Geography and Environment of China

Occupying an area of about 3.7 million square miles, the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) is the third-largest country in the world, after Canada and Russia. It shares borders with North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. Hong Kong and Macau (Aomen), situated on China’s southern coast, are now Special Administrative Regions of the P.R.C. Two-thirds of China’s area is mountainous or semidesert; only about one-tenth is cultivated. Ninety percent of its people live on one-sixth of the land, primarily in the fertile plains and deltas of the east.

Detailed geography