b. ^ Simple characterizations of the political structure The term political structure. used in a general sense, refers to institutions or groups and their relations to each other, their patterns of interaction within political systems and to political regulations, laws and the norms present in political systems in such a way that they constitute the political landscape of the political entity. In the since the 1980s are no longer possible.^[9]

c. ^ 9,598,086 km² excludes all disputed territories. 9,640,821 km² Includes PRC-administered area (Aksai Chin Aksai Chin, also Aksayqin, Akesaiqin or Akesai Qin , is a disputed region located in the northwestern region of the Tibetan Plateau north of the western Kunlun Mountains. It is entirely administered by the People's Republic of China as a part of Hotan County in the Hotan Prefecture of Xinjiang Autonomous Region. It is, however, claimed by India as and Trans-Karakoram Tract The Trans-Karakoram Tract is an area of nearly 5,800 km2 along both sides of the Shaksgam River that was conferred to China by a border agreement between Pakistan and China in 1963 with the proviso that the settlement was subject to the final solution of the Kashmir dispute. Pakistan claimed that it was a no-man's undemarcated border land, hence, both territories claimed by India), Taiwan is not included.^[10]

The People's Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China, is a country in East Asia East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about 12,000,000 km2 (4,600,000 sq mi), or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe. It is the most populous This is a list of countries by population. The list includes independent countries and inhabited dependent territories based on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1. Also given, as a percentage, is each country's population compared to the population of the world, which is currently 6,820,800,000 state in the world with over 1.3 billion people The demographics of the People's Republic of China are characterized by a large population with a relatively small youth cohort, which is partially a result of the People's Republic of China's one-child policy. The population policies implemented in China since 1979 have helped to prevent an extra 400 million births. Others[who?] believe this. China is ruled by the Communist Party of China The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is the world's largest political party (CPC) under a single-party A single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election. Sometimes the term de facto single-party state is used to describe a dominant-party system where laws or practices prevent the system.^[11] The PRC exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces A province, in the context of Chinese government, is a translation of sheng , which is an administrative division. Together with municipalities, autonomous regions, and the special administrative regions, provinces make up the first level (known as the province level) of administrative division in China. Provinces are also the first level division, five autonomous regions An autonomous region is a first-level administrative subdivision of People's Republic of China. Like Chinese provinces, an autonomous region has its own local government, but an autonomous region theoretically has more legislative rights. In practice, they only have the right to appoint the governor (from the local minority)[citation needed]. In, four directly administered municipalities Direct-controlled municipality is the highest level classificiation for cities used by Republic of China , People's Republic of China, Korea and Vietnam with status equal to that of the provinces in the respective countries. The People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China, the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan, the Democratic People's (Beijing Beijing , also known as Peking (pronounced /piːˈkɪŋ/ or /peɪˈkɪŋ/), is a metropolis in northern China, and the capital of the People's Republic of China. Governed as a municipality under direct administration of the central government, Beijing borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and for a small section in the east, and, Tianjin Tianjin (Chinese: 天津; pinyin: Tiānjīn; Wade–Giles: T'ien-chin; [tʰi̯ɛn˥˥ t͡ɕin˥˥]; Postal map spelling: Tientsin) is a metropolis in Northeastern China and one of the five national central cities. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is thus under direct administration of the, Shanghai Shanghai is the most populous city in China and one of the most populous cities in the world. A global city, Shanghai exerts influence over global commerce, finance, culture, art, fashion, research and entertainment. The city is located at the middle portion of the Chinese coast, and sits at the mouth of the Yangtze, and Chongqing The municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the sub-provincial city administration that was part of Sichuan Province. In 2007, the municipality of Chongqing had a population of 31.4 million. It has jurisdiction over 19 districts, 17 counties, and four autonomous counties. With an area of 82,300 km² , it is the largest direct-), and two highly autonomous^[12] special administrative regions (SARs) - Hong Kong Hong Kong[note 3] is one of two special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China; the other is Macau. Situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour. With a land mass of 1,104 km2 (426 sq mi) and a population of seven and Macau Macau , also known as Macao (pronounced /məˈkaʊ/) is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China, the other being Hong Kong. Macau lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, bordering Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea in the east and south. The PRC's capital is Beijing.^[13]

At about 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles), the PRC is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area This is a list of the sovereign states and dependent territories of the world, sorted by total area, including all entities on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1,^[14] and the second largest This is a list of the sovereign states and dependent territories of the world, sorted by land area only, including all entities on the ISO standard ISO 3166-1 by land area.^[15] Its landscape is diverse, with forest steppes The Mongolian-Manchurian grassland, also known as the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe, is a temperate grassland found in Mongolia and the north of China and deserts (the Gobi The Gobi (Mongolian: Говь, Govi, "semidesert"; Chinese: 戈壁 Gēbì (Shāmò)) is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Taklamakan The Taklamakan Desert , also known as Taklimakan, is a desert in Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's 17th largest desert. It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, and the desert Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan (ancient Mount Imeon) to the west and north. The name is) in the dry north near Mongolia Mongolia (pronounced /mɒŋˈɡoʊliə/; Mongolian: Монгол улс , literally Mongol country/nation, ) is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and the People's Republic of China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is and Russia Russia (pronounced /ˈrʌʃə/ ; Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈraʦəjə] ( listen)), is a state in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic,'s Siberia Siberia , is a vast region, constituting almost all of Northern Asia and currently the massive central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, as it was in the USSR from its beginning, and the Russian Empire since the 16th century, and subtropical The subtropics are the geographical and climatical zone of the Earth immediately north and south of the tropical zone, which is bounded by the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, at latitudes 23.5°N and 23.5°S. The term "subtropical" describes the climatic region found adjacent to the tropics, usually between 20 and 40 forests in the wet south close to Vietnam Vietnam (pronounced /ˌviː.ɛtˈnɑːm/ VEE-et-NAHM; Vietnamese: Việt Nam, listen ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Cộng hòa xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam, listen (help·info)), is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People's Republic of China (PRC) to the, Laos Laos , officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and People's Republic of China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west, and Burma Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar, is the largest country by geographical area in mainland Southeast Asia. The country is bordered by People's Republic of China on the north-east, Laos on the east, Thailand on the south-east, Bangladesh on the west, India on the north-west and the Bay of Bengal to the south-west with the Andaman Sea defining. The terrain in the west is rugged and at high altitude, with the Himalayas The Himalaya Range (Sanskrit: literally, "abode of snow", Hindi/Sanskrit: हिमालय, IPA: /hɪˈmɑːləj/), or the Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. By extension, it is also the name of a massive mountain system that includes the Karakoram, the Hindu and the Tian Shan The Tian Shan (Chinese: 天山 ; Pinyin: Tiān Shān; Uyghur: تەڭرىتاغ Tengri Tagh), also commonly spelled Tien Shan, is a mountain range located in Central Asia. The Chinese name for Tian Shan or Tien Shan, may in turn go back to a Xiongnu name, qilian (祁连) reported by the Shiji as the homeland of the Yuezhi, which has been argued to mountain ranges forming China's natural borders with India and Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent. In contrast, mainland China's eastern seaboard is low-lying and has a 14,500-kilometre long coastline bounded on the southeast by the South China Sea and on the east by the East China Sea beyond which lies Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

The ancient Chinese civilization—one of the world's earliest—flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River which flows through the North China Plain.^[16] For more than 4,000 years, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies (also known as dynasties). The first of these dynasties was the Xia (approx 2000BC) but it was the later Qin Dynasty that first unified China in 221 BC. The last dynasty, the Qing, ended in 1911 with the founding of the Republic of China (ROC) by the Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party. The first half of the 20th century saw China plunged into a period of disunity and civil wars that divided the country into two main political camps – the Kuomintang and the communists. Major hostilities ended in 1949, when the communists won the civil war and established the People's Republic of China in mainland China. The KMT-led Republic of China government retreated to Taipei, its jurisdiction now limited to Taiwan and several outlying islands. Since then, the PRC has been involved in disputes with the ROC over issues of sovereignty and the political status of Taiwan.

Since the introduction of market-based economic reforms in 1978, China has become the world's fastest growing major economy,^[17] the world's largest exporter and second largest importer of goods. Rapid industrialization has reduced its poverty rate from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001.^[18] However, the PRC is now faced with a number of other problems including a rapidly aging population due to the one-child policy,^[19] a widening rural-urban income gap, and environmental degradation.^[20][21] Moreover, China has been criticized for its human rights violations by governments and non-governmental organizations (NGO),^[22] and for having a problematic record of interfering with press freedom.^[23]

China is a major power and the world's third largest economy nominally (or second largest by PPP) and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as being a member of multilateral organizations including the WTO, APEC, G-20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army with the second-largest defense budget. China has been characterized as a potential superpower by a number of academics,^[24] military analysts,^[25] and public policy and economics analysts.^[26]

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