The People’s Republic of China (officially: Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo, in short: Zhongguo; pronounced as: Tsung-Gua Jen-Min Kung-Gu Kuo) lies in East Asia. The total surface area is 9,571,300 km2, and thus China is the third largest country of the world (after Russia and Canada). It is about 239 times larger than The Netherlands. The longest straight distance is over 5,000 km.
The total length of all the borders of China is more than 22,000 kilometres and is divided as follows:

Off the coast of China there are more than three thousand islands, of which Hainan, in the South Chinese Sea, is the largest. The island is regularly stricken by typhoons, particularly from May to October.
China consists of mountains (35%), highland (27%), basins or deserts (17%), hilly areas (8%), and plains (13%).
Mount Everest in Tibet is the highest mountain of the world with its 8848 meters, the Turpan Depression in the northwest is China’s lowest point (154 meters below sea-level). Over a hundred mountaintops in China are higher than 7,000 meters and more than a thousand are higher than 6,000 meters. The Gobi (Gebi Shamo) and the Takla-Makan are deserts, interrupting the large plains in the north.
A large part of China suffers regularly from earthquakes, which are sometimes very heavy. The earthquake area stretches from West-Sichuan to Bo Hai, a north arm of the Yellow Sea.

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