China's Vast Land Area and Regional Features
China is the third largest country in the world, after Russia and Canada. Slightly larger than the United States including Alaska, it covers nearly 9,596,960 km2. Included in this total are 9,326,410 km2 of land and 270,550 km2 of inland lakes and rivers. From east to west, the distance is about 5,000 km from the Heilongjiang River to the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia; from north to south, the distance is approximately 4,050 km from Heilongjiang Province in the north to Hainan Province in the south and another 1,450 km farther south to the Zengmu Reef, bordering the north coast of Malaysia.
Most of China’s population lives on the relatively flat and fertile southeastern part of the country. Most are farmers, living, as did their forebears, in the low-lying hills and the central plains that stretch from the highlands eastward and southward to the sea. Agriculture predominates in this vast area, generally favored by a temperate of subtropical climate.
Only 15 percent of the country is good for agriculture (compared to 21 percent in the U.S.) and most of this land is on the central eastern coast and along the valleys of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. About 34 percent of China is covered by pastures, and 14 percent by forests. Based on 2005 estimates, 14.86 percent (about 1.4 million km2) of China’s land is arable. About 1.3 percent (some 116,580 km2) is planted with permanent crops. With comparatively far less land planted with permanent crops, intensive agricultural techniques are used to reap harvests that are sufficient to feed the world’s largest population and still have a surplus for export.
China is made up of 23 provinces and 5 autonomous regions populated by large numbers of ethnic minorities. China’s largest cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing are governed directly by the Chinese government as municipalities. Although China crosses all or part of five international time zones, it operates on a single uniform time, China Standard Time (CST; Greenwich Mean Time plus eight hours), using Beijing as the basis. China does not employ a daylight savings time system.
Even though China is the world’s most populous country, much of its land is uninhabitable or nearly uninhabitable. The western half of the country is mostly desert. The central and southern portions of the country are covered with rugged mountains and the northeast is heavily forested and bitterly cold in winter.
The northern part of China is relatively flat and embraces the Yellow River basin, the Qinling Mountain Range, the Shanxi loess region, the North China Central Plain, Mongolian plateau, eastern highlands and central plain of the Northeast China.
The western part of China is the home of the Tarim Basin and Taklimakan Desert, two of the driest and most desolate regions in the world, and the Tianshan Mountains.
The spine of the Himalayas, including Mount Qomolangma, runs along the border between Tibet (part of China) and Nepal. Most of Tibet is occupied by the Tibetan Plateau, a dry, desolate region, punctuated by mountains and isolated lakes. The average elevation in Tibet is over 4,000 m, and there are 40 peaks over 6,000 m high. Very few people live in Tibet. The Tibetan plateau embraces the Himalayas, Kunlun Mountains and the Hengduan Mountains.
The central part of China embraces the Yangtze Basin, Sichuan Basin and the Yangtze plains and delta. Between Tibet and the plains of eastern China are rugged ridges of mountains, difficult to traverse, and many of them lie in western Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. Getting across these mountains can take weeks. East of these mountains are the Yangtze River valley and the plains of northern and eastern China. This area is the heavily populated home of the Han Chinese. It is also largely agricultural and has four seasons.
Southeast China is a green, semitropical region inhabited by large numbers of ethnic minorities similar to the hill tribes found in neighboring Burma, Laos and Vietnam. There are numerous mountains and mountain ranges of various sizes. Large tracts of forest have been cleared here and deforestation-induced erosion is very noticeable.
The Significance and Features of China's Maritime Area
The China Sea consists of two parts, the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which connect through the shallow Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China’s mainland.
The South China Sea, as the largest marginal sea of the western Pacific, covers an area of about 3,685,000 km2 and has a mean depth of 1,060 m.
The major rivers draining into the sea are the branches forming the Zhujiang River delta between Hong Kong and Macau. Weather in the region is tropical and largely controlled by monsoon winds. Annual rainfall varies from about 2,000 mm to as much as 4,000 mm around the southern basin; summer typhoons are frequent. Monsoons also control the sea-surface currents as well as the exchange of water between the South China Sea and adjacent bodies of water.
The East China Sea extends northeastward from the South China Sea and is bounded on the west by the Asian mainland and on the east by Japan’s southernmost main island. An east-west line connecting Cheju Island with the mainland of China separates the East China Sea from the Yellow Sea to its north. The East China Sea, with an area of 751,100 km2, is generally shallow, having an average depth of only 349 m. The climate of the East China Sea is also dominated by the monsoon wind system. Warm, moist winds from the west Pacific bring a rainy summer season accompanied by typhoons, but in the winter the monsoons reverse and bring cold, dry air from the Asian continent in the northwest.
Both seas are heavily fished; tuna, mackerel, croaker, anchovy, shrimp, and shellfish constitute the main catch. Fish from the South China Sea provide as much as 50 percent of the animal protein consumed along the densely populated coast. Both seas also serve as major shipping routes. The South China Sea, with the Strait of Malacca, forms the main transport route between the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the East China Sea serves as the main shipping route from the South China Sea to Japanese and other North Pacific ports.
