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China has a land mass of 3,706,580 square miles, making it roughly the same area as the continental United States of America. China is in the east of the Asian continent and on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean, bordering with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadzhikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. The climate is extremely diverse; tropical in the south and subarctic in the north. The landscape features mountains, high plateaus, and deserts in the west; plains, deltas, and hills in the east. The highest mountain in Tibet, China is the highest mountain in the world: Mount Qomolangma, towering above all others at 29,035 feet.

China is the world's most populous country with a population estimated at about 1.294 billion by the end of 2003, one-fifth of the world's total. This figure does not include the Chinese living in the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, and Taiwan Province. 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. 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 its Catholic and Protestant forms.

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 Macau. 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.

Mandarin (Putonghua, based on the Beijing dialect) is standard Chinese language.

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