...ude Macau, located near Hong Kong on Chinas southern coast, hich is a Chinese territory administered by Portugal. Macau is scheduled to return to Chinese administration in 1999. The capital of China is Beijing the countrys most populous urban center is Shanghai.More than one-fifth of the orlds total population lives ithin Chinas borders. China gave birth to one of the orlds earliest civilizations and has a recorded history that dates from some 3500 years ago. Zhongguo, the Chinese name for the country, means central land, a reference to the Chinese belief that their country as the geographical center of the earth and the only true civilization. By the 19th century China had become a politically and economically eak nation, dominated by foreign poers.China underent many changes in the first half of the 20th century. The imperial government as overthron and in the chaotic years that folloed, to groupsthe Kuomintang KMT and the Communistsstruggled for control of the country. In 1949 the Communists on control of China. The government of the Republic of China, led by the KMT, fled to Taian. The accession of the Communist government in 1949 stands as one of the most important events in Chinese history in a remarkably short period of time radical changes ere effected in both the Chinese economy and society. Since the 1970s China has cast off its self-imposed isolation from the international community and has sought to modernize its economic structure.LAND AND RESOURCES China encompasses a great diversity of landscapes and a corresponding variety of natural resources. Generally speaking, Chinas higher elevations are found in the est, here some of the orlds highest mountain ranges are located. Three of these, the Tien Shan, Kunlun Mountains, and Qin Ling, date from an episode of Paleozoic mountain building orogeny that began late in the Carboniferous period and ended in the Permian period, hen all of the orlds landmasses had dran together to form a single supercontinent, Pangaea see Geology The Geologic Time Scale. A fourth, the Himalayas, is of more recent origin. It formed hen sediments that had been deposited in a Mesozoic sea, the Tethys, ere squeezed together and lifted up by the collision of India ith Eurasia, an event that began during the Oligocene epoch of the Tertiary period, some 40 million years ago. In the present or Recent epoch of the Quaternary period, tectonic activity has taken the form of devastating earthquakes that tend to occur in a broad arc extending from the estern edge of the Sichuan Basin northeast toard Bo Hai, the gulf on the northern shore of the Yello Sea. The countrys numerous mountain ranges enclose a series of plateaus and basins and furnish a notable ealth of ater and mineral resources. A broad range of climatic types, from the subarctic to tropical, and including large areas of alpine and desert habitats, supports a magnificent array of plant and animal life.Mountains occupy about 43 percent of Chinas land surface mountainous plateaus account for another 26 percent and basins, predominantly hilly in terrain and located mainly in arid regions, cover approximately 19 percent of the area. Only 12 percent of the total area may be classed as plains.Rivers and Lakes All the major river systems of China, including the three longestthe Yangtze, Huang He, and Xi Jiangflo in a generally estern to eastern direction to the Pacific Ocean. In all, about 50 percent of the total land area drains to the Pacific. Only about 10 percent of the countrys area drains to the Indian and Arctic oceans. The remaining 40 percent has no outlet to the sea and drains to the arid basins of the est and north, here the streams evaporate or percolate to form deep underground ater reserves principal among these streams is the Tarim.The northernmost major stream of China is the Amur River Heilong Jiang, hich forms most of the northeastern boundary ith Russia. The Songhua and Liao rivers and their tributaries drain most of the Manchurian Plain and its surrounding highlands. The major river of North China is the Huang He. It is traditionally referred to as Chinas Sorro because, throughout Chinese history, it has periodically devastated large areas by flooding. The river is diked in its loer course, and its bed is elevated above the surrounding plain as a result of the accumulation of silt. The river rises in the marginal highlands of the Tibetan Plateau and follos a circuitous course to the Bo Hai an arm of the Yello Sea, draining an area more than tice the size of France. The Yangtze River of central China has a discharge more than ten times that of the Huang He. The longest river in Asia, it has a vast drainage basin. The Yangtze rises near the source of the Huang He and enters the sea at Shanghai. It is a major transportation artery.Serving the major port of Guangzhou Canton are the estuarine loer reaches of the Xi Jiang, the most important river system of southern China. The river, hich has numerous tributaries and distributaries, has a discharge three times as great as that of the Huang He.Most of the important lakes hu of China lie along the middle and loer Yangtze Valley. The to largest in the middle portion are Dongting Hu and Poyang Hu. In summer these lakes increase their areas by to to three times and serve as reservoirs for excess ater. Tai Hu is the largest of several lakes in the Yangtze delta, and Hongze Hu and Gaoyou Hu lie just to the north of the delta.Saline lakes, many of considerable size, abound in the Tibetan Plateau. The largest is the marshy Qinghai Hu in the less elevated northeast, but several others nearly as large occur on the high plateau. In the arid northest and in the Mongolian Steppe are a number of large lakes, most of hich are also saline principal among these are Lop Nur and Bosten Hu east of the Tarim Pendi. Ulansuhai Nur, hich is fed by the Huang He, is in Inner Mongolia Hulun Nur lies est of the Da Hinggan Ling in Manchuria.More than 2000 reservoirs have been constructed throughout the nation, primarily for irrigation and flood control. Most are small, but the largest, the Longmen reservoir on the Huang He, has a capacity of 35.4 billion cu m 1250 billion cu ft.Plant Life As a result of the ide range of climates and topography, China is rich in plant species. Most of the original vegetation has been removed, hoever, during centuries of settlement and intensive cultivation. Natural forests are generally preserved only in the more remote mountain areas.Dense tropical rain forests are found in the region south of the Xi Jiang valley. These forests consist of broadleaf evergreens, some more than 50 m more than 160 ft tall, intermixed ith palms. An extensive region of subtropical vegetation extends north to the Yangtze Valley and est to the Tibetan Plateau. This zone is especially rich in species, including evergreen oak, ginkgo, bamboo, pine, azalea, and camellia. Also found are forests ith laurel and magnolia and a dense undergroth of smaller ...
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