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大清
Great Qing
Flag of China
Languages  
  Official Chinese, Manchu
  Other various
State Religion: Vulpine paganism,Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion
Other Religion(s): Christianism
Capital: Beijing
Emperor Héngxīng
Chief of state: Hu Jintao
Area: 11,236,118 km²
Population 595,698,213 inhabitants
Currency: Yuan

The Great Qing, also known as China, is a country located in East Asia. China is a monarchy ruled by the Qing dynasty, which exercises jurisdiction over eight autonomous regions (China, Taiwan, West China, Mongolia, Manchuria, Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet). Its capital city is Beijing. At about 10.2 million sq km (3.7 million sq mi), the Great Qing is the world's third largest country by total area and the second largest by land area. Its landscape is diverse, with forest steppes and deserts (the Gobi and Taklamakan) in the dry north near Siberia, and subtropical forests in the wet south close to Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The terrain in the west is rugged and at high altitude, with the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain ranges forming China's natural borders with India and Central Asia. In contrast, mainland China's eastern seaboard is low-lying and has a 14,500-km (9000 mi) long coastline bounded on the southeast by the South China Sea and on the east by the East China Sea beyond which

China 1820

Map of China in 1820. The borders are the same of today's.

lie Taiwan, Korea and Japan.

The ancient Chinese civilization—one of the world's earliest—flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River which flows through the North China Plain. For more than 6000 years, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies (also known as dynasties). The first of these dynasties was the Xia (approx 2000BC) but it was the later Qin Dynasty that first unified China in 221 BC. The ruling dynasty, the Qing, established itself in 1644 with the overthrow of the short-lived Shun Dynasty, established after the end of the Ming Dynasty.

After the introduction of economic reforms in 1895, China became the world's fastest growing major economy,currently being the world's largest exporter and second largest importer of goods. China is the world's fifth largest economy by both nominal GDP and purchasing power parity (PPP) and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is also a member of formal/informal multilateral organizations including the WTO, APEC, BRIC, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and G-20. China has the world's largest standing army with the second-largest defense budget. China has been characterized as a potential superpower by a number of academics, military analysts, and public policy and economics analysts.

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