中华人民共和国驻特立尼达和多巴哥共和国大使馆经济商务处

Economic and Commercial Office of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago

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Geography

China is situated in eastern Asia, bounded by the Pacific in the east. The third largest country in the world, next to Canada and Russia, it has an area of 9.6 million square kilometers, or one-fifteenth of the world's land mass. It begins from the confluence of the Heilong and Wusuli rivers (135 degrees and 5 minutes east longitude) in the east to the Pamirs west of Wuqia County in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (73 degrees and 40 minutes east longitude) in the west, about 5,200 kilometers apart; and from the midstream of the Heilong River north of Mohe (53 degrees and 31 minutes north latitude) in the north to the southernmost island Zengmu'ansha in the South China Sea (4 degrees and 15 minutes north latitude), about 5,500 kilometers apart.

The border stretches over 22,000 kilometers on land and the coastline extends well over 18,000 kilometers, washed by the waters of the Bohai, the Huanghai, the East China and the South China seas. The Bohai Sea is the inland sea of China.

There are 6,536 islands larger than 500 square meters, the largest is Taiwan, with a total area of about 36,000 square kilometers, and the second, Hainan. The South China Sea Islands are the southernmost island group of China.

Introduction
 
Located in East Asia, on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has a land area of about 9.6 million sq km, and is the third-largest country in the world, next only to Russia and Canada.

From north to south, the territory of China measures some 5,500 km, stretching from the center of the Heilongjiang River north of the town of Mohe (latitude 53° 30’ N) to the Zengmu Reef at the southernmost tip of the Nansha Islands (latitude 4° N). When north China is still covered with snow, people in south China are busy with spring plowing. From west to east, the nation extends about 5,200 km from the Pamirs (longitude 73° 40’E) to the confluence of the Heilongjiang and Wusuli rivers (longitude 135° 05’ E), with a time difference of over four hours. When the Pamirs are cloaked in night, the morning sun is shining brightly over east China. China has land borders 22,800 km long, with 15 contiguous countries: Korea to the east; the People’s Republic of Mongolia to the north; Russia to the northeast; Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan and Tajikistan to the northwest; Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan to the west and southwest; and Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar to the south. Across the seas to the east and southeast are the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Chinese mainland is flanked to the east and south by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas, with a total maritime area of 4.73 million sq km. The Bohai Sea is China’s continental sea, while the Yellow, East China and South China seas are marginal seas of the Pacific Ocean. A total of 5,400 islands dot China’s vast territorial waters. The largest of these, with an area of about 36,000 sq km, is Taiwan, followed by Hainan with an area of 34,000 sq km. Diaoyu and Chiwei islands, located to the northeast of Taiwan Island, are China’s easternmost islands. The many islands, islets, reefs and shoals on the South China Sea, known collectively as the South China Sea Islands, are subdivided into the Dongsha, Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha island groups.

Topography
 
China’s topography is varied and complicated, with towering mountains, basins of different sizes, undulating plateaus and hills, and flat and fertile plains.

A bird’s-eye view of China would indicate that China’s terrain descends in four steps from west to east.

The top of this four-step “staircase” is the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Averaging more than 4,000 m above sea level, it is often called the “roof of the world.” Rising 8,848 m above sea level is Mt. Qomolangma, the world’s highest peak and the main peak of the Himalayas.

The second step includes the Inner Mongolia, Loess and Yunnan-Guizhou plateaus, and the Tarim, Junggar and Sichuan basins, with an average elevation of between 1,000 m and 2,000 m.

The third step, about 500-1,000 m in elevation, begins at a line drawn around the Greater Hinggan, Taihang, Wushan and Xuefeng mountain ranges and extends eastward to the coast. Here, from north to south, are the Northeast Plain, the North China Plain and the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain. Interspersed amongst the plains are hills and foothills.

To the east, the land extends out into the ocean, in a continental shelf, the fourth step of the staircase. The water here is less than 200 m deep

Land and Mineral Resources
  
The composition and distribution of China’s land resources have three major characteristics: (1) variety in type--cultivated land, forests, grasslands, deserts and tideland; (2) many more mountains and plateaus than flatlands and basins; (3) unbalanced distribution: farmland mainly concentrated in the east, grasslands largely in the west and north, and forests mostly in the far northeast and southwest.

In China today, 94.97 million ha of land are cultivated, mainly in the Northeast Plain, the North China Plain, the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain, the Pearl River Delta Plain and the Sichuan Basin. The fertile black soil of the Northeast Plain is ideal for growing wheat, corn, sorghum, soybeans, flax and sugar beets. The deep, brown topsoil of the North China Plain is planted with wheat, corn, millet, sorghum and cotton. The Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain’s many lakes and rivers make it particularly suitable for paddy rice and freshwater fish, hence its designation of “land of fish and rice.” This area also produces large quantities of tea and silkworms. The purplish soil of the warm and humid Sichuan Basin is green with crops in all four seasons, including paddy rice, rapeseed and sugarcane.

Forests blanket 133.7 million ha of China. The Greater Hinggan, the Lesser Hinggan and the Changbai mountain ranges in the northeast are China’s largest natural forest areas. Major tree species found here include conifers, such as Korean pine, larch and Olga Bay larch, and broadleaves such as white birch, oak, willow, elm and Northeast China ash. Major tree species of the southwest include the dragon spruce, fir and Yunnan pine, as well as precious teak trees, red sandalwood, camphor trees, nanmu and padauk. Often called a “kingdom of plants,” Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan Province is a rarity in that it is a tropical broadleaf forest playing host to more than 5,000 plant species.

Grasslands in China cover an area of 400 million ha, stretching more than 3,000 km from the northeast to the southwest. They are the centers of animal husbandry. The Inner Mongolian Prairie is China’s largest natural pastureland, and home to Sanhe horses, Sanhe cattle and Mongolian sheep. The famous natural pasturelands north and south of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang are ideal for stock breeding. The famous Ili horses and Xinjiang fine-wool sheep are raised here.

China’s cultivated lands, forests and grasslands are among the world’s largest in terms of sheer area. But due to China’s large population, the areas of cultivated land, forest and grassland per capita are small, especially in the case of cultivated land—less than 0.08 ha per capita, or only one third of the world’s average.

China is rich in mineral resources, and all the world’s known minerals can be found here. To date, geologists have confirmed reserves of 153 different minerals, putting China third in the world in total reserves. Proven reserves of energy sources include coal, petroleum, natural gas, and oil shale; and radioactive minerals include uranium and thorium. China’s coal reserves total 1,007.1 billion tons, mainly distributed in north China, with Shanxi and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region taking the lead. Petroleum reserves are mainly in northwest and also in northeast China, north China and the continental shelves in east China. Proven reserves of ferrous metals include iron, manganese, vanadium and titanium. China’s 45.9 billion tons of iron ore are mainly distributed in northeast, north and southwest China. The Anshan-Benxi Area in Liaoning, east Hebei, and Panzhihua in Sichuan are major iron producers. China has the world’s largest reserves of tungsten, tin, antimony, zinc, molybdenum, lead, mercury and other nonferrous metals; its reserves of rare earth metals far exceed the total for the rest of the world.

Rivers
  
China abounds in rivers. More than 1,500 rivers each drain 1,000 sq km or larger areas. More than 2,700 billion cu m of water flow along these rivers, 5.8 percent of the world’s total. Most of the large rivers find their source in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and as a result China is rich in water-power resources, leading the world in hydropower potential, with reserves of 680 million kw.

China’s rivers can be categorized as exterior and interior systems. The catchment area for the exterior rivers that empty into the oceans accounts for 64 percent of the country’s total land area. The Yangtze, Yellow, Heilongjiang, Pearl, Liaohe, Haihe, Huaihe and Lancang rivers flow east, and empty into the Pacific Ocean. The Yarlungzangbo River in Tibet, which flows first east and then south into the Indian Ocean, boasts the Grand Yarlungzangbo Canyon, the largest canyon in the world, 504.6 km long and 6,009 m deep. The Ertix River flows from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the Arctic Ocean. The catchment area for the interior rivers that flow into inland lakes or disappear into deserts or salt marshes makes up 36 percent of China’s total land area. Its 2,179 km make the Tarim River in southern Xinjiang China’s longest interior river.

The Yangtze is the largest river in China, and the third- longest in the world, next only to the Nile in northeast Africa and the Amazon in South America. It is 6,300 km long, and has a catchment area of 1.809 million sq km. The middle and lower Yangtze River’s warm and humid climate, plentiful rainfall and fertile soil make the area an important agricultural region. Known as the “golden waterway,” the Yangtze is a transportation artery linking west and east. The Yellow River is the second-largest river in China, 5,464 km in length, with a catchment area of 752,000 sq km. The Yellow River valley was one of the birthplaces of ancient Chinese civilization. It has lush pastureland and abundant mineral deposits. The Heilongjiang River is north China’s largest. It has a total length of 4,350 km, of which 3,101 km are within China. The Pearl River is the largest river in south China, with a total length of 2,214 km. In addition to those endowed by nature, China has a famous man-made river—he Grand Canal, running from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou in the south. Work first began on the Grand Canal as early as in the fifth century B.C. It links five major rivers—the Haihe, Yellow, Huaihe, Yangtze and Qiantang. With a total length of 1,801 km, the Grand Canal is the longest as well as the oldest man-made waterway in the world.

China's Seas
  
China borders on 4 sea areas, namely Bohai area, Yellow sea area, East China sea area and South sea area together with Pacific sea area to the east of Taiwan. All the China sea areas are rich in resources, vast in territory, proper in geographical location and appropriate in climate. And also they have rich resources of ocean fishery, inter-tidal beach, undersea mineral, coastal salt and ocean powers. The natural size of china seas is up to 4.727 million square kilometers, about half of the size of the land space of China. China coastline is about 18 thousand kilometers long, along which are more than 6,500 islands, 160 gulfs and bays, over 700 harbors and ports (including over 300 deepwater ports). The inter-tidal beach occupies a space of 20 thousand square kilometers, which has great potentials for development. With the fine conditions for development, which are provided by the sea, the coastal regions goes rapidly in the social and economic development and they have become a populated area with active economies centering there. In the year of 1997, to total value of sea industry was about RMB 310.4 billion Yuan, among which the aquatic products accounts for 156.9 billion Yuan, crude oil and natural gas 24.8 billion Yuan, coastal sand mineral 88 million Yuan, sea salt industry 79.3 billion Yuan, ship-building 22.8 billion Yuan, sea transportation 52.2 billion Yuan and international tours and travels along the sea 45.8 billion Yuan. The Chinese coastal continental slope stretch into the sea widely with nearly 10 thousand oceanic living species and the costal inter-tidal beach is the best area for developing marine farming. According to the estimation by relevant departments, the effective exploration size of the Chinese coastal continental slope together with the southern part of the South Sea is 1 million square kilometers, the total volume of crude oil reserve is about 15-40 billion tons, natural gas reserve is about 100 thousand cubic meters, sea energy reserve is about 431 million KW and the theoretical reserve of the sea energy is about 630 million KW.

Fauna and Flora

  
China is one of the countries with the greatest diversity of wildlife in the world. There are more than 4,400 species of vertebrates, more than 10 percent of the world’s total. There are nearly 500 animal species, 1,189 species of birds, more than 320 species of reptiles and 210 species of amphibians. Wildlife peculiar to China includes such well-known animals as the giant panda, golden-haired monkey, South China tiger, brown-eared pheasant, white-flag dolphin, Chinese alligator and red-crowned crane, totaling more than 100 species. The giant panda is an especially attractive sight. Heavily built, it has a docile disposition, and is delightfully adorable. The 1.2-m-tall red-crowned crane is a snow-white migratory bird. A distinctive patch of red skin tops its grey-brown head, hence its name. The white-flag dolphin is one of only two species of freshwater whale in the world. In 1980, a male white-flag dolphin was caught for the first time in the Yangtze River, which aroused great interest among dolphin researchers worldwide.

Species of arbor is considered as one of the oldest and rarest plants in the world. The golden larch, one of only five species of rare garden trees in the world, grow in the mountain areas in the Yangtze River valley. Its coin-shaped leaves on short branches are green in spring and summer, turning yellow in autumn. China is home to more than 2,000 species of edible plants and 3,000 species of medicinal plants. Ginseng from the Changbai Mountains, safflowers from Tibet, Chinese wolfberry from Ningxia and notoginseng from Yunnan and Guizhou are particularly well-known Chinese herbal medicines. There is a wide variety of flowering plants. A flower indigenous to China, the elegant and graceful peony is treasured as the “color of the nation and the scent of heaven.” Three famous species of flowers--the azalea, fairy primrose and rough gentian--grow in southwest China. During the flowering period, mountain slopes covered with flowers in a riot of colors form a delightful contrast with undulating ridges and peaks.

In a concerted effort to protect the nation’s zoological and botanical resources, and save species close to extinction, China has established 1.146 nature reserves to protect forests and wildlife, with a total area of 88.13 million ha. The 15 nature reserves in China, namely, Sichuan’s Wolong and Jiuzhaigou, Jilin’s Changbai Mountains, Guangdong’s Dinghu Mountains, Guizhou’s Fanjing Mountains, Fujian’s Wuyi Mountains, Hubei’s Shennongjia, Inner Mongolia’s Xilingol, Xinjiang’s Mt. Bogda, Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna, Jiangsu’s Yancheng, Zhejiang’s Tianmu Mountains Nanji and Islands Guizhou’s Maolan and Heilongjiang’s Fenglin, have joined the “International People and Bio-sphere Protection Network.” Heilongjiang’s Zhalong, Jilin’s Xianghai, Hunan’s Dongting Lake, Jiangxi’s Poyang Lake, Qinghai’s Bird Island, Hainan’s Dongzhai Harbor and Hong Kong’s Mai Po have been included in the listing of the world’s important wetlands.


(Information by Network Center of MOFCOM)
(News source: English Website of Ministery of Commerce)