People's Republic of China | |
|---|---|
| Anthem: "March of the Volunteers" | |
 Location of the People's Republic of China | |
| Capital | Beijing 39°55′N 116°23′E / 39.917°N 116.383°E |
| Largest city by municipal boundary | Chongqing[a] |
| Largest city by urban population | Shanghai |
| Official languages | Standard Chinese (de facto)[2] |
| Simplified characters | |
| Ethnic groups (2020)[3] |
|
| Religion (2023)[4] |
|
| Demonym(s) | Chinese |
| Government | Unitary Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist republic |
| Xi Jinping | |
• Premier | Li Qiang |
| Zhao Leji | |
| Wang Huning | |
| Han Zheng | |
| Legislature | National People's Congress[d] |
| Formation | |
| c. 2070 BCE | |
| 221 BCE | |
| 1 January 1912 | |
| 1 October 1949 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 9,596,961 km2 (3,705,407 sq mi)[e][8] (3rd / 4th) |
• Water (%) | 2.8[5] |
| Population | |
• 2023 estimate |  1,409,670,000[9] (2nd) |
• Density | 145[10]/km2 (375.5/sq mi) (83rd) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2024 estimate |
• Total |  $37.072 trillion[f][11] (1st) |
• Per capita | $26,310[11] (79th) |
| GDP (nominal) | 2024 estimate |
• Total | $18.273 trillion[11] (2nd) |
• Per capita | $12,969[11] (73rd) |
| Gini (2021) |  35.7[12]medium inequality |
| HDI (2022) | 0.788[13] high (75th) |
| Currency | Renminbi (元/¥)[g] (CNY) |
| Time zone | UTC+8 (CST) |
| Calling code | |
| ISO 3166 code | CN |
| Internet TLD | |
.svg)
China,[h] officially the People's Republic of China (PRC),[i] is a country in East Asia. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the second-most populous country after India, representing 17.4% of the world population. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land.[j] With an area of nearly 9.6 million square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third-largest country by total land area.[k] The country is divided into 33 province-level divisions: 22 provinces,[l] five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the country's capital, while Shanghai is its most populous city by urban area and largest financial center.
China is considered one of the cradles of civilization: the first human inhabitants in the region arrived during the Paleolithic. By the late 2nd millennium BCE, the earliest dynastic states had emerged in the Yellow River basin. The 8th–3rd centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature, philosophy, and historiography. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor, ushering in more than two millennia of imperial dynasties including the Qin, Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the building of the Great Wall, Chinese culture flourished and has heavily influenced both its neighbors and lands further afield. However, China began to cede parts of the country in the late 19th century to various European powers by a series of unequal treaties.
After decades of Qing China on the decline, the 1911 Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and the monarchy and the Republic of China (ROC) was established the following year. The country under the nascent Beiyang government was unstable and ultimately fragmented during the Warlord Era, which was ended upon the Northern Expedition conducted by the Kuomintang (KMT) to reunify the country. The Chinese Civil War began in 1927, when KMT forces purged members of the rival Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who proceeded to engage in sporadic fighting against the KMT-led Nationalist government. Following the country's invasion by the Empire of Japan in 1937, the CCP and KMT formed the Second United Front to fight the Japanese. The Second Sino-Japanese War eventually ended in a Chinese victory; however, the CCP and the KMT resumed their civil war as soon as the war ended. In 1949, the resurgent Communists established control over most of the country, proclaiming the People's Republic of China and forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to the island of Taiwan. The country was split, with both sides claiming to be the sole legitimate government of China. Following the implementation of land reforms, further attempts by the PRC to realize communism failed: the Great Leap Forward was largely responsible for the Great Chinese Famine that ended with millions of Chinese people having died, and the subsequent Cultural Revolution was a period of social turmoil and persecution characterized by Maoist populism. Following the Sino-Soviet split, the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972 would precipitate the normalization of relations with the United States. Economic reforms that began in 1978 moved the country away from a socialist planned economy towards an increasingly capitalist market economy, spurring significant economic growth. The corresponding movement for increased democracy and liberalization stalled after the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989.
China is a unitary one-party socialist republic led by the CCP. It is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council; the UN representative for China was changed from the ROC to the PRC in 1971. It is a founding member of several multilateral and regional organizations such as the AIIB, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank, and the RCEP. It is a member of the BRICS, the G20, APEC, the SCO, and the East Asia Summit. Making up around one-fifth of the world economy, the Chinese economy is the world's largest economy by PPP-adjusted GDP, the second-largest economy by nominal GDP, and the second-wealthiest country, albeit ranking poorly in measures of democracy, human rights and religious freedom. The country has been one of the fastest-growing major economies and is the world's largest manufacturer and exporter, as well as the second-largest importer. China is a nuclear-weapon state with the world's largest standing army by military personnel and the second-largest defense budget. It is a great power, and has been described as an emerging superpower. China is known for its cuisine and culture, and has 59 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the second-highest number of any country.
- ^ "The world's biggest cities: How do you measure them?". BBC. 29 January 2012. Retrieved 2024-08-08.
- ^ Adamson, Bob; Feng, Anwei (27 December 2021). Multilingual China: National, Minority and Foreign Languages. Routledge. p. 90. ISBN 978-1-0004-8702-2.
Despite not being defined as such in the Constitution, Putonghua enjoys de facto status of the official language in China and is legislated as the standard form of Chinese.
- ^ "Main Data of the Seventh National Population Census". Stats.gov.cn. Archived from the original on 2021-05-11. Retrieved 2021-07-25.
- ^ 2023 approximations of the statistics from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) of the year 2018, as contained in the following analyses:
- "Measuring Religion in China" (PDF). Pew Research Center. 30 August 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-09-09."Measuring Religions in China". 30 August 2023. Archived from the original on 2023-09-30. A compilation of statistics from reliable surveys held throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, with an emphasis on the CFPS 2018.
- Wenzel-Teuber, Katharina (2023). "Statistics on Religions and Churches in the People's Republic of China – Update for the Year 2022" (PDF). Religions & Christianity in Today's China. XIII. China Zentrum: 18–44. ISSN 2192-9289. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-06-23.
- Zhang, Chunni; Lu, Yunfeng; He, Sheng (2021). "Exploring Chinese folk religion: Popularity, diffuseness, and diversities" (PDF). Chinese Journal of Sociology. 7 (4). SAGE Publications: 575–592. doi:10.1177/2057150X211042687. ISSN 2057-150X. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-10-15.
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
CIAwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Demographic Yearbook—Table 3: Population by sex, rate of population increase, surface area and density" (PDF). UN Statistics. 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-12-24. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
- ^ a b "China". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2019-07-27. Retrieved 2017-12-04.
- ^ "Total surface area as of 19 January 2007". United Nations Statistics Division. Archived from the original on 2023-12-03. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
- ^ Master, Farah (17 January 2024). "China's population drops for second year, with record low birth rate". Reuters. Retrieved 2024-01-17.
- ^ "Population density (people per km2 of land area)". IMF. Archived from the original on 2015-05-16. Retrieved 2015-05-16.
- ^ a b c d "World Economic Outlook Database, October 2024 Edition. (China)". www.imf.org. International Monetary Fund. 22 October 2024. Retrieved 2024-11-11.
- ^ "Gini index – China". World Bank. Archived from the original on 2024-03-19. Retrieved 2022-05-24.
- ^ "Human Development Report 2023/24" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. 13 March 2024. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-03-13. Retrieved 2024-03-13.
- ^ a b "United States". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2015-05-28. Retrieved 2017-12-04.
- ^
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: "United States". The World Factbook (2024 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 2016-07-03. (Archived 2016 edition.)
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).