China
The world's most populous nation reborn as an economic superpower
China is a civilization-state of continental scale, the world's second-most populous country and the second-largest economy, whose rise has reshaped global trade and power. Spanning from the Pacific coast to the high Tibetan Plateau, it contains within its borders deserts, megacities, river deltas, and the planet's highest mountains. Few places hold such a long, unbroken cultural thread, a written language and statecraft running back more than three thousand years, now fused with the steel-and-glass dynamism of cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen. China today is at once the workshop of the world and an ancient empire reasserting itself.
The land tilts from the towering west to the populous east. The Tibetan Plateau, the Roof of the World, gives rise to the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, the great arteries of Chinese civilization, while the Himalaya along the southern frontier culminate in Mount Everest, at 8,848 meters the highest point on Earth, on the Nepal border. To the north and west spread the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts, and the fertile eastern plains and river basins hold the bulk of the population. The climate ranges from subarctic in the far north to tropical in the south, and the country is prone to floods, droughts, and earthquakes.
Imperial China, unified under the Qin in 221 BCE, endured through successive dynasties until the fall of the Qing in 1912. Decades of upheaval, war, and revolution culminated in the Communist victory of 1949 and the founding of the People's Republic under Mao Zedong. After his death, Deng Xiaoping's reforms opened the economy and ignited the fastest large-scale industrialization in history. Today China is a one-party state of formidable reach, a leader in manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure through initiatives like the Belt and Road, while contending with an aging population, regional tensions, and its contested claims over Taiwan and the South China Sea.