Chinese Civilization 2009-10-03 (2 of 8)

Copyrights of this video belong to the People's Republic of China, the municipality of Beijing, the National Tourism Administration of the People's Republic of China and the Beijing Tourism Administration.

The People's Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China, is a country in East Asia. It is the most populous state in the world with over 1.3 billion people. China is ruled by the Communist Party of China (CPC) under a single-party system. The PRC exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two highly autonomous special administrative regions (SARs) - Hong Kong and Macau. The PRC's capital is Beijing.

At about 9.6 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles), the PRC is the world's third- or fourth-largest country by total area, and the second largest by land area. Its landscape is diverse, with forest steppes and deserts (the Gobi and Taklamakan) in the dry north near Mongolia and Russia's Siberia, and subtropical forests in the wet south close to Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The terrain in the west is rugged and at high altitude, with the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain ranges forming China's natural borders with India and Central Asia. In contrast, mainland China'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 Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.

The ancient Chinese civilization—one of the world's earliest—flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River which flows through the North China Plain. For more than 4,000 years, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies (also known as dynasties). The first of these dynasties was the Xia (approx 2000BC) but it was the later Qin Dynasty that first unified China in 221 BC.

Since the introduction of market-based economic reforms in 1978, China has become the world's fastest growing major economy, the world's largest exporter and second largest importer of goods. Rapid industrialization has reduced its poverty rate from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001. Moreover, China is a major power and the world's third largest economy nominally and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as being a member of multilateral organizations including the WTO, APEC, G-20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army with the second-largest defense budget. China has been characterized as a potential superpower by a number of academics, military analysts, and public policy and economics analysts.

中国，古时通常泛指中原地区，与中华中夏中土中州含义相同。古代华夏族、汉族建国于黄河流域一带，以为居天下之中，故称中国。后来成为我国的专用的简称。1949年10月­1日起，国名全称为中华人民共和国。陆地面积9600000平方公里，人口13亿（2008），首都北京。

中文名称： 中华人民共和国
英文名称： The People's Republic of China(P.R.C.)
简称： 中国
所属洲： 亚洲
首都： 北京
主要城市： 北京，上海，香港
国庆日： 10月1日
国歌： 《义勇军进行曲》
国家代码： CHN
官方语言： 汉语普通话
货币： 人民币
时区： 东8区
政治体制： 人民代表大会制度
国家领袖： 胡锦涛，吴邦国，温家宝
人口数量： 13亿人(2008年)
人口密度： 132人/平方公里(2008年)
主要民族： 汉族
国土面积： 约960万平方公里
GDP总计： 44022亿美元(2008年)
人均GDP： 3315美元(2008年)
国际电话区号： +86
国际域名缩写： .cn
道路通行： 靠右行驶或靠右通行

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