THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
"The immense population of China, the richness of its soil, the variety of its product, the
vast extent of its territory, and the facility of communication by land and water, the activity of its inhabitants, all united to render this nation the most commercial in the world..." Abbe Huc, The Chinese Empire, 1859.
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is the world's most populous country. It lies roughly within the same latitudes as the United States. Its land area, about 3.7 million square miles (9.6 million square kilometres), is the third largest in the world, after the USSR and Canada. The country slopes down from the high mountains of Tibet and Central Asia to the Pacific coast, with three principal river systems, the Huanghe (Yellow River), the Changjiang (Yangtze) and the Xihe* (West River) descending to the coastal plains in a generally easterly direction. The Huanghe is known as "China's sorrow", due to its high propensity to flood. It carries the largest volume of silt of any of the world's rivers. 1600 million tons of silt per year enter the lower reaches: a quarter goes into the bed, half into the delta and a quarter into the sea. Over the centuries the silt has raised the river bed above the level of agricultural land for many hundreds of square miles on either side of the river, and the inhabitants depend on the sound maintenance of the dikes for protection against the threat of flooding.
The topography is extremely varied. Less than one-sixth of the country is suitable for agriculture and this lies mainly in the eastern third, which is relatively flat though interspersed with mountain ranges. In the west are the mountains of the Qinghai/Tibet plateau (over two-thirds of China is mountainous) and the deserts of Xinjiang. There are large areas of semi-arid grassland in the northeast. The climate is affected by the monsoon cycle. Temperatures vary from cool winters and hot summers in the southeast to extremely cold winters and hot summers in the north and the interior. Rainfall is heaviest in the southern coastal areas, diminishing gradually northward and westward towards the vast areas of desert and semi-arid land.
China has large energy and mineral resources but also problems of uneven distribution and poor quality. The eastern seaboard and the northeast which account for 73% of industrial output have barely 10% of total energy resources. Coal is plentiful in northern China but less so in the south. Water resources are ample but are in most cases remote from industrial centres, and the seasonal variation in river flow causes problems. 70% of hydroelectric power is generated in the southwest. Although unexploited reserves of crude oil, including those offshore, are thought to be extensive, reserves currently exploited are viscous with a high proportion of heavy distillates. Iron ore reserves are abundant but have a low iron content. China is well provided with manganese and many alloying metals essential for the development of the steel industry. It probably has the world's largest reserves of tungsten (wolfram). Resources of tin, mercury and antimony offer considerable development and export potential. China also has reserves of uranium, but is deficient in chrome, nickel, cobalt and copper.
The 1982 national census gave the population of the PRC as 1,008 million, of whom 80% live in rural areas. Current policy aims at limiting annual natural population growth to 13 per 1000 and ensuring that the population in the year 2000 does not exceed 1200 million. In order to achieve this target a one child per couple policy, backed up by a series of formidable incentives and penalties has been instituted. Nearly nine-tenths of the people live in the eastern third of the country, where in some areas the density of population exceeds 1,000 persons per square mile. Some 6% of the population are ethnic minorities living for the most part in the thinly populated peripheral areas. There are 55 such groups. Most numerous are the Zhuang in Guangxi, the Uygurs in Xinjiang and the Mongols in Inner Mongolia. Birth control policies are less strictly applied in minority areas.
*Chinese names rendered in the pinyin system, now the standard method of transliteration a guide to pinyin is attached.
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