History

With a recorded history dating back some 5,000 years China was home to one of the world's earliest civilisations. In the 21 st century B.C, Qin Shihuang established China's first centralised autocracy, the Qin Dynasty, thereby ushering Chinese history into feudalism, which endured in a succession of dynasties until the Opium War of 1840.

In the early 1200's, the Mongols occupied China, led by Genghis Khan. Kublai Khan, his grandson, established the Yuan dynasty, making the Mongolians the first foreign people to rule China. By the mid-1300s, the Yuan dynasty gave way to the Ming dynasty. Then in the mid-1600s, Manchurian troops overthrew the Ming dynasty to establish the Qing dynasty.

The revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-sen toppled the rule of the Qing Dynasty, putting an end to more than 2,000 years of feudalism. However, war with Japan and a protracted civil war led to the collapse of the Nationalist government and victory for Communist's under the inspired leadership of Mao Zedong. The People's Republic of China was founded on October 1 st , 1949.

Today, China is implementing reform and open polices and has established a socialist market economy.

Geography

Located in Eastern Asia, China is bordered by the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the South China Sea. Land borders include North Korea and Vietnam. It is a vast country covering some nine and a half million square kilometres making it the world's fourth-largest country (after Russia, Canada, and the U.S).

The landscape is incredibly diverse and includes deserts, mountains and fertile river basins. Much of western China is mountainous with the Himalayan, Tian and Pamir ranges dominating the landscape. Western China also has vast areas of desert while Central China is mostly mountainous.

Rivers play a major role in China, both for transportation and for irrigation. Much of the northern wheat fields and southern rice fields are irrigated from rivers. The mighty Yangtze River (the world 3 rd longest river) acts as unofficial divide between North and South.

China is blessed with an abundance of natural resources including coal, iron, ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminium, lead, zinc and uranium. There is also enormous potential for the exploitation of hydroelectric power.

The country is so vast and the terrain is so varied that climates differ from region to region. In the Yangtze and Huaihe river valleys in the central part of China, there are four distinctive seasons. Generally speaking the climate is dominated by dry seasons and wet monsoons, which make for clear temperature differences in winter and summer. April-May & September-October are perhaps the best times to visit most parts of the country.

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