Formal name: The People's Republic
of China (PRC)
Capital: Beijing
Constitution: After the founding of
the PRC, four Constitutions have been formulated successively in
1954, 1975, 1978 and 1982. The present Constitution was adopted in
1982 and amended four times, most recently on March 14, 2004.
Top legislative power: The National
People's Congress (NPC) and its Standing Committee. Representing
the people and all levels of people's congresses in China, the NPC
supervises all state-level institutions. Its powers include
electing the President of China.
Head of State: President Hu Jintao
elected March 15, 2003.
Top administrative body: The State
Council, which is the cabinet or chief administrative body of the
PRC that includes the heads of all governmental agencies. Headed by
Premier Wen Jiabao.
Military: The People's Liberation
Army (PLA) includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Second
Artillery Force. Hu Jintao is chairman of the Central Military
Commission of China, the country's top military agency and
commander of its armed forces.
National flag: Red flag with five
stars.
National emblem: Tiananmen
gatetower under five stars, encircled by ears of grain and with a
gear wheel below.
National anthem: March of the
Volunteers. Decided upon as the provisional national anthem of
the new China on September 27, 1949, at the First Plenary Session
of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC),
the song was officially adopted as the national anthem of the PRC
on December 4, 1982, by the NPC.
National Day: Chinese celebrate
October 1 as National Day in honor of the founding of the People's
Republic of China on October 1, 1949.
Other national holidays: Spring
Festival (the celebration of Chinese New Year, generally between
the last 10-day period of January and mid-February) and
International Labor Day (May 1). Major holidays in China are
occasions for family reunions and traveling. Starting in October
1999, China's three official holidays became "Golden Weeks" each
with seven days vacation made possible by working four extra days
before the commencement of the holiday and afterwards.
Land size: China has a landmass of
9,600,000 sq km, making it roughly the same area as the continental
United States.?
Location: In the east of the Asian
continent, on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean.
Border countries: Korea, Mongolia,
Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadzhikistan, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
Climate: Extremely diverse;
tropical in the south to subarctic in the north.
Geography: Mountains, high
plateaus, and deserts in the west; plains, deltas, and hills in the
east. The highest mountain in China is the highest mountain in the
world: Mount Qomolangma. The mountain towers above all others
at
8,844.43 m.
Animal: The giant panda is
considered a Chinese national treasure. Just over 1,000 survive in
the wild, most of them in Sichuan Province. The giant panda is one
of more than 100 species of wild animals found only in China,
including three endangered monkey species that are almost as rare
as the panda: the black leaf monkey, the Guizhou golden monkey or
snub-nosed monkey and the Yunnan golden monkey.
Flower: China does not have an
"official" national flower, but the tree peony can be regarded as a
national favorite. The tree peony (mudan) received the most votes
in an unofficial survey conducted in 1994 in every district in
China asking people to select a national flower. Other ornamental
plants originating in China include the azalea and rhododendron,
camellia, gardenia, hibiscus, chrysanthemum, etc.
Bird: More bird species live in
China than any other place in the world. Shaanxi Province's red
ibis is also a national treasure. Only some 1,500 of this highly
endangered bird species exist. Other cranes found in China include
the Siberian white, common, black-necked sarus.
Tree: The oldest tree in the world
is China's gingko, which first appeared during the Jurassic Age
some 160 million years ago.
Population: China is the world's
most populous country with a population estimated at about 1.30756
billion by the end of 2005, one-fifth of the world's total. This
figure does not include the Chinese living in the Hong Kong and
Macao Special Administrative Regions, and Taiwan
Province.?
Population density: The population
density is about 135 people per sq km, roughly four times greater
than that of the US.
Population ethnicity: 91.6 percent
of Chinese people are Han. The non-Han population includes 55
ethnic minorities, of which the major groups are the Zhuang,
Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uygur, Yi, Tujia, Mongolian, and Tibetan.
Population distribution: Most of
the population of China lives in the middle and lower reaches of
the Yellow River, Yangtze River and Pearl River valleys, and the
Northeast Plain. In 2000 a "go-west" campaign was launched by the
government to help its relatively backward western and central
areas catch up with more affluent eastern China.
Religions: The number of religious
worshippers in China is estimated at well over 100 million, most of
whom follow Buddhism. Other major religions are Daoism, Islam and
Christianity in both Catholic and Protestant forms.
Languages: Standard Chinese or
Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect, Yue (Cantonese), Wu
(Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang,
Gan, and Hakka dialects, as well as minority languages. In 1958,
the First National People's Congress approved, at its Fifth
Session, the adoption of the Pinyin (Scheme for the Chinese
Phonetic Alphabet) for spelling Chinese names and places in Roman
letters, but the Pinyin system was not popularly used until the
late 1970s. Pinyin is now widely seen in China, and it replaces
earlier Romanization spelling systems.
Political parties: The Communist
Party of China (CPC) is the country's sole political party in
power. Hu Jintao became general secretary of the CPC at its 16th
National Congress in November 2002. Founded in July 1921, the CPC
today has more than 70.8 million members. There are eight other
parties.
Top advisory body: The Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference(CPPCC). Representing all
ethnic groups and a broad range of political and special interest
groups, the CPPCC provides advice on social issues and exercises
democratic supervision over the government.
Administrative divisions: China is
made up of 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four
municipalities directly under the Central Government, and the
special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao. The 23
provinces are Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan,
Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin,
Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan,
Yunnan, Zhejiang; the five autonomous regions are Guangxi, Inner
Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang and Tibet; the four municipalities are
Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Tianjin.
Currency: Renminbi (RMB)/yuan