HISTORY

China is the home of one of the world's oldest civilizations, but it has only recently
become a "modern" nation. In the last 20 years, China has changed faster than any
other country in the world.

Chinese history is divided into dynasties, each of which marks the period when a line of
emperors ruled. The first empire was the Qin dynasty and began in 221 B.C. The last
emperor was overthrown in 1912, and China became a republic. The communist
government began its rule in 1949 following a civil war with the Chinese Nationalists.

Ancient China was a land of invention. For centuries, China was way ahead of most
other countries in science and technology, astronomy, and math. The Chinese invented
paper, the magnetic compass, printing, porcelain, silk, and gunpowder, among other
things.

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. With a
population of over 1.381 billion, it is the world's most populous state.[15] The state is governed by
the Communist Party of China based in the capital of Beijing.[16]It exercises jurisdiction over
22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled
municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin,Shanghai, and Chongqing), two mostly self-governing special
administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau), and claims sovereignty over Taiwan. The country's
major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong
Kong. China is a great power and a major regional power within Asia, and has been characterized as
a potential superpower.[17][18]

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second largest state by
land area,[19] and either thethird or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of
measurement.[i] China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and
the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south.
TheHimalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much
of South and Central Asia. TheYangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world,
respectively, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's
coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by
the Bohai, Yellow, East China, and South China seas.

China is one of the cradles of civilization, with its known history beginning with an ancient civilization
one of the world's earliest that flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China
Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies known
as dynasties. Since 221 BC, when the Qin Dynasty first conquered several states to form a Chinese
empire, the state has expanded, fractured and reformed numerous times. The Republic of
China (ROC) replaced thelast dynasty in 1912, and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it
was defeated by the Communist Party of China in theChinese Civil War. The Communist Party
established the People's Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, while the ROC government
relocated to Taiwan with its present de facto temporary capital in Taipei. Both the ROC and PRC
continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China.

China had the largest economy in the world for most of the past two thousand years, during which it
has seen cycles of prosperity and decline.[20][21] Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978,
China has become one of the world's fastest-growing major economies. As of 2014, it is the world's
second-largest economy by nominal GDP and largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). China is
also the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. [22] China is a
recognizednuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest
defense budget.[23][24] The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as
a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous
formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), the BCIM and the G-20.