CHINA, or more accurately the Chinese Republic, is an extensive dominion of Eastern Asia of which China proper constitutes the principal portion. For centuries this dominion has been known as the Chinese Empire, and it is still frequently referred to as such, although the form of government is now republican. China includes a number of dependencies or subject territories, viz.: Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkestan, and the small territories between Mongolia and Tibet.
By its natives China is never so called, but usually by the Chinese words for “The Middle State,” or “The Republic of the Middle Flower.” The name China (Chi-na, land of Chin) comes to us from India through Buddhism. Various old names are Serica and Cathay, and in the Bible “Land of Sinim.”
China and its dependent territories have an area of 4,300,000 square miles. The population of the whole is variously estimated at from 300,000,000 to 440,000,000. The great bulk of this falls to the provinces of China proper: the population of all the dependencies (Manchuria, Tibet, Mongolia, East Turkestan), making but some 16,000,000 or 25,000,000 of the total.
Surface.—Occupying all the central and eastern portion of the continent of Asia, the limits are for the most part very distinctly marked out by great natural features. The boundary with Russian Siberia on the north runs along the Amur River and the crests of the Sayan and Altai Mountains; towards western Turkestan the alpine heights of the Thian Shan and the Pamir form the limit; the snow clad Himalaya range separates China from the hot plains of India in the south, and the mountains of Yunnan continue the natural frontier eastward again to the coasts of the Pacific.
Within these wide exterior limits China includes a number of regions, some of which are strongly contrasted with one another in their natural features and in the character of their population. Along the eastern or maritime border, where the rivers flowing down from the mountain region of the interior have spread out in wide alluvial plains next the sea, lie China proper and Manchuria, filled with a teeming population of busy agriculturists and townsfolk. Within, on the high plateau of Central Asia, the region of bare steppes and deserts, and the mountain skirts round it, are the countries of Mongolia, Eastern [678] Turkestan, and Tibet, thinly peopled for the most part by nomadic pastoral tribes.
China Proper may be described as sloping from the mountainous regions of Tibet and Nepal toward the shores of the Pacific on the east and south. The most extensive mountain range in it is the Nan Ling or Southern Range, a far extending spur of the Himalayas. Commencing in Yunnan, it bounds Kwangsi, Kwangtung, and Fukien, on the north, and, passing through Chekiang, enters the sea at Ningpo.
HUNCHBACK BRIDGE, NEAR PEKING, CHINA
North of this long range, and west of the one hundred and thirteenth meridian, on to the borders of Tibet, the country is mountainous, while to the east and from the great wall on the north to the Po-yang Lake in the south, there is the Great Plain, comprising the greater part of the provinces of Chihli, Shantung, Honan, Anhui, and Kiangsu. The Great Plain extends on both sides of the lower Hoang-ho, between the great cities of Peking and Nanking, over an area more than three times as extensive as England. Sedulously irrigated or drained, and cultivated in every corner, this great plain supports the densest agricultural population in the world.
