Canada
China Travel and Destination Guide
BACKGROUND INFO
Full Name
People's Republic of China
Capital City
Beijing
Area
9,596,960 sq km
Population
1,286,975,468
Time Zone
GMT/UTC +8
Daylight Saving Start
not in use
Daylight Saving End
not in use
Weights Measures System
Metric
Geography
The third-largest country in the world, China is bounded to the north by the deserts of Mongolia, to the west by the inhospitable Tibetan plateau and the Himalaya, and to the east by the East and South China seas. China's 22 provinces and five autonomous regions are governed from Beijing, along with some 5000 islands. Hong Kong and Macau have returned to the fold as Special Administrative Regions (SAR). Disputed territories are dotted near and far around China's southeast coast. Taiwan - a festering dispute that flares up from time to time - is the best known. Then there's the oil-rich Spratly Island group, which every country in the region wants to suck dry, the Diaoyutai Islands (known as Senkaku to the Japanese), the Paracels (or Xisha, if China gets its way), and the Pescadores (or Penghu). The statistics for population and area refer to mainland China.
Languages
• Mandarin (official)
China's language is officially Mandarin, as spoken in Beijing. The Chinese call it Putonghua. About 70% of the population speak Mandarin, but that's just the tip of the linguistic iceberg. The country is awash with dialects, and dialects within dialects - and few of them are mutually intelligible. Of the seven major strains, Cantonese is the one most likely to be spoken in your local Chinese takeaway.
• Cantonese (other)
Cantonese is the lingua franca of Guangdong, southern Guangxi, Hong Kong and (to an extent) Macau.
• Shanghainese (other)
People
Han Chinese (93%), plus 55 ethnic minorities
Religion
Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism (no stats available); Islam (14 million), Christianity (7 million)
Government Type
Communist Republic
Government Leaders
Hu Jintao
President (head of state)
Country Dialing Code
86
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