China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia.

It is
the world's most populous state, with a population of over 1.381 billion.[15] The PRC is a singleparty state governed by the Communist Party of China, with its seat of government in
the capital city of Beijing.[16] It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous
regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), two
mostly self-governing special administrative regions(Hong Kong and Macau), and claims
sovereignty over the Republic of China (island of Taiwan) off the southeast coast of the
mainland.
Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second largest state
by land area,[17] and either thethird or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of
measurement.[i] China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and
the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south.
TheHimalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian
Shan mountain
ranges
separate
China
from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze andYellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the
world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline
along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by
the Bohai, Yellow, East andSouth China Seas.
China is a cradle of civilization, with its known history beginning with an ancient civilization
one of the world's earliest that flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North
China Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies known
as dynasties. Since 221 BCE, when the Qin Dynasty first conquered several states to form a
Chinese empire, the state has expanded, fractured and reformed numerous times. The Republic
of China (ROC) replaced thelast dynasty in 1912, and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949,
when it was defeated by the Communist Party of China in theChinese Civil War. The Communist
Party established the People's Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, while the ROC
government relocated to Taiwan with its present capital in Taipei. Both the ROC and PRC
continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China.
China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during
which it has seen cycles of prosperityand decline.[18][19] Since the introduction of economic
reforms in 1978, China has become one of the world's fastest-growingmajor economies. As of
2014, it is the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and largest by purchasing power
parity(PPP). China is also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods.
[20]
China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing
army and second-largest defence budget.[21][22] The PRC has been a United Nations member since
1971, when it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. China is

also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including

the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BCIM and the G20. China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia, and has been characterized as
a potential superpower.
ince the late 1990s, China's national road network has been significantly expanded through the
creation of a network of national highways and expressways. In 2011 China's highways had
reached a total length of 85,000 km (53,000 mi), making it the longest highway system in the
world.[356] In 1991, there were only six bridges across the main stretch of the Yangtze River,
which bisects the country into northern and southern halves. By October 2014, there were 81
such bridges and tunnels.
China has the world's largest market for automobiles, having surpassed the United States in both
auto sales and production. Auto sales in 2009 exceeded 13.6 million[357] and may reach 40 million
by 2020.[358] A side-effect of the rapid growth of China's road network has been a significant rise
in traffic accidents,[359] with poorly enforced traffic laws cited as a possible causein 2011 alone,
around 62,000 Chinese died in road accidents. [360] In urban areas, bicycles remain a common
mode of transport, despite the increasing prevalence of automobiles as of 2012, there are
approximately 470 million bicycles in China.[361]
China's railways, which are state-owned, are among 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. [362][363] As of
2013, the country had 103,144 km (64,091 mi) of railways, the third longest network in the
world.[364] All provinces and regions are connected to the rail network except Macau. The
railways strain to meet enormous demand particularly during the Chinese New Year holiday,
when the world's largest annual human migration takes place.[363] In 2013, Chinese railways
delivered 2.106 billion passenger trips, generating 1,059.56 billion passenger-kilometers and
carried 3.967 billion tons of freight, generating 2,917.4 billion cargo tons-kilometers.[364]
China's high-speed rail (HSR) system, built entirely since the early 2000s, had 11,028 kilometres
(6,852 miles) of track in 2013 and was the longest HSR network in the world.[365] The network
includes the BeijingGuangzhouShenzhen High-Speed Railway, the single longest HSR line in
the world, and the BeijingShanghai High-Speed Railway, which has three of longest railroad
bridges in the world.[366] The HSR track network is set to reach approximately 16,000 km
(9,900 mi) by 2020.[367] The Shanghai Maglev Train, which reaches 431 km/h (268 mph), is the
fastest commercial train service in the world.[368]
The national census of 2010 recorded the population of the People's Republic of China as
approximately 1,370,536,875. About 16.60% of the population were 14 years old or younger,

70.14% were between 15 and 59 years old, and 13.26% were over 60 years old. [376] The
population growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be 0.46%.[377]
Although a middle-income country by Western standards, China's rapid growth has pulled
hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty since 1978. Today, about 10% of the Chinese
population lives below the poverty line of US$1 per day, down from 64% in 1978. Urban
unemployment in China reportedly declined to 4% by the end of 2007. [378] At present, urban
unemployment rate of China is about 4.1%.[379][380]
With a population of over 1.3 billion and dwindling natural resources, the government of China
is very concerned about its population growth rate and has attempted since 1979, with mixed
results,[381] to implement a strict family planning policy, known as the "one-child policy." Before
2013, this policy sought to restrict families to one child each, with exceptions for ethnic
minorities and a degree of flexibility in rural areas. A major loosening of the policy was enacted
in December 2013, allowing families to have two children if one parent is an only child. [382] The
government is now dropping the one-child policy in favor of a two-child policy. Data from the
2010 census implies that the total fertility rate may now be around 1.4.[383]
There are as many as 292 living languages in China.[391] The languages most commonly spoken
belong
to
the Sinitic
branch of
the Sino-Tibetan
language family,
which
[392]
contains Mandarin (spoken natively by 70% of the population),
and other Chinese
varieties: Wu(including Shanghainese), Yue (including Cantonese and Taishanese), Min (includi
ng Hoochew, Hokkien and Teochew), Xiang, Gan, andHakka. Languages of the Tibeto-Burman
branch, including Tibetan, Qiang, Naxi and Yi, are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan
Guizhou
Plateau.
Other
ethnic
minority
languages
in southwest
China include Zhuang, Thai, Dong and Sui of
the Tai-Kadai
family, Miaoand Yao of
the HmongMien
family,
and Wa of
the Austroasiatic
family.
Across northeastern and northwestern
China,
minority
ethnic
groups
speak Altaic
languages including Manchu, Mongolian and
several Turkic
languages: Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Salar and Western Yugur. Korean is spoken natively along
the border with North Korea. Sarikoli, the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang, is an IndoEuropean language. Taiwanese aborigines, including a small population on the mainland,
speak Austronesian languages.[393]
Standard Mandarin, a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect, is the official national
language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different
linguistic backgrounds.[394]