Talk:Geography of China

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day... section on August 23, 2004.

Contents 1 Map 2 Meaning of the word "China".. 3 Fourth Largest 4 Who knows this mountain range? 5 Great wall length 6 Borders 7 Gobi Desert 8 Merge/Delete 9 Data source or references of this image 10 Typo in a picture

[edit] Map

The map on this page needs some NPOVing to be like Image:Smaller_map_of_China.png. --Jiang 07:24 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Done. --[So how your going tooday??

That would be me. You see, a lot of the articles had american comparisons, so I wanted to NPOV that. this being the english wikipedia, I added english countries. You will see these comparisons on some articles, but most of them dont have it yet. Earl Andrew 19:21, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning of the word "China"..

The term "China" in this article is obviously referring to the PRC, which is not following the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)#Political NPOV. The set of conventions says

"Wikipedia reflects the neutral reality and considers the term "China" not to coincide with any particular sovereign state or government. In particular, the word "China" should not be used to be synonymously with areas under the current administration of the People's Republic of China or with Mainland China.", and

"Wikipedia treats the Republic of China as a sovereign state with equal status with the People's Republic of China, yet does not address whether they are considered separate nations.".

In my opinion this article should either be rewritten, to refer to China as a region, or have the title changed. — Instantnood 18:16, Feb 17 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fourth Largest

The article says that China is the Fourth largest country in the world after the US. It then states that China is slightly larger than the US. Make up your mind.

Quite correct - I've removed those unnecessary, and self-contradictory, size comparisons. - DavidWBrooks 18:52, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_the_United_States

This link states US is the 3rd largest country in the world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_China

This link states China is the 3rd largest country in the world

Which one is the largest country in the world?

Quote:

Chinanews, Mar. 31 - The page introducing China on the website www.cia.gov of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) shows that China is "slightly smaller than the US" in territory. According to statistics released by CIA, the area of China's territory is 9,596,960 square kilometers while that of the United States is 9,631,418 square kilometers.

This saying disagrees with Chinese people's common sense in geography. Doesn't China rank third in the world behind Russia and Canada in territory, but fourth behind the US?

Investigations find that all other authoritative websites and publications of the US declare that the US's territory is larger than China's. The US national geographic website www.nationalgeographic.com and the electronic encyclopedia produced by Microsoft also make the same statement.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, China has an area of 9,572,900 square kilometers and the US's territory is 9,518,287 square kilometers.

Mr. Wu, spokesman from the Basic Mapping Management Office of the National Territory Mapping Department of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, revealed that the task aiming to confirm the accurate area of the Chinese territory had been completed. It will be clear which country is the third largest in territory when the figure is published at an opportune time

Schrödinger's cat 16:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

There isn't a definite answer as to which one is larger, as there are different ways to measure the area. For example, if you measured the surface area, china would probably be bigger, but when measuring it "the simple way" USA turns out to be bigger. Also, do you count in the lakes? rivers? ponds? islands? overseas territories? disputed territories? the ice in alaska? and the list goes on and on. --HJV 01:30, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Area of a political entity is always counted 'the simple way', by which I assume you mean projecting boundaries onto the earth spheroid and integratinopsojgsoigjfjsigjsfggsigjfg area across the spheroid surface. (Conversely, the 'hard way' would be to integrate area over the 3d surface formed by mountains, etc.). As for the categories of area to include:

 non-dependent-territory islands -- always yes
 rivers, ponds, wholly internal lakes -- always yes
 border lakes (great lakes, caspian sea) -- judgment call
 coastal, 'internal' waters -- judgment call, what matters most is a consistent definition of 'internal'
 territorial sea -- generally no
 contiguous zone, EEZ -- always no
 dependent territories -- debatable but probably not. if anything, quote with and without
 disputed territories -- safest to quote with and without, generally disputed territory is included under a country that has had long-term control
 sea ice -- irrelevant, depends on what sea classification it falls under

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.177.126.183 (talk) 03:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Just because there is not a definite answer, so I suggest to add a disputed tag after the rank number, and list the both answers to the readers. — Schrödinger's cat 16:38, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who knows this mountain range?

In the WikiProject Wikipedia:Nuttall_Encyclopedia_topics, we hit on the "Yung-Ling" mountains,

Yung-Ling is a mountain range running north and south, which forms the eastern buttress of the tableland of Central Asia.

Does anybody know, what the current name of these mountains is? The source is from 1907, and Google doesn't help much. Is it Da Hinggan Ling? Thanks--J heisenberg 15:47, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

i think Yung-Ling = 雲嶺

[edit] Great wall length

Is there a reason why the Great Wall is listed as 3300 km long here? Other sources (including Great Wall of China) put it at ~6350 km. i don't want to change it since i don't know if this is a reference to a particular part of the wall ... --Sbmehta 07:06, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Borders

I summed up measures of each border but got a strange result...

{{#expr:76+470+3380+1533+1416+858+423+4673+2185+1236+523+3605+40+414+1281}} = 22113

According to the article are Chinese Land boundaries: total: 22,143.34 km. What's the point? --Miincee 11:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gobi Desert

The article currently states that the Gobi Desert is "one of the world's largest and hottest", while Gobi Desert states "The Gobi desert is a cold desert", and Geography of Mongolia states extreme temperatures of 38C in the Gobi. The later quoted 45C here is not attributed to any source. Temperatures in the interior of Australia, or the Middle East, or the Sahara, and indeed elsewhere in China, regularly go into the high 40's, and even the low 50's, which would seem to make the claim that the Gobi is one of the hottest dubious at best. High temperatures attributed to Western China would seem to be better attributed to the Tarim Basin & its associated Taklamakan Desert, which indeed has anecdotal high temperatures of 50+C, but which is not considered geologically to be a part of the Gobi. This is supported in the article Gobi Desert in the geography section.

Additionally, List of deserts by area puts the Gobi at #4 for size. I'm proposing this line should be changed to the factual statement "the world's fourth largest desert", with a link to the appropriate Gobi Desert wiki page. Fehrgo 15:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, the reference to the size of the Gobi is better left to the Gobi Desert article. Update made with unsupported statements removed. Fehrgo 15:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge/Delete

THE MAP SHOWING CHINA HISTORIC MACRO AREAS SHOULD NOT BE DELECTED. THE CURRENT CHINA POLITICAL, CULTURAL, ETHNIC CRISES IS HAPPENDING BECAUSE CHINESE GOVERNMENT IS AVOIDING THESE REALITY ABOUT CHINA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korean1manchuria (talk • contribs) 12:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The page Geography of China should be deleted, with the correct sections being merged into the articles georaphy of Taiwan or geography of the PRC. There's no reason why we should have Geography of China (it's like creating an article called Geography in Britain (for the region which is Great Britain and Brittany) and then creating a page called Geography in Great Britain (the Island)). In other words, this is one of the most pointless sets of two pages.User:Spacevezon^talk 16:19, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

PAST, PRESENT, FOR THE FUTURE. CHINESE AND CHINESE GOVERNMENT ARE AFRAID OF TRUTH. IT'S THE TRUTH THAT WILL DESTROY OR DISMANTLE CHINA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korean1manchuria (talk • contribs) 00:55, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Data source or references of this image

Bounds...--59.61.148.206 (talk) 13:15, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

China have been divided by historic macro areas. Thats the truth. China political agenda and China historic agenda are two different situation. Wikipedia should add this map. Its would be very educational for Non-Chinese Past, Present, and for Future China wasn't unified nations. It was separated by many historic macro areas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korean1manchuria (talk • contribs) 12:52, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry. My indefinite word makes you misunderstand. Part of Korean Peninsula and North Vietnam had been controled by China, But south Vietnam not("never firmly control").--117.25.12.85 (talk) 13:32, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry. My indefinite word makes you misunderstand. Korean Peninsula never been controled by China, But instead Koreans or Korean Kingdoms such as Ko-Chosun, Korguryo-Balhae Kingdoms, Koryo-Chosun-Kando territory clearly shows Koreans had firmly control Korean Peninsula and Manchuria region. History, Settlement, Cultural Geography always have been Koreans. Not Chinese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korean1manchuria (talk • contribs) 00:49, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

See History of Korea--220.250.63.35 (talk) 06:59, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

1. The "Chinese plain" (dark yellow) is a well know concept, same for the Han area (yellow), Tibetan plateau, Sichuan isolate topography, Southern hills, Tarim bassin, Steppes, Mandchuria plain, etc. That's de facto topographic areas, which add naturally their human/historical side. Every book about Chinese history talk about the "tibetan tribues", the Mandchou plain peoples, the Sichuan exception (as a stronghold), etc. See : Gernet, Le Monde Chinois, and so so many books. As soon as you had read several books about the whole Chinese history, you can see that all authors are constantly using these macro areas to explain populations, cultures, wars and conquests. I putted those concepts into a map, following well know topographic limits. Simply.

2. For vietnam, the Han, Tang, Ming dynasty are enough to claim some controls for the 2/3 north.

3. For the fact that "montagnard" Korean peoples have controled both sides of the Changbai mountains, look at the Korean-Chinese history.

Accordingly, I restore the map. Thanks. Yug (talk) 06:37, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

MAP CLEARLY SHOWS MANCHURIA BELONGS TO KOREANS. KOREANS CONTROLLED MANCHURIA AND BOTH SIDES BAEKDUSAN/BAEKDU MOUNTAIN. LOCAL/NATIVE WORD IS BAEKDUSAN NOT CHANGAI MOUNTAIN. FOR EXAMPLE, LIKE SAYING KOREAN KIMCHEE WITH CHINESE OR JAPANESE TWIST PRONUNCIATION. IF YOU GOING TO USE THE WORD CORRECTLY ITS CALLED BAEKDUSAN NOT CHANGBAISAN OR MOUNTAIN. —Preceding unsigned comment added by KoreaBaekDooSan (talk • contribs) 07:05, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Typo in a picture

I think there is a typo in the "The Geography of China" .png file (second image) -> "Northeastern Plan". I can't fix it as I lack the software for it (I wouldn't know how to use it anyway :)) ).