China is bounded to the north by deserts and the west by the inhospitable Tibet-Qinghai Plateau. The Han Chinese, who first built their civilization around Huang He ( Yellow River), moved south and east towards the sea. The Han did not develop as a maritime people so expansion was halted at the coast; they found themselves in control of a vast plain cut off from the rest of the world by oceans, mountains and deserts.

China is the third largest country in the world, after Russia and Canada, and has an area of 9.5 million sq km. Only half of China is occupied by Han Chinese; the rest is inhabited by Mongols, Tibetans, Uyghurs and a host of other ‘national minorities’ who occupy the periphery of China. The existences of numerous minority languages is why maps of China often have two spellings for the same place- one spelling being the minority language, the other being Chinese. For example, Kashgar is the same place as Kashi.

From the capital, Beijing, the government rules 21 provinces and the five ‘autonomous regions’ of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Guangxi and Tibet. The ‘special municipalities’ of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing are administered directly by the central government. Hong Kong and Macau are both termed Special Administrative Zone.

Taiwan is considered by the PRC government to be a province of China. The remote Spratly Islands (Nasha) in the South China Sea are claimed by China and other countries including the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia. In 1989 the Chinese forcefully took the Paracel Island (Xisha) from Vietnam. China fought and won a border war with India in the 1960s, but the boundary issue remains unresolved and potential source of further conflict between the two nuclear states.

China’s topography varies from mountainous regions with towering peaks to flat, featureless plains. The land surface is like a staircase descending from west to east. At the top are the plateaus of Tibet and Qinghai in the south-west, averaging 4500m above sea level. At eh southern rim of the plateau is the Himalayan mountain range, with peaks averaging 6000m high; 40 peaks rise 7000m or more, Mt Everest, known to the Chinese as Zhumulangnafeng, lies on the Tibet-Nepal border.

Melting snow and ice from the mountains of western China and the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau provides the headwaters for many of the country’s largest rivers; Chang Jiang, Huang He, Lancang Jiang ( Mekong River) and Nu Hiang ( Salween River). The latter runs from eastern Tibet into Yunnan and on into Myanmar.

The Tarim Basin is the largest inland basin in the world and is the site of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Here you’ll find the Taklamakan Desert (the largest in China) as well as China’s largest shifting salt lake, Lop Nur (Luobu Po), where China tested its nuclear bombs. The Tarim Basin is bordered to the north by Tian Shan.

To the east of this range is the low-luring Trupan Depression, known as the ‘Oasis of Fire’, which is the hottest place in China. The Junggar Basin lies in the far north of Xinjiang province, beyond Tian Shan.

As you cross the mountains on the eastern edge of this second step of the topographical staircase, the altitude drops to less than 1000m above sea level. Here, forming the third step, are the plains of the Chang Jiang valley and northern and eastern China. These plains-the homeland of the Han Chinese, their ‘Middle Kingdom’- are the most important agricultural areas f the country and the most heavily populated. It should be remembered that two-thirds of China is mountain, desert or otherwise unfit for cultivation. If you exclude the largely barren regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau from the remaining third, all that remains for cultivation is a meager 15% or 20% of land area. Only this to feed 1.3 billion people!

Huang He, about 5460km long and the second longest river in China, is the birthplace of Chinese civilization. The third great waterway of China, the Grand Canal, is the longest artificial canal in the world. It originally stretched for 1800km from Hangzhou is south China to Beijing in the north. Today, however, most of the Grand Canal is sited over and no longer navigable.