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CHINA > OVERVIEW
With an area of 9.6 million square kilometers, China (People’s Republic
of China) set on one-fifteenth of the world’s land mass, which put the
country in the third position of world largest country ranks. China is very
mountainous over most of its territory, with dry plateaus in the west and the
Gobi Desert in the far north. The Bohai Sea is the inland sea. Along with the
Huanghai, the East China and the South China seas, it washes the 22,000 kilometers
broadening border on land and the over 18,000 kilometers extending coastline.
There are 6,536 islands larger than 500 square meters, the largest is Taiwan,
with a total area of about 36,000 square kilometers, and the second, Hainan.
There is a resurgent interest in Confucianism in all over the country, despite
China’s Confucian heritage was disgraced under Mao Reign. A growing Chinese
nationalism, with some anti-foreign basics, is gaining favor both officially
and among Chinese intellectuals. In late 1978 the Chinese leadership began moving
the economy from a lethargic Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more
market-oriented system. The result has been a quadrupling of GDP since 1978.
In 2000, China stood as the second largest economy in the world after the US.
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