An Overview of China’s Geography

When talking about China and Chinese Culture, what will come to your mind first? Its long history, tasty food, or the big cities like Beijing or Shanghai? But, you might have missed the fact that, geographical speaking, China is also one of the largest countries in the world. How large is it? What are some fun facts about its geographic features? This article will introduce some to you!

China has a territorial area of 9.6 million square kilometers and an aquatic territory spanning 4.73 million square kilometers. That’s a lot of abstract numbers! So here are some comparisons to make it more relatable: it’s the third largest country, coming behind Russia and Canada. Its territorial area roughly equals to the total area of Europe excluding Russia.

It’s true that China is a very large country. But it also has a huge population, about 1.4 billion by 2017. This is nearly 19% of the whole population of the world. Therefore, the area per capita is fairly small, only 29% of the world’s average. A huge population can be an asset and a strength in many aspects. But more people also means fewer personal resources. This is why, when it comes to geographical data, China is almost always large in overall numbers, but small in per capita data.

In general, the country can be divided into two areas: the South and the North. A geographical line formed by Qinling Mountain and Huai River is usually seen as the boundary of these two large areas. The climate, landscape, as well as people’s lifestyle varies a lot between the North and the South. However, this doesn’t automatically mean that inside each area there is a great similarity.

That’s part of the reason why there are 34 administrative divisions, including 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, four municipalities directly under the central government, and two special administrative regions. The concept of the province is similar to “state” in the US and “county” in the UK. Among the 34 divisions, there are world-renown cities like Beijing, Shanghai (both of which are super metropolis), Xi’an and Henan (famous for their rich cultural heritage).