China

China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country located in East Asia. It is the world's most populouscountry, with a population of over 1.3 billion. The PRC is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing.[17][18] It exercisesjurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions(Hong Kong and Macau).[19] The PRC also claims Taiwan – which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity – as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complexpolitical status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War.
Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, China is the world's second-largest country by land area,[20] and the third orfourth-largest by total area, depending on the definition of total area.[21] China's landscape is vast and diverse, with forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts occupying the arid north andnorthwest near Mongolia and Central Asia, and subtropical forests prevalent in the wetter south near Southeast Asia. The terrain of western China is rugged and elevated, with the Himalaya, Karakoram,Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separating China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, have their sources in the Tibetan Plateau andcontinue 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 and South China Seas.
Theancient Chinese civilization – one of the world's earliest – flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain.[22] For millennia, China's political system was based on...