China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's second-most populous country after India, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion (17% of the world's population), across an area of 9.6 million square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), making it the third-largest country by area. It is divided into 33 province-level divisions, including two special administrative regions. Beijing is the capital, while Shanghai is the most populous city by urban area. Its geography features the vast Central Plain, major rivers such as the Yangtze and Yellow River, deserts, subtropical and temperate forests, plateaus, and mountain ranges such as the Himalayas.
Humans first arrived in China during the Paleolithic. By the 2nd millennium BCE, dynastic states had emerged. The 1st millennium BCE saw political turmoil and cultural growth. In 221 BCE, China was unified under the Qin and the succeeding Han dynasty, ushering in two millennia of imperial rule across periods of unity and division. Its achievements include the Silk Road and the invention of gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass. After increased Western political, economic, and philosophical influence, the 1911 Revolution overthrew the empire and established the Republic of China (ROC). The Warlord Era and Chinese Civil War followed, interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War. This ended in a Chinese victory in 1945. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proclaimed the PRC and forced the ROC's retreat to Taiwan. Both sides claim political legitimacy. CCP attempts to advance communism faltered through famine and political turmoil. The reform and opening up that began in 1978 moved China towards a socialist market economy, spurring economic growth.
The PRC is a unitary state with the CCP as its sole ruling party. It is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and a member of many multilateral organizations. China is the world's largest manufacturer and makes up about one-fifth of the global economy. It is the second largest economy on Earth. International organizations have criticized the PRC, alleging authoritarianism and human rights abuses. Possessing a large military and nuclear stockpile, China has been described as a superpower due to its influence in geopolitics, science and technology, manufacturing, economics and culture.
Chinese art and culture has influenced much of Asia. Chinese characters are among the oldest writing systems on Earth, with a literary tradition dating back millennia to the Chinese classics. China is the birthplace of Confucianism and Daoism, which form the traditional three teachings of Chinese philosophy and folk religion alongside Buddhism. Chinese cuisine is diverse and highly regional, with rice as a staple in the south and wheat in the north. It has 60 World Heritage Sites, including the Great Wall and Grand Canal. The Han, mostly speakers of Sinitic languages, are China's dominant ethnicity, although it is home to 55 recognized minorities, including the Hui, Mongols, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Zhuang.
Etymology
The word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century; however, it was not used by the Chinese themselves during this period. Its origin has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to the Sanskrit word Cīna (चिन), used in ancient India. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture from the 3rd century BCE to 4th century CE, including the Mahabharata and the Laws of Manu. In 1655, the missionary Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) or the prior state of Qin. This remains a common etymology, although Indian sources precedes the dynasty, though not the state. Another possible source is the ancient Guizhou polity of Yelang, known as ʐina in Loloish languages.
The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China" (中华人民共和国; Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó). The shorter form of this name is 中国; Zhōngguó, from zhōng ('central' or 'middle') and guó ('state'), a term first used for the demesne of the Western Zhou dynasty. The names of ruling imperial dynasties were typically used to refer to the region and state. In the 1800s, Zhongguo was officially adopted as the name of the country by the Qing dynasty. China is sometimes referred to as mainland China or "the Mainland" when distinguishing it from the Republic of China on Taiwan or the PRC's Special Administrative Regions.
History
Prehistory
Evidence of early humans such as Homo erectus in China dates to the Paleolithic, around 1.7 million years ago, with unconfirmed sites as old as 2 million years ago. Modern Homo sapiens are attested from around 50,000 years ago. Following the end of the Last Glacial Period, in about 8,000 BCE, pottery-making Neolithic cultures emerged. By the 6000s BCE, sedentary agricultural societies had spread across the lower Yellow River basin. These societies became increasingly complex, urbanized, and stratified, but many experienced a population collapse in the late 2000s BCE for unclear reasons.
Ancient China
After 2000 BCE, a Bronze Age culture emerged in the Central Plain, dubbed the Erlitou culture after its main site. Erlitou has been controversially identified with the Xia, the traditionally-accepted first dynasty, but no written records exist to confirm this. The Shang dynasty purportedly succeeded the Xia around 1600 BCE, with its early stages tentatively identified with an expansionist state known archaeologically as the Erligang culture. The historicity of the Late Shang is attested through divinational writings in the oracle bone script. These are the earliest known form of writing in China and the ancestor of modern Chinese characters.
The Shang were overthrown by the Zhou c. 1046 BCE. The Zhou ruled over a vast and loose confederation of vassal states across central China gradually weakened by regional lords. Centralized authority finally collapsed in 771 BCE, giving way to constant regional warfare. During the Eastern Zhou, a multitude of small aristocratic Spring and Autumn period polities evolved into seven territorial Warring States over the following centuries. Literary and philosophical developments of this period include the emergence of various schools of thought, such as Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, and Legalism, alongside Chinese classics like the Analects and the Tao Te Ching.
Imperial China
Classical period
In the 220s BCE, Qin rapidly conquered the other warring states. In 221, its ruler Qin Shi Huang proclaimed himself the first emperor (皇帝; Huángdì) and founded the Qin dynasty. He led an autocratic Legalist state organized in a system of commanderies and counties. The dynasty lasted only fifteen years, falling soon after his death.
Following widespread revolts, the Han dynasty emerged to rule China between 206 BCE and 220 CE. The Han gradually reinstated centralized control, legitimizing their rule through Confucian scholarship. Military expeditions against the Xiongnu, a confederation of nomadic steppe tribes frequently in conflict with the dynasty, expanded Han influence into parts of Central Asia and helped to establish the Silk Road, allowing for trade connections between China and western Eurasia. Contemporaneously, merchants established maritime trade routes linking China, Southeast Asia, and India.
The Han faced widespread uprisings and the emergence of local warlords in the 100s CE. By 220, the empire was split into the Three Kingdoms. These were briefly united by the Jin dynasty in 280, which fell into civil war. Sinicized formerly nomadic peoples who had settled in Northern China, such as the Xiongnu, rebelled and founded new dynasties. These coalesced into the Northern and Southern dynasties in the 400s. During these conflicts, Buddhism was introduced to China via the Silk Road.
Medieval period
After centuries of warfare, China was reunited under the Sui in 589, who constructed the Grand Canal to link Northern and Southern China. The Sui collapsed in the 610s, and were succeeded by the Tang. The Tang dynasty centralized the state and dispatched military expeditions to pacify the surrounding regions. It promoted Buddhism, but through expanding international trade built a heavily cosmopolitan society centered on its capital of Chang'an. It reformed the civil service examinations and oversaw a flourishing of art, poetry, architecture, and scholarship. The 755–763 An Lushan rebellion weakened the Tang, which gradually fragmented before collapsing completely in 907.
The Song dynasty rose to power in 960. It faced military crises, unable to subdue its Sinicized non-Han neighbors, the Khitan-led Liao dynasty and the Tangut-led Western Xia. The consistent focus on defense allowed for a heavily centralized state and military, which made the first military application of gunpowder. The proliferation of printing technology allowed books to become widely available, while the elite class of scholar-officials grew increasingly powerful. Production, population, and trade expanded massively, alongside innovations such as industrial metallurgy and hydraulic machinery. The Song capital Kaifeng was overrun by the Jurchen-led Jin in 1127, forcing the Song to retreat to Southern China. During this period, the revivalist philosophical movement of Neo-Confucianism emerged.
Late imperial period
In 1206, Genghis Khan united the nomadic Mongols to the north under the Mongol Empire. Over the following fifty years, they conquered the Western Xia and the Jin, in addition to their other conquests as far west as Europe. The empire split into separate khanates. In 1271, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan established the Yuan dynasty and subjugated the Song by 1279. The Yuan maintained a Mongol elite culture, but Chinese culture remained largely unchanged.
In the 1340s, central China was devastated by disease, famine, and mass floods along the Yellow River. Various rebellions erupted, leading to a peasant leader declaring himself the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1368. The Ming built a new capital at Beijing, with the Forbidden City as its imperial palace, although the lower Yangtze remained the wealthiest region. Trade grew, and the European colonization of the Americas brought new crops and a massive influx of silver to China. The population doubled, and a growing publishing industry began producing works in vernacular Chinese, including the Four Classic Novels.
The Ming state declined and by the 1600s became unable to contain peasant rebellions. The Manchu to the north declared the Qing dynasty in 1636 and conquered the Ming, killing their last claimant emperor in 1662 and conquering a Ming rump state on Taiwan in 1683. From the late 1600s to the end of the 1700s, the High Qing era saw economic growth and territorial expansion westward, including the conquest of Tibet and much of Central Asia.
European powers fought various wars against the Qing dynasty during the 19th century. These began with the United Kingdom's First Opium War in 1839–1842, which resulted in the first of the "unequal treaties" imposed on the dynasty, which opened treaty ports, allowed Christian missionary activity, and loosened trade restrictions. China faced an economic crisis and internal unrest, and uprisings such as the 1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion resulted in the deaths of millions. Reformist factions of the Qing responded with the Self-Strengthening Movement, seeking to adopt western weapons and technologies, but this had limited impact for much of the empire.
The Qing's defeat by the Empire of Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) resulted in the loss of Taiwan and the growth of both reformist and revolutionary political movements. An imperial push for reform in 1898 was ended after an internal coup, while the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion was defeated by a coalition of foreign powers in 1901. The late Qing dynasty again advanced reforms, but growing revolutionary and anti-Manchu sentiment culminated in the 1911 Revolution. A coalition of revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Qing and declared the Republic of China in 1912.
Republic of China
President Yuan Shikai crushed his main opposition, the Kuomintang, and ruled China as a dictator until his death in 1916, following an abortive attempt to restore the monarchy. During the succeeding Warlord Era, feuding regional warlords and governors took power across China, while Tibet and Mongolia declared independence. The nominal republican government had little control outside Beijing. During this period, New Culture intellectuals and students rebelled against traditional society. A crackdown on a student protest in 1919 led to the May Fourth Movement and further agitation by intellectuals for a cultural and political upheaval, with many embracing Western political ideas such as communism.In the mid-1920s, the Kuomintang allied with the nascent Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and launched the Northern Expedition to reunify China. In 1927, the Kuomintang violent purged the CCP and gained the allegiance of the northern warlords, establishing a new government at Nanjing. The CCP was driven into the countryside and repressed, before regrouping in the northwest.
Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, before launching an invasion of the rest of China in 1937. A renewed coalition between the CCP and Kuomintang fought Japan in what became a theater of World War II, as Japanese forces committed numerous war atrocities against the civilian population and occupied most of China's major cities. After the surrender of Japan in 1945, China became a founding member of the United Nations and regained control over Manchuria and Taiwan. The civil war between the CCP and the Kuomintang resumed the following year.
People's Republic of China
After a string of military victories, CCP chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan and continued to claim legitimacy. The following year, the PRC began to occupy and annex Tibet. The PRC, a people's democratic dictatorship under CCP control, enacted many reforms: it restructured the economy under state control, promoted literacy and women's equality, expanded heavy industry, and promoted land collectivization through the Land Reform Movement, which saw state-tolerated violence against landlords by the peasantry and the death of upwards of a million people.
In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a mass industrialization project which resulted in the Great Chinese Famine and around 30 million deaths. As the Cold War deepened, the PRC grew politically isolated from its former ally, the Soviet Union, as well as the Western Bloc. China detonated its first atomic bomb in 1964. Attempting to reassert control of the CCP after the Great Leap, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, sparking a decade of political violence, crackdowns on perceived counterrevolutionaries, and social upheaval that lasted until Mao's death in 1976.
Deng Xiaoping served as paramount leader from 1978 to 1989. The PRC's reform and opening up during the 1980s and 1990s saw economic liberalization towards a socialist market economy, rapid economic growth, friendlier relations with the West, and crackdowns on political dissent in events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. China shifted away from an agricultural economy and rapidly urbanized, although this led to stark economic inequality between urban and rural areas, as well as environmental deterioration. Since the 1990s, market forces has become China's main economic driver. Paramount leader Xi Jinping, in power since 2012, has launched a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign and has overseen the centralization of political power and the expansion of Chinese economic influence through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Geography
China's geography is highly varied, featuring a dry and mountainous west, alongside both mountains and wide river valleys in the east. Chinese civilization was traditionally centered in the lowlands around its two largest rivers: the Yangtze and the Yellow River, both originating on the Tibetan Plateau. This temperate region is bordered by forest and steppe to the north, alongside the mountainous and subtropical south. China's shoreline spans the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea, all part of the Pacific Ocean. Besides Taiwan, its largest island is Hainan, while Zhoushan is the largest archipelago. Poyang Lake is the largest of the country's many freshwater lakes.
Large mountain ranges in the west, including the Himalayas and Tian Shan, separate China from South and Central Asia. It features both the Turpan Depression, among the deepest points on land, and the high Tibetan Plateau. The world's highest point, Mount Everest (8,848 metres (29,029 ft)), lies on the border with Nepal. China has a wide variety of ore and mineral resources.
Its climate is mainly dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which lead to pronounced temperature differences between winter and summer. In the winter, northern winds coming from high-latitude areas are cold and dry; in summer, southern winds from coastal areas at lower latitudes are warm and moist. Its northwestern deserts receive as little as 50 mm (2.0 in) of rainfall annually, while much of southern China exceeds 1,000 mm (39 in). Much of eastern China is well-suited for agriculture, with two or three crops able to be harvested per year. The south is dominated by rice farming, while the north grows crops such as wheat and maize. In 2021, 12% of global permanent meadows and pastures belonged to China, as well as 8% of global cropland.
Environment
China is one of 17 megadiverse countries, containing a wide variety of forests, shrublands, wetlands, steppes, and deserts, which host (as of 2018) 92,300 known species of plants, animals, and fungi. According to government surveys, China's forest coverage grew from 10% of the overall territory in 1949 to 25% in 2024. The far north contains taiga, which to the south transitions into deciduous forest. South of the Yangtze, mixed conifer and deciduous forest is common, with tropical and subtropical forests farther south.
In the 21st century, China has suffered from environmental deterioration and pollution due to rapid development, alongside the broader effects of climate change. About 11% of its plant species and 21% of its vertebrate species are threatened or endangered due to habitat loss, pollution, and poaching. "Flagship" endangered species such as the giant panda and tiger have received additional funding and protection.
Although China ranks as the highest CO2 emitting country, it only emits 8 tons of CO2 per capita as of 2020, significantly lower than many developed countries. Total greenhouse gas emissions by China are the world's largest. The PRC has prioritized clamping down on pollution, announcing its aims to reach its peak emissions levels before 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
China is the world's leading investor in renewable energy and its commercialization, investing CN¥3.6 trillion in 2022 alone. Traditionally reliant on non-renewable energy sources such as coal, China's adaptation of renewable energy has increased significantly in recent years. In 2025, 54.4% of China's electricity came from coal, while 42% came from clean energy sources. Despite its emphasis on renewables, China remains deeply connected to global oil markets.
Political geography
China is the second-largest country by land area after Russia, and the third- or fourth-largest by total area. Total area figures range from 9,572,900 km2 (3,696,100 sq mi) to 9,596,961 km2 (3,705,407 sq mi). China borders 14 nations, with a combined land border length of 22,117 km (13,743 mi). Its coastline spans approximately 14,500 km (9,000 mi).
The PRC has engaged in 23 border disputes since 1949, of which six are unsettled. It actively disputes several portions of its Himalayan border with India, including the Aksai Chin in Kashmir and most of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It maintains maritime disputes with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and with various countries over the South China Sea Islands, including the Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands.
Politics
The PRC is a unitary state under the absolute leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Since the 1980s, the CCP has called its guiding theories and policies socialism with Chinese characteristics, which it considers an adapted form of Marxism–Leninism that emphasizes a market economy as the primary stage of socialism. The PRC describes itself as a socialist state, and a people's democratic dictatorship. Many academic sources describe it as an authoritarian state, although others dispute this label.
The National People's Congress (NPC) holds the unified powers of the state and oversight over all state organs, with its NPC Standing Committee elected to meet between the annual NPC meetings. Its elections are indirect and the CCP controls nominations. The NPC ostensibly elects positions such as the president, vice president, military chairman, and chief justice, and approves the president's nomination for premier (the head of government). In practice, the CCP leadership chooses candidates for these posts. The premier heads the State Council, which includes 26 ministers, including the heads of ministries and commissions. The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is an advisory body that formally leads the CCP's united front system, which aims to gain support from non-CCP intellectuals, eight minor parties, and people's organizations.
The governance of China is characterized by a high degree of political centralization but significant economic decentralization. Policy instruments or processes are often tested locally before being adapted and applied more widely. Surveys have generally shown that the Chinese public has a high level of satisfaction with the government. These views are generally attributed to the material comforts and security available to large segments of the Chinese as well as the government's responsiveness.
Chinese Communist Party
The CCP is the founding and sole ruling party of the PRC, organized to Leninist principles as a vanguard party. The party's highest body is its National Congress, which mainly consists of members elected by party membership and meets every five years. The National Congress elects the Central Committee, which convenes yearly as the highest party organ between congresses. The Central Committee ostensibly elects the party's top leadership, the Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and the general secretary. In practice, the committee typically approves a slate of candidates created by existing party leadership.
The Politburo usually gathers once a month, while the smaller Politburo Standing Committee is thought to meet weekly. The general secretary holds ultimate power and authority over party and state and serves as the paramount leader of China. The current general secretary is Xi Jinping, who took office on 15 November 2012. The National Congress also elects the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's main disciplinary and anti-corruption organ.
As the CCP and the government itself are closely intertwined, disputes within the party represent the main form of political contention in China. The CCP controls appointments in government bodies, with most senior government officials being CCP members. The appointment of CCP cadres and the leadership of major state-owned enterprises and institutions is managed by the party's Organization Department. The CCP maintains committees on a national and local scale, with about 5.1 million committees at the grassroots level.
Administrative divisions
The PRC is divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions (each with a designated minority group), four direct-administered municipalities, as well as the special administrative regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macau, which hold large amounts of political and economic autonomy. Provinces and autonomous regions are divided into prefectures and prefecture-level cities, which themselves are divided into counties and county-level cities. The PRC claims the ROC's territory, most of which is under the claimed Taiwan Province.
Foreign relations
China is one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the second largest contributor to the United Nations. China has the largest diplomatic network of any country: It has diplomatic relations with 179 United Nations member states and embassies in 174. China is a member of the G20, BRICS, East Asia Summit, APEC, and other intergovernmental organizations.
China is widely described as a superpower due to its influence in geopolitics, technology, manufacturing, economics and culture. Although China moderated its relations with the West during the reform era, its rise in power has brought political tensions with many of its neighbors in Asia and with the United States, the current dominant superpower. Although China is among the United States' largest trade partners, their relationship is tempered by a trade war and strong disagreements over the political status of Taiwan. The PRC maintains the one China principle, recognizing itself as the only legitimate Chinese government and Taiwan as a part of China, which it officially regards as a de jure province.
China's foreign policy is based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which include a principle of non-intervention in other countries' domestic affairs. Per its policy of non-alignment, China has no defense pacts except for its 1961 treaty with North Korea, although it maintains close relationships with neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Russia. The PRC has invested heavily in developing countries across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, creating a system of development banks and loans through the Belt and Road Initiative.