China is an Asian country; its capital is Beijing. China dominates a vast portion of the Eurasian continent, encompassing the earth’s highest mountains, largest desert and third-longest river. One of the world’s oldest civilizations, China boasts the longest continuously used written language system, and was the source of pivotal human inventions such as paper, the compass, gunpowder and printing technologies. The Chinese language has more than 100 dialects and is the most commonly spoken language in the world; China’s contributions to literature, science and technology, the visual arts, music, dance, architecture and landscape design have been legion.
Archeological evidence suggests that there may have been humans in China for tens of thousands of years. China has been ruled by successive dynasties, beginning with the bronze-age Xia and continuing through the Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan (established by Mongol emperor Kublai Khan), Ming and the Qing, established by the Manchus in 1644 and lasting until 1912. The last Chinese emperor was Puyi, 2-year-old nephew of the previous emperor Guangxu, placed on the throne in 1908. In January of 1912 the Republic of China was established with Sun Yat-sen as its first provisional president. The politically fragmented China was united in the late 1920s under Chiang Kai-shek. In 1949, after the Sino-Japanese War and a Chinese Civil War, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was formed under the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. China underwent a series of socioeconomic movements—the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s—but with the death of its first-generation leaders the PRC has implemented political and economic reforms that have facilitated rapid economic growth in the 1990s and beyond.
China is a land of great contrasts, with many ancient wonders coexisting side by side with modern, dynamic cities. The country is home to most of the world’s religions, most notably Buddhism and Taoism but also Christianity, Islam and Judaism; philosophically, the country has adhered to Confucianism for thousands of years. Its immense geographic area covers terrain from mountains and plateaus in the north to subtropical areas in the south.