Formal name: 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 8,848 m or
29,035 feet.
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, hooded, white-naped, and
demoiselle.
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 1.294 billion by the
end of 2004, 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 U.S.
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
67 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