TOPOGRAPHY
China's topography is varied and complicated, with towering mountains, basins
of different sizes, undulating plateaus and hills, and flat and fertile plains.
A bird's eye view of China would indicate that China's terrain descends in
four steps from west to east.
The top of this four-step "staircase" is the
Qinhai-Tibet
Plateau. Averaging more than 4,000 m above sea level, it is often called
the "roof of the world." Rosomg 8,848 m above sea level is Mt.
Qomolangma, the world's highest peak and the main peak of the Himalayas.
The second step includes the Inner Mongolia, Loess and Yunnan-Guizhou
plateaus, and the Tarim, Junggar and Sichuan basins, with an average elevation
of between 1,000 m and 2,000 m.
The third step, about 500 - 1,000 m in elevation, begins at a line drawn
around the Greater Hinggan, Taihang, Wushan and Xuefeng mountain ranges and
extends eastward to the coast. Here, from north to south are the Northeast
Plain, the North China Plain and the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain.
Interspersed amongst the plains are hills and foothills.
To the east, the land extends out into the ocean, in a continental shelf, the
fourth step of the staircase. The water here is less than 200 m deep.
RIVERS
China abounds in rivers. More than 1,500 rivers each drain 1,000 sq km
or larger areas. More than 2,700 billion cu m of water flow along these
rivers, 5.8 percent of the world's total. Most of the large rivers find
their source in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and as a result China is rich in
waterpower resources, leading the world in hydropower potential, with reserves
of 680 million kw.
China's rivers can be categorized as exterior and interior systems. The
catchment area for the exterior rivers that empty into the oceans accounts for
64 percent of the country's total land area. The Yangtze, Tello,
Heilongjiang, Peal, Liaohe, Haihe, Huaihe, and Lancang rivers flow east, and
empty into the Pacific Ocean. The Yarlungzangbo River in Tibet, which
flows first east and then south into the Indian Ocean, boasts the Grand
Yarlungzangbo Canyon, the largest canyon in the world, 504.6 km long and 6.009 m
deep.
The Ertix River flows from the Xingjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to
the Artic Ocean. The catchment area for the interior rivers that flow into
inland lakes or disappear into deserts or salt marshes makes up 36 percent of
China's total land area. Its 2,179 km make the Tarim River in southern
Xinjiang Chian's longest interior river.
The Yangtze is the largest river in China, and the third-longest in the
world, next only to the Nile in northeast Africa and the Amazon in South
America. It is 6.300 km long and has a catchment area of 1.809 million sq
km. The middle and lower Yangtze River's warm and humid climate, plentiful
rainfall and fertile soil make the area an important agricultural region.
Known as the "golden waterway," the Yangtze is a transportation artery
linking west and east. The Yellow River is the second-largest river in
China, 5,464 km in length, with a catchment area of 752,000 sq km. The
Yellow River valley was one of the birthplaces of ancient Chinese
civilization. It has lush pastureland and abundant mineral deposits.
The Heilongjiang River is north China's largest.
It has a total length of
4.350 km, of which 3,101 km are within China. The Pearl River is the
largest river in south China, with a total length of 2.214 km. In addition
to those endowed by nature, China has a famous man-made river - the Grand Canal,
running from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou in the south. Work first
began on the Grand Canal as early as in the fifth century B.C.
It links
five major rivers - the Haihe, Yellow, Huaihe, Yangtze and Qiantang. With
a total length of 1,801 km, the Grand Canal is the longest as well as the oldest
man-made waterway in the world.
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CLIMATE
China has a marked continental monsoonal climate characterized by great
variety. Northerly winds prevail in winter, while southerly winds reign in
summer. The four seasons are quite distinct. The rainy season
coincides with the hot season.
From September to April the following year,
the dry and cold winter monsoons from Siberia and Mongolia in the north
gradually become weak as they reach the southern part of the country, resulting
in cold and dry winters and great differences in temperature. The cold
summer monsoons last from April to September.
The warm and moist summer monsoons from the oceans bring abundant rainfall
and high temperatures, with little difference in temperature between the south
and the north. China's complex and varied climate results in a great
variety of temperature belts, and dry and moist zones.
In terms of
temperature, the nation can be sectored from the south to north into equatorial,
tropical, sub-tropical, warm-temperate, temperate, and cold-temperate zones; in
terms of moisture, it can be sectored from southeast to northwest into humid (32
percent of land area), semi0humid (15 percent), semi-arid (22 percent) and arid
zones (31 percent).
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 tide-land; (2) many more mountains and plateaus than flatlands and
basins; (3) unbalanced distribution: farmland mainly concentrated in the east,
grasslands largely in the west and north, and forests mostly in the far
northeast and southwest.
In China today, 108 million ha of land are cultivated, mainly in the
Northeast Plain, the North China Plain, the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain, the
Pearl River Delta Plain and the Sichuan Basin. The fertile black soil of
the Northeast Plain is ideal for growing wheat, corn, sorghum, soybeans, flax
and sugar beets.
The deep, brown topsoil of the North China Plain in
planted with wheat, corn, millet, sorghum and cotton. The Middle-Lower
Yangtze Plain's many lakes and rivers make is particularly suitable for paddy
rice and freshwater fish, hence its designation of "land of fish and
rice." This area also produces large quantities of tea and
silkworms. The purplish soil of the warm and humid Sichuan Basin is green
with crops in all four seasons, including paddy rice, rapeseed and tangerines.
Forests blanket 128,63 million ha of China. The Greater
Hinggan, the
Lesser Hinggan and the Changbai mountain ranges in the northeast are China's
largest natural forest areas. Major tree species found here include
conifers, such as Korea pine, larch and Olga Bay larch, and the broadleaves such
as white birch, oak, willow, elm and Northeast China ash.
Major tree
species of the southwest include the dragon spruce, fir and Yunnan pine, as well
as precious teak trees, red sandalwood, camphor trees, manmu and padauk.
Often called a "kingdom of plants," Xishuangbanna is southern Yunnan
Province is a rarity in that it is a tropical broadleaf forest playing host to
more than 5,000 plant species.
Grasslands in China cover an area of 400 million ha, stretching more than
3,000 km from the northeast to the southwest. They are the centers of
animal husbandry. The Inner Mongolian Prairie is China's largest natural
pastureland, and home to Sanhe horses, Sanhe cattle and Mongolian sheep.
The famous natural pasturelands north and south of the Tianshan Mountains in
Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang are ideal for stock breeding. The famous
Ili horses and Xinjiang fine-wool sheep are raised here.
China's cultivated lands, forest and grasslands are among the world's largest
in terms of sheer area. But due to China's large population, the areas of
cultivated land, forest and grassland per capita are small, especially in the
case of cultivated land--less than 0.08 ha per capita, or only one third of the
world's average.
China is rich in mineral resources, and all the world's known minerals can be
found here. To date, geologists have confirmed reserves of 151 different
minerals, putting China third in the world in total reserves. Proven
reserves of energy sources include coal, petroleum, natural gas, and oil shale;
and radioactive minerals include uranium and thorium.
China's coal
reserves total 1,002.49 billion tons, mainly distributed in north China, with
Shanxi and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region taking the lead. Petroleum
reserves are mainly in northwest and also in northeast China, north China and
the continental shelves in east China. Proven reserves of ferrous metals
include iron, manganese, vanadium and titanium.
China's 46.35 billion tons
of iron ore are mainly distributed in northeast, north and southwest
China. The Anshan-Benxi Area in Liaoning, east Hebei and Panzhihua in
Sichuan are major iron producers. China has the world's largest reserves
of tungsten, tin, antimony, zinc, molybdenum, lead, mercury and other nonferrous
metals; its reserves of rare earth metals far exceed the total for the rest of
the world.
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Information provided by
the Chinese Embassy |
