People's Republic of China Country

The People's Republic of China ( listen), commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population. It is a socialist republic ruled by the Communist Party of China under a single-party system and has jurisdiction over twenty-two provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions. The capital of the PRC is Beijing.

At 9.6-million square kilometres, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the world's third or fourth largest country by area. It has a diverse landscape; in the north, near the PRC's borders with Mongolia and Russia's Siberia, the Gobi Desert and forest steppes dominate the dry expanse while lush subtropical forests grow along its southern borders with Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. The terrain in the west is rugged and high altitude, with the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain ranges forming the PRC's natural borders with India and Central Asia. In contrast, the PRC'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 Korea and Japan.