrecognized and suffers from lower productivity.
Wealth
As of 2020, China was second in the world, after the United States, US, in total number of billionaires and total number of millionaires, with 698 Chinese billionaires and 4.4 million millionaires. In 2019, China overtook the US as the home to the highest number of people who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000, according to the global wealth report by Credit Suisse. According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2020, China is home to five of the world's top ten cities (
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
,
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
,
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country.
China had 85 female billionaires as of January 2021, two-thirds of the global total, and minted 24 new female billionaires in 2020.
However, it ranks behind over 60 countries (out of around 180) in per capita economic output, making it an upper-middle income country. According to the International Monetary Fund, IMF, on a per capita income basis among countries with a large population of over 100 million as of 2021, China ranked 3rd by List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita, GDP per capita (nominal) and 5th by List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita, GDP per capita (PPP). Additionally, its development is highly uneven. Its major cities and coastal areas are far more prosperous compared to rural and interior regions. China brought more people out of extreme poverty than any other country in history—between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million. China reduced the extreme poverty rate—per international standard, it refers to an income of less than $1.90/day—from 88% in 1981 to 1.85% by 2013.
According to the World Bank, the number of Chinese in extreme poverty fell from 756 million to 25 million between 1990 and 2013. The portion of people in China living below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day (2011 Purchasing power parity, PPP) fell to 0.3% in 2018 from 66.3% in 1990. Using the lower-middle income poverty line of $3.20 per day, the portion fell to 2.9% in 2018 from 90.0% in 1990. Using the upper-middle income poverty line of $5.50 per day, the portion fell to 17.0% from 98.3% in 1990.
Economic growth
From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...
,
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CC ...
and the new Chinese leadership began to Economic reform in the People's Republic of China, reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Collective farming, Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient Government-owned corporation, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses.
According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $14.28 trillion by 2019. Between 2010 and 2019, China's contribution to global GDP growth has been 25% to 39%. It is the largest engine of global growth for the world economy, accounting for 25–30% global total expansion since the financial crisis of 2008–2009.
In the early 2010s, China's economic growth rate began to slow amid domestic credit troubles, weakening international demand for Chinese exports and fragility in the global economy. China's GDP was slightly larger than Germany's in 2007; however, by 2017, China's $12.2 trillion-economy became larger than those of Germany, UK, France and Italy combined. In 2018, the IMF reiterated its forecast that China will overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP by 2030. Economists also expect China's middle-class to expand to 600 million people by 2025.
China was the only major economy in the world to grow in 2020, recording a 2.3% growth due to its success in containing the coronavirus within its borders. However, by April 2022, China's debt-to-GDP ratio had grown to 270%.
China in the global economy
China is a member of the World Trade Organization, WTO and is the world's largest trading power, with a total international trade value of US$4.62 trillion in 2018. Foreign exchange reserves of the People's Republic of China, Its foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.1 trillion as of 2019, making its reserves by far the world's largest.
In 2012, China was the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $253 billion.
In 2014, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US64 billion making it the second largest recipient of remittances in the world. China also invests abroad, with a total outward FDI of $62.4 billion in 2012,
and a number of major takeovers of foreign firms by Chinese companies. China is a major owner of US public debt, holding trillions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasury bonds.
["Washington learns to treat China with care"](_blank)
CNNMoney.com. 29 July 2009. China's undervalued exchange rate has caused friction with other major economies,
and it has also been widely criticized for manufacturing large quantities of counterfeit goods.
Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, Chinese authorities sought to actively wean off of its dependence on the U.S. dollar as a result of perceived weaknesses of the international monetary system. To achieve those ends, China took a series of actions to further the internationalization of the Renminbi. In 2008, China established the dim sum bond market and expanded the Cross-Border Trade RMB Settlement Pilot Project, which helps establish pools of offshore RMB liquidity. This was followed with bilateral agreements to settle trades directly in renminbi with Russia, Japan, Australia, Singapore,
the United Kingdom, and Canada. As a result of the rapid internationalization of the renminbi, it became the eighth-most-traded currency in the world, an emerging international reserve currency,
and a component of the IMF's special drawing rights; however, partly due to capital controls that make the renminbi fall short of being a fully convertible currency, it remains far behind the Euro, Dollar and Japanese Yen in international trade volumes.
Class and income inequality
China has had the world's largest middle-class population since 2015, and the middle-class grew to a size of 400 million by 2018. In 2020, a study by the Brookings Institution forecasted that China's middle class will reach 1.2 billion by 2027 (almost 4 times the entire U.S. population today), making up one-fourth of the world's total.
From 1978 to 2018, the average standard of living multiplied by a factor of twenty-six.
Wages in China have grown a lot in the last 40 years—real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007. Per capita incomes have risen significantly – when the PRC was founded in 1949, per capita income in China was one-fifth of the world average; per capita incomes now equal the world average itself.
By 2018, median wages in Chinese cities such as Shanghai were about the same as or higher than the wages in Eastern European countries. China has the world's highest number of billionaires, with nearly 878 as of October 2020, increasing at the rate of roughly five per week.
China has a high level of economic inequality, which has increased in the past few decades. In 2018 China's Gini coefficient was 0.467, according to the World Bank.
Science and technology
Historical
China was a world leader in science and technology until the
Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
. Ancient List of Chinese discoveries, Chinese discoveries and List of Chinese inventions, inventions, such as papermaking, History of typography in East Asia, printing, the
compass
A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with ...
, and
gunpowder
Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). ...
(the
Four Great Inventions
The Four Great Inventions () are inventions from ancient China that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as symbols of ancient China's advanced science and technology. They are the compass, History of gunpowder, ...
), became widespread across East Asia, the Middle East and later Europe. Chinese mathematicians were the first to use negative numbers#History, negative numbers. By the 17th century, the Western hemisphere surpassed China in scientific and technological advancement. The causes of this early modern Great Divergence continue to be debated by scholars.
After repeated Eight-Nation Alliance, military defeats by the European colonial powers and First Sino-Japanese war, Japan in the 19th century, Chinese reformers began promoting modern science and technology as part of the
Self-Strengthening Movement
The Self-Strengthening Movement, also known as the Westernization or Western Affairs Movement (–1895), was a period of radical institutional reforms initiated in China during the late Qing dynasty following the military disasters of the Opium ...
. After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, in which scientific research was part of central planning. After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology were promoted as one of the Four Modernizations, and the Soviet-inspired academic system was gradually reformed.
Modern era
Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, China has made significant investments in scientific research
and is quickly catching up with the US in R&D spending. China officially spent around 2.4% of its GDP on R&D in 2020, totaling to around $377.8 billion. Science and technology are seen as vital for achieving China's economic and political goals, and are held as a source of national pride to a degree sometimes described as "techno-nationalism".
According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received 1.54 million patent applications in 2018, representing nearly half of patent applications worldwide, more than double the US. In 2019, China was No. 1 in international patents application. China was ranked 11th, 3rd in Asia & Oceania region and 2nd for countries with a population of over 100 million in the Global Innovation Index in 2022, it has increased its ranking considerably since 2013, where it was ranked 35th. China ranks first globally in the important indicators, including patents, utility models, trademarks, industrial designs, and creative goods exports and it also has 2 (Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
in the 2nd and 3rd spots respectively) of the global top 5 science and technology clusters, which is more than any other country.
Chinese supercomputers, although built using critical non-domestic components, have been ranked the TOP500, fastest in the world on a few occasions. China has struggled with developing several technologies domestically, including manufacturing of the most advanced semiconductors, and reliable jet engines.
China is developing Education in China, its education system with an emphasis on STEM fields, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); in 2009, China graduated over 10,000 PhD engineers, and as many as 500,000 BSc graduates, more than any other country. China became the world's largest publisher of Academic publishing in China, scientific papers since 2016. Chinese-born academicians have won the Nobel Prize in Physics four times, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Fields Medal once respectively, though most of them conducted their prize-winning research in western nations.
Space program
The Chinese space program started in 1958 with some technology transfers from the Soviet Union and an initial goal of launching China's first artificial satellite in 1959. This was accomplished in 1970 with Dong Fang Hong I, making China the fifth country to do so independently. In 2003, China became the first country in Asia and the third country in the world to independently send humans into space, with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5; , List of Chinese astronauts, sixteen Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women. In 2007, China became the third country to successfully 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test, destroy its own satellite. In 2011, China launched its first space station testbed, Tiangong-1. In 2013, China successfully landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu (rover), Yutu rover onto the lunar surface. In 2016, the first Quantum Experiments at Space Scale, quantum science satellite was launched in partnership with Austria dedicated to testing the fundamentals of quantum communication in space. In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the Far side of the Moon. In 2020, the first experimental 6G (network), 6G test satellite was launched and Chang'e 5 successfully returned moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently after the United States and the Soviet Union. In 2021, China became the second nation in history to independently land a Zhurong (rover), rover (Zhurong) on Mars, joining the United States.
China constructed its own modular space station, the Tiangong space station, ''Tiangong'', in low Earth orbit. The space station was completed on 3 November 2022 with the launch and transpositioning of the last module. On 29 November 2022, China performed its first in-orbit crew handover aboard the ''Tiangong'' marking the beginning of the country's permanent presence in space.
Infrastructure
After a decades-long infrastructural boom, China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructural projects: China has the High-speed rail by country, world's largest bullet train network, the List of supertall skyscrapers, most supertall skyscrapers in the world, the world's largest power plant (the Three Gorges Dam), the largest energy generation capacity in the world, a BeiDou, global satellite navigation system with the largest number of satellites in the world, and has initiated the
Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, or B&R), formerly known as One Belt One Road ( zh, link=no, 一带一路) or OBOR for short, is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in nearly 150 ...
, a large global infrastructure building initiative with funding on the order of $50–100 billion per year. The Belt and Road Initiative could be one of the largest development plans in modern history.
Telecommunications
China is the largest telecom market in the world and currently has the List of countries by number of mobile phones in use, largest number of active cellphones of any country in the world, with over 1.5 billion subscribers, as of 2018. It also has the world's largest number of List of countries by number of Internet users, internet and List of countries by number of broadband Internet users, broadband users, with over 800 million Internet users —equivalent to around 60% of its population—and almost all of them being mobile as well. By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total. China is making rapid advances in 5G—by late 2018, China had started large-scale and commercial 5G trials.
China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, are the three large providers of mobile and internet in China. China Telecom alone served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile, the largest of them all, had 925 million users, as of 2018. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China.
Several Chinese telecommunications companies, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have been accused of spying for the Chinese military.
China has developed its own satellite navigation system, dubbed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, Beidou, which began offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012
as well as global services by the end of 2018. Upon the completion of the 35th Beidou satellite, which was launched into orbit on 23 June 2020, Beidou followed Global Positioning System, GPS and GLONASS as the third completed global navigation satellite in the world.
Transport
Since the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the creation of a network of China National Highways, national highways and Expressways of China, expressways. In 2018, Expressways of China, China's highways had reached a total length of , making it the List of countries by road network size, longest highway system in the world. China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both auto sales and List of countries by motor vehicle production, production. A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise in traffic accidents, though the number of fatalities in traffic accidents fell by 20% from 2007 to 2017. In urban areas, bicycles remain a common mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles – , there are approximately 470 million bicycles in China.
Rail transport in China, China's railways, which are China Railway Corporation, state-owned, are among Rail usage statistics by country, the busiest in the world, handling a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on only 6 percent of the world's tracks in 2006. As of 2017, the country had of railways, the List of countries by rail transport network size, second longest network in the world.
The railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the Chunyun, world's largest annual human migration takes place.
China's High-speed rail in China, high-speed rail (HSR) system started construction in the early 2000s. By the end of 2020, High-speed rail in China, high speed rail in China had reached of dedicated lines alone, making it the High-speed rail by country, longest HSR network in the world. Services on the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway, Beijing–Shanghai, Beijing–Tianjin intercity railway, Beijing–Tianjin, and Chengdu–Chongqing intercity railway, Chengdu–Chongqing Lines reach up to , making them the fastest conventional high speed railway services in the world. With an annual ridership of over 2.29 billion passengers in 2019 it is the world's busiest. The network includes the Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong High-Speed Railway, Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in the world, and the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which has List of longest bridges in the world, three of longest railroad bridges in the world. The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches , is the fastest commercial train service in the world.
Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated. , 44 Chinese cities have Urban rail transit in China, urban mass transit systems in operation and 39 more have metro systems approved. As of 2020, China boasts the five longest List of metro systems, metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai Metro, Shanghai, Beijing Subway, Beijing, Guangzhou Metro, Guangzhou, Chengdu Metro, Chengdu and Shenzhen Metro, Shenzhen being the largest.
There were List of airports in China, approximately 229 airports in 2017, with around 240 planned by 2020. China has over 2,000 List of ports in China, river and seaports, about 130 of which are open to foreign shipping. In 2017, the Ports of Port of Shanghai, Shanghai, Port of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Port of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Port of Guangzhou, Guangzhou, Port of Qingdao, Qingdao and Port of Tianjin, Tianjin ranked in the Top 10 in the world List of world's busiest container ports, in container traffic and List of world's busiest container ports, cargo tonnage.
Water supply and sanitation
Water supply and sanitation infrastructure in China is facing challenges such as rapid urbanization, as well as Water resources of China, water scarcity, contamination, and pollution.
According to data presented by the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF in 2015, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation. The ongoing South–North Water Transfer Project intends to abate water shortage in the north.
Demographics
The 2020 Chinese census, national census of 2020 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as approximately 1,411,778,724. According to the 2020 census, about 17.95% of the population were 14 years old or younger, 63.35% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 18.7% were over 60 years old.
The population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%. China used to make up much of the world's poor; now it makes up much of the world's middle-class. Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has Poverty in China, pulled hundreds of millions—800 million, to be more precise—of its people out of poverty since 1978. By 2013, less than 2% of the Chinese population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.9 per day, down from 88% in 1981.
From 2009 to 2018, the unemployment rate in China has averaged about 4%.
Given concerns about population growth, China implemented a two-child limit during the 1970s, and, in 1979, began to advocate for an even stricter limit of one child per family. Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, given the unpopularity of the strict limits, China began to allow some major exemptions, particularly in rural areas, resulting in what was actually a "1.5"-child policy from the mid-1980s to 2015 (ethnic minorities were also exempt from one child limits). The next major loosening of the policy was enacted in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy. A three-child policy was announced on 31 May 2021, due to