Quick Facts

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  Education

  The Chinese Constitution requires that all Chinese children receive nine years of compulsory education, including six years of primary school and three years of junior middle school.

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  Land and Mineral Resources

  The composition and distribution of China’s land resources have three major characteristics: (1) variety in type -- cultivated land, forests, grasslands, deserts and tideland; (2) more mountains and plateaus than flatlands and basins; (3) unbalanced distribution: farmland mainly concentrates in the east, grasslands largely in the west and north, and forests mostly in the far northeast and southwest.

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  Rivers and Lakes

  China abounds in rivers. More than 1,500 rivers each drain 1,000 square kilometers or larger areas. More than 2,700 billion cubic meters of water flow along these rivers, 5.8% of the world’s total.

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  China’s History

  China, one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, has a recorded history of nearly 4,000 years.

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  People

  China is a unified nation consisting of many different ethnic groups. Fifty-six different ethnic groups make up the great Chinese national family.

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  Geography

  The People’s Republic of China is located in the eastern part of the Asian continent, on the western Pacific rim.