China

Geography

The People's Republic of China is a territorial state in East Asia with an area of 9.56 million km². This land mass is only slightly larger than that of the USA and makes China the third largest country in the world. Even more remarkable is its population of 1.43 billion inhabitants. In 2023, China was overtaken by India as the most populous country.

Despite the large population with a density of 149.1 inhabitants per kilometer, the population is distributed very unevenly. The metropolitan areas with exceptionally large cities are located in the eastern and southern coastal regions. Around a third of the country is made up of mountains, of which the Himalayas and the Karakoram in the south are the world's highest mountain ranges. The highest mountain peak is Mount Everest at 8,848 meters on the border with Nepal. In the northwest, there are vast steppes and desert areas that extend far into the interior of the country and make large areas uninhabitable due to the lack of vegetation. Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are the driest regions.

Megacities are lined up along the approximately 14,500 km long coastline. Over 150 megacities have sprung up in recent decades. The Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing and Tianjin metropolitan areas are considered the largest conurbations. While at the end of the 1970s not even one in five Chinese lived in cities, today the proportion of the urban population is 63.6%.

China borders the 15 neighboring countries of Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macao, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam.

Climate in China

Due to the country's size of over 9 million km², the Chinese climate is extremely varied by region. There are 18 of the 30 climate classifications according to Köppen-Geiger in China alone. The northeast is the coldest area. With temperatures sometimes below -30 °C, winters here are extremely cold. In the west, there is a drier desert climate, which is also very cold in winter, but very hot in summer. The further southwest one goes, the more influential the Pacific becomes. This is reflected in tropical rainfall and humidity, especially in milder temperatures. In the southeast, it is still around 28 degrees during the summer months, but in winter, the mercury rarely drops below 15 degrees.

• Detailed climate data for China and 6 individual regions
• Earthquakes
• Tsunamis
• Typhoons

Languages

Mother tongue	Distribution
Chinese	92.0 %
Zhuang	1.4 %
Hui	0.8 %
Yi	0.6 %
Uighur	0.6 %
Tujia	0.5 %
Tibetan	0.4 %
Mongolian	0.2 %
Korean	0.1 %
other	3.4 %

Religions

Religion	Distribution
Buddhists	6.2%
Local chinese beliefs	17.5%
Catholics	0.4%
Protestants	1.9%
Taoists	4.4%
Muslims	1.7%
nondenominational	58.5%
other	9.4%

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Economy

GDP:	17,963.17 bn $
Exportations:	3,715.83 bn $
Importations:	3,139.50 bn $
› Tourism receipts:	11.33 bn $
Debt rate:	77.10 %
› Unemployment rate:	4.97 %
› Inflation rate:	1.97 %
› Corruption index:	42 (bad)
› Energy consumption:	6,875.1 bn kWh

According to the definition from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China is a developing country because of its lower economic performance. Despite this classification, the country is currently also one of the emerging markets, i.e. countries with increasing industrialization.

With an average annual income of 12,850 USD China is one of the upper middle-income countries.

Land use

4% Urban areas:	380,679 km²
56% Agricultural areas:	5,376,268 km²
23% Forest:	2,231,983 km²
2% Water areas:	174,700 km²
16% Others:	1,573,979 km²

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Transport

Roadways:	5,200,000 km
Railways:	150,000 km
Waterways:	27,700 km
Reg. vehicles:	315,000,000
› Airports: