China

Full name of country: People's Republic of China

Region: East & Southeast Asia

Official language: Standard Chinese or Mandarin (Zhuang, Yue, Mongolian, Uighur, Kyrgyz, and Tibetan are recognized as official regional languages)

Population: 1,416,043,270 (2024 est.)

Nationality: Chinese (singular and plural) (noun), Chinese (adjective)

Land area: 9,326,410 sq km (3,600,946 sq miles)

Water area: 270,550 sq km (104,460 sq miles)

Capital: Beijing

National anthem: “Yiyongjun Jinxingqu” (The March of the Volunteers), by Tian Han/Nie Er

National holiday: anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, October 1 (1949)

Population growth: 0.23% (2024 est.)

Time zone: UTC +8

Flag: The flag of China is red. In the upper left corner, a large golden star sits with four smaller stars to its right. The red color represents China’s communist revolution, the large star represents the Communist Party of China, and the four smaller stars represent China’s four social classes: the peasants, the working class, the urban bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie.

Independence: October 1, 1949 (People's Republic of China established); notable earlier dates: 221 BCE (unification under the Qin Dynasty); January 1, 1912 (Qing Dynasty replaced by the Republic of China)

Government type: Communist state

Suffrage: universal for those eighteen years of age

Legal system: civil law influenced by Soviet and continental European civil law systems; legislature retains power to interpret statutes

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is in East Asia along the East China, Yellow, and South China Seas. It is bordered by Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan to the north; North Korea to the northeast; Laos, Vietnam, Bhutan, and Myanmar to the south; India and Nepal to the southwest; and Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to the west.

Ancient China was one of the most advanced and powerful cultures in world history. Contemporary China is a developing world power known for its huge population and rapid economic expansion.

Note: unless otherwise indicated, statistical data in this article is sourced from the CIA World Factbook, as cited in the bibliography.

People and Culture

Population: China is the second-most populous country in the world, according to the United Nations, and is officially home to more than 1.41 billion people (2024 est.). China had long been the world's most populous country until it was overtaken by India in 2023. Over one-sixth of the planet’s human inhabitants live in China.

The Han ethnic group made up 91.1 percent of the population in 2021. The Zhuang are the largest minority group, and smaller ethnic groups include the Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uighur (also spelled Uyghur), Yi, Tujia, Tibetans, and Mongols, among others.

The Han, Manchu, and Hui speak Mandarin Chinese. Other dialects and languages include Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghaiese), Minbei (Fuzhou), and Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, and minority languages. Yue is an official language in the province of Guangdong. The five autonomous regions of China also recognize official languages other than Mandarin. Zhuang is the official language in the autonomous region of Guangxi Zhuang, Mongolian is official in Nei Mongol, Uighur and Kyrgyz are official in Xinjiang, and Tibetan is official in Xizang (Tibet).

Because of the government’s official support of atheism, accurate statistics on religious affiliation in China are difficult to obtain. However, the country has tens of millions of practitioners of Islam, different Christian denominations, and Buddhism. Smaller groups, such as Falun Gong and practitioners of folk religions, are also present. Folk religion in China can include elements of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

Some of China's religious minorities have faced varying degrees of government repression. For example, the Chinese government's repression of the country's Muslim Uyghur minority, concentrated in the Xinjiang region, has included the imprisonment of many Uyghurs in concentration camps and efforts to suppress Uyghur religion and culture. Many international critics have accused China of committing genocide against this group.

Since 1950, there has been a massive migration from China’s rural areas to its cities. In 2023, 64.6 percent of the country’s population lived in urban areas, with an estimated 1.78 percent annual rate of change between 2020 and 2025. These figures do not include Hong Kong or Macau.

Most migration has been to China’s bustling southeastern coastline. By the early 2020s more than one hundred cities in China had populations of more than one million. Shanghai is the largest city, followed by the capital, Beijing. Other major urban areas include Chongqing, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Shenzhen.

China was ranked 74th out of 191 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index in 2021. Although the nation has attained high human development overall, the rural population often lives at near-subsistence levels.

Indigenous People: China is home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations. The country claims the first fossil record of Homo erectus, the 1.7 million-year-old Yuanmou Man. It is believed that Homo sapiens (Latin for “wise man” or “knowing man”) arrived in China from Africa around 65,000 years ago. Recorded evidence of various tribal civilizations in China dates from 5,000 to 8,000 years ago.

In the late third century BCE, the Qin dynasty united many of China’s ancient regional powers under the first Chinese empire and built the Great Wall of China. The English name “China” is believed to derive from the name “Qin.”

Chinese civilization made some of its greatest advances during the rule of the Han dynasty, which lasted approximately 400 years, beginning in 202 BCE.

Education: During the 1960s, China’s communist government closed most schools. In the 1980s, leader Deng Xiaoping made education a much greater priority. The 1986 Compulsory Education Law of the PRC mandates primary education (generally six years) for all children. Three years of lower secondary schooling is also standard in urban areas. Upper secondary school is another three years and caters to students aged fifteen through seventeen. An estimated 90 percent of all children complete primary school, and 73 percent complete junior secondary education. A significant percentage of Chinese students go on to enroll in higher education programs, although availability of jobs for university graduates became a major economic concern by the 2020s.

The average literacy rate in China is high, at 96.8 percent (98.5 percent among men and 95.2 percent among women) according to 2018 estimates.

Health Care: Health care in China is administered through village, township, and county hospitals. Village doctors must finish junior secondary school and complete three to six months of training. Township doctors must complete primary and secondary education and three years of medical school. County hospital physicians are the most capable, typically completing four to five years of medical school. Insurance and state-assisted health care financing are rapidly evolving as the state struggles to provide care for all citizens.

China’s birth rate declined dramatically after 1980 due to government intervention that encouraged contraception, late marriage, and a “one couple, one child” policy. In 2015, the government announced it was ending the one-child policy, and that all families would be allowed to have two children without penalty, starting in early 2016. By that point the country's population growth rate had plummeted, leading to concerns of population loss in the future.

In 2024 the estimated birth rate was 10.2 births per 1,000 people. The estimated infant mortality rate was 6.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024. The average life expectancy was 78.7 years (2024 estimate).

Food: Due to China’s size, history, and cultural heritage, the country has one of the most diverse cuisines in the world. In general, rice (or another starchy carbohydrate) is served with every meal, and food is eaten with wooden chopsticks and/or soup spoons.

With the exceptions of rice and dairy products, China is generally self-sufficient in food production. Chinese cooking varies widely according to geographical region, and even individual cities are known for unique styles, as with Shanghai and Beijing.

Sichuan (or Szechuan) cuisine emphasizes fried foods spiced with the native Sichuan pepper, as well as chili peppers, garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. Typical dishes include Kung Pao chicken and twice-cooked pork. Shandong cuisine is known for its varied soup dishes.

Cantonese cuisine, from the Guangdong region, uses the steaming and stir-fry techniques often associated by Western cultures with Asian food. Most American Chinese restaurants serve a variation of Cantonese food. Common meats are pork, duck, and chicken; these are often served roasted. Also known as “Hong Kong style” cooking, typical Cantonese dishes include dim sum, char siu (barbequed pork), shark fin soup, and wonton soup.

Typical dishes in Mandarin (Northern Chinese) cuisine, originating in Beijing, include Peking duck and hot and sour soup.

Arts & Entertainment: Beijing is China’s cultural center, home to museums such as the Forbidden City (built 1420, museum 1925) and the Beijing Art Museum (1985). The Shanghai Museum (1952, current site 1996) houses ancient Chinese art. Shanghai is home to several science museums, including the Science and Technology Museum. Classical gardens such as Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden, once the province of the country’s elite, are now public.

China has a long, rich literary tradition, due in part to the development of printing in the eleventh century. Chinese poetry, dating back to the fourth century BCE, has had a profound influence on world literature, particularly during the early-twentieth-century Modernist movement.

Chinese calligraphy has been used for thousands of years, and is an art in itself. The country’s dramatic landscape has inspired painters for centuries, and the art of penjing (tray scenery) gardening is an ancient forerunner of the Japanese art of bonsai.

Chinese culture suffered under the communist government’s Cultural Revolution. Popular Beijing (Peking) opera groups could only perform government-sanctioned propaganda works. However, a pervasive interest in Western culture accompanied later economic reforms. Modern Chinese cities are now a combination of traditional Chinese tile roofs and curving decorative designs and United States or European-designed modern styles. Cinemas are popular, often showing Western or Japanese films in addition to domestic Chinese and Hong Kong films, as are traditional acrobatic shows by groups such as the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe.

Holidays: Spring Festival is the most important holiday in the People’s Republic of China, coinciding with the traditional Chinese New Year in late January or early February. Spring Festival celebrations may last for ten days or more.

Other major state holidays are International Labor Day, beginning May 1, and the Mid-Autumn Festival National Day, which begins October 1. Minor holidays include international New Year's Day in January, Tomb Sweeping Day in April, Buddha’s Birthday in May, and the Dragon Boat Festival around June.

Environment and Geography

Topography: China’s land area is more than 9,300,000 square kilometers (3,590,000 square miles), making it slightly smaller than the United States. Much of this vast terrain is mountainous, including the Himalaya, Kunlun, and Tian mountain ranges.

Mount Qomolangma on China’s border with Nepal in the Himalayas, better known in the West as Mount Everest, is the highest peak in the world at 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level. Below it, the Tibetan Plateau, the “rooftop of the world,” stretches out at an average elevation of 4,510 meters (14,800 feet).

China generally slopes downward from west to east. Only about 12 percent of the country’s area settles into flat plains regions. Its coastline stretches for 14,500 kilometers (9,010 miles) along thousands of islands in territorial waters. China’s length and width are both over 5,200 kilometers (3,200 miles).

There are more than 1,500 significant rivers, 2,800 large natural lakes and 2,000 man-made reservoirs throughout China. Its rivers typically drain eastward to the Pacific Ocean. The longest, the Yangtze River at 6,300 kilometers (3,915 miles), connects Shanghai with inland cities. The second-largest Huang He (Yellow River), in the northern part of the country, fills China’s largest reservoir, the Long Men, at 35.4 billion cubic meters (1,250 billion cubic feet) capacity.

Poyang in Jiangxi Province is China’s largest freshwater lake. Other large lakes include Dongting Tai, Hongze, and Gaoyou. Qinghai Lake is the country’s largest inland saltwater lake.

Natural Resources: China is the world’s leading coal producer and consumer. Most of the country’s electric plants are coal fired, although the government has been actively adding energy production capacity from sources other than coal and oil, with an emphasis on natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy sources, particularly solar. Uranium is mined for use in China’s nuclear power plants. The country’s petroleum reserves kept up with demand until 1993, when industrial growth required imported oil.

In 2016 China dramatically increased its investments in renewable energy and more than doubled its solar energy production, making the country the leading producer of solar power in the world. That same year it ratified the Paris Agreement to combat climate change. Despite these efforts, fossil fuel consumption remained high into the 2020s.

Other important mineral deposits include graphite, iron ore, bauxite, manganese, molybdenum, mercury and phosphates.

China is home to some of the world’s most polluted cities. A 2016 study by researchers at Peking University noted improvements in air quality among five major cities, but all of the cities had higher air pollution than deemed safe by World Health Organization standards. Of the cities studied, Beijing had the lowest percentage of days each year with good or light air pollution readings, with 50 percent, while Guangzhou and Shanghai had the highest percentage of days with such readings, with about 80 percent.

Water pollution is severe due to erosion and industrialization. Millions of Chinese drink water that is above safe bacteria levels. Water shortages are frequent; due to dams, irrigation, silt, and reservoirs, the Yellow River runs dry for more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from its former mouth on the northeastern coast.

Plants & Animals: China’s forests and grasslands have been dramatically reduced by farming and a voracious appetite for building materials. However, many remote, nearly inaccessible forested areas have helped protect a wide range of plant and animal diversity.

China’s wide variety of forests, including tropical, subtropical, temperate, and boreal, are estimated to hold approximately 30,000 native plant species, twice as many as are found in the United States. Subtropical southern ranges contain numerous tree species, including ginkgo, oak, bamboo (a grass), pine, magnolia, and azalea.

Thousands of plants native to China are grown around the world, including food crops such as soybeans, oranges, peaches, and apricots; and flowers including forsythias, gardenias, magnolias, peonies, primroses, and rhododendrons.

Common animals in China’s tropical areas include primates such as rhesus macaques. Temperate areas are home to dogs, cats, foxes, and wolves. Less abundant are bears and large cats. Wild horses roam upland western steppes. Camels, yaks, and water buffalo are used as work animals.

Rare animals include the endangered giant panda, found only in southwestern China, and the white-flag dolphin, a freshwater whale discovered in the Yangtze River in 1980.

Climate: Most of China’s weather is influenced by two trends: cold, dry winter winds blowing south and east, and wet, warm westerly summer monsoon winds off the Pacific Ocean.

The southeastern part of the country is subtropical. Hong Kong’s average winter temperature is 16 degrees Celsius (61 degrees Fahrenheit); its summer average is 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit). Approximately 80 percent of the region’s annual rainfall arrives between May and September.

Along the coast, roughly fifteen tropical cyclones per year strengthen to become typhoons (hurricanes), half of which push torrential rains into southeast China. Southwest China’s higher elevation promotes cooler summers, but winters remain mild, creating an extended growing season.

Central China’s continental climate features cold, dry winters and warm, humid summers, much like the central United States. Beijing’s average winter temperature is –4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit); its average summer temperature is 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit). About 90 percent of annual rainfall occurs between April and August. The autumn months (September and October) are generally the most hospitable.

There are desert and arctic climates to the north and west. The average January temperature atop Mount Qomolangma is –36 degrees Celsius (–33 degrees Fahrenheit) with an average wind chill of –70 degrees Celsius (–94 degrees Fahrenheit).

Economy

In late 1978 the Chinese government began embracing a more market-oriented economic system. By 2000, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) had quadrupled. Development of industry has been concentrated along the coast, from Hong Kong up to Shanghai. The country experienced strong growth for much of the early twenty-first century, but growth slowed at times during the 2020s.

In 2023 China’s real GDP (purchasing power parity) was estimated at US$31.227 trillion. The estimated per-capita GDP was US$22,100 that year.

In 2004 China overtook the United States as the world’s largest consumer, besting the United States in energy, food consumption, industrial commodities such as steel, and consumer products such as cell phones and televisions.

Industry: Unlike developed nations with service-based economies, China’s GDP is strongly supported by industry. China is a manufacturing giant, accomplished not only in traditional skills such as textiles and metalworking, but also in complex engineering and assembly work supporting the automotive, aviation, aerospace, and telecommunications industries. Industry accounts for 38.3 percent of China’s GDP; services, 54.6 percent; and agriculture, 7.1 percent (2023 estimates).

mining and ore processing, coal; machine building; armaments; petroleum; cement; chemicals; fertilizer; consumer products (including toys, and electronics); food processing

China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late 2001. In 2010 China became the largest exporter in the world, a position it retained in 2023. Top exports include electrical and other machinery, apparel, furniture, and textiles. Some of the countries who received the most exports from China were the United States, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Agriculture:Rice is China’s major crop, grown mainly in the south, followed by wheat in the northern plain regions. Other major crops include potatoes, corn, tobacco, peanuts, tea, apples, and cotton. The country remains the world’s top producer of green teas. Pigs are the most common livestock, followed by sheep and poultry.

Fish farms are common, often stocked with carp, and shellfish are an important catch along the coast.

Tourism: In 2019 China welcomed 162.5 million tourists. The contribution of travel and tourism accounted for 11.3 percent of the national GDP in 2019. This is in contrast to some 230,000 foreign tourists in 1978, before market reforms. Most tourists come from China’s major trade partners, along with Russia and surrounding countries such the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. However, due to complications resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, tourism arrivals in China dropped to just 30.4 million in 2020 and remained low in 2021 and 2022.

Beijing is the top destination due to the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Beijing Zoo, and its many hotels and restaurants. Just over 70 kilometers (40 miles) to the northwest, at Badaling, stands the Great Wall of China. Often termed the Seventh Wonder of the World, it measures 6,000 kilometers (4,000 miles) long and an average 8 meters (25 feet) high. Also near Beijing are the Ming Tombs, holding the remains of thirteen Chinese emperors.

Another major tourist attraction, only discovered in 1974, is the 2,200-year-old Tomb of the Terracotta Warriors, also known as the Qin Tomb, in Xi’an. Some 7,000 life-size clay soldiers complete with chariots, horses, and weapons were built to protect the burial site of Emperor Qin Shihuangdi, a task assumed to be the life’s work of approximately 700,000 laborers.

Government

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949 under Mao Zedong. It emphasized centralized power, state-owned industry, and communal farms. Modern leadership has moved toward Western-style business practices, but China’s constitution, last promulgated in 1982, remains largely ceremonial in light of continued tight dictatorial control over freedom of speech, political protest, and interpretation of law.

The chief of state is the president, who is indirectly elected by the National People's Congress for a five-year term. The head of state is the premier, who leads the powerful State Council. State Council members are appointed by elected members of the National People’s Congress. The premier is nominated by the president and confirmed by the National People's Congress. Members of the unicameral National People's Congress are indirectly elected by municipal, regional, and provincial people's congresses and the People's Liberation Army.

The government has traditionally quelled ethnic separatists without the use of violence, exceptions being Tibetans and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Protest over political restrictions flared in 1989, led by students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. After about two months, tanks and troops put a forceful end to the demonstrations.

Regional government is divided into twenty-three provinces (China counts Taiwan as its twenty-third province), five autonomous regions, the municipalities of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing, and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Local government falls to prefectures and counties, then cities, towns, and villages.

Interesting Facts

• In Mandarin Chinese, China is called Zhongguo, which means “Middle Kingdom.”
• Great Chinese inventions include the compass, gunpowder, movable type printing, and paper.
• The Chinese writing system is roughly 4,000 years old. China is one of the world’s only civilizations to develop a written language independent of a spoken language.
• China borders more countries than any other country in the world, with fourteen neighbors.

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