China

China is a geographical region in East Asia. With over one-fifth of the world's population, the majority of China exists today as a state known as the People's Republic of China, but it also refers to a long-standing civilization comprising successive states and cultures dating back more than 4,000 years.

With one of the world's longest periods of mostly uninterrupted civilization and the world's longest continuously used written language system, China's history has been largely characterized by repeated divisions and reunifications amid alternating periods of peace and war, and violent imperial dynastic change. The country's territorial extent expanded outwards from a core area in the North China Plain, and varied according to its changing fortunes to include multiple regions of East, Northeast, and Central Asia. (The term "China proper" is used by some observers and historians to describe the core territory historically home to the majority Han Chinese, as opposed to lands associated later with China such as what is now Xinjiang, or Mongolia.) For centuries, Imperial China was also one of the world's most technologically advanced civilizations, and East Asia's dominant cultural influence, with an impact lasting to the present day.

By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, China's political, economic, and military influence declined relative to the growing regional power of Japan and the influence of Western powers. The imperial system in China ended with the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC) under Sun Yat-sen in 1912; however, the next four decades of ROC rule were marred by warlord control, the Second Sino-Japanese War during which the Empire of Japan occupied large parts of China, and the Chinese Civil War which pitted Chinese Nationalists against the Communist forces.

In 1949, before the end of the Chinese Civil War (1946-1950), the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China (PRC), forcing the Nationalists to retreat and relocate the ROC government to the island of Taiwan, which it had governed since the end of World War II. Since then, the ROC has maintained administrative control over Taiwan, the Pescadores, several islands off the coast of Fujian province, and some islands in the South China Sea. The disputed status of the island remains a major issue in international relations today.

China is called Zhongguo in Mandarin Chinese (also romanized as Jhongguo or Chung-kuo), which is usually translated as "Middle Kingdom." The first character Zhong (中) means "middle" or "center" while guo (国 or 國) means "country" or "kingdom".

The term has not been used consistently throughout Chinese history, however, and carries certain cultural and political connotations both positive and negative, some ideological, and early states considered part of Chinese history are not called "Zhongguo". During the Spring and Autumn Period, it was used only to describe the states politically descended from the Western Zhou Dynasty, in the Yellow River (Huang He) valley, to the exclusion of states such as Chu and Qin. The "Chinese" thus defined their nation as culturally and politically distinct from - and as the axis mundi of surrounding nations; a concept that continued well into the Qing Dynasty, although being continually redefined while the central political influence expanded territorially, and its culture assimilated alien influences.

Thus Zhongguo quickly came to include areas farther south, as the cultural and political unit (not yet a "nation" or "country" in the modern sense) spread in a southerly direction, including the Yangtze River and Pearl River systems, and by the Tang Dynasty it even included "barbarian" regimes such as the Xianbei and Xiongnu. Inner Mongolia, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, and the island of Taiwan, over time, came to be dominated (to a greater or lesser extent) by, or officially ruled by, imperial China, and are often included as a part of Zhongguo, though acceptance or denial of such claims remains politically controversial, especially where Zhongguo means PRC.

During the Han Dynasty and before, Zhongguo had three distinctive meanings:

1. The area around the capital or imperial domain. The Book of Poetry explicitly gives this definition.
2. Territories under the direct authority of the "central" authorities. The Historical Records states: "Eight mountains are famed in the empire. Three are with the Man and Yi barbarians. Five are in Zhongguo ."
3. The area now called the North China Plain . The Sanguo Zhi records the following monologue: "If we can lead the host of Wu and Yue (the kingdoms in areas of present-day Shanghai , southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang ) to oppose Zhongguo , then we should break off relations with them soon." In this sense, the term Zhongguo is synonymous with Hua and Xia , and distinct from southern peoples living around the Yangtze River Delta .

During the period of division after the fall of the Han Dynasty, the term Zhongguo was subjected to transformation as a result of the surge of nomadic peoples from the northern frontier. This was doubly so after the loss of the Yellow River valley, the cradle of Chinese civilization, to these peoples. For example, the Xianbei called their Northern Wei regime Zhongguo, contrasting it with the Southern Dynasties, which they called the Yi (夷), meaning "barbarian". The southern dynasties, for their part, recently exiled from the north, called the Northern Wei Lu (虜), meaning "criminal" or "prisoner". In this way Zhongguo came to represent political legitimacy. It was used in this manner from the tenth century onwards by the competing dynasties of Liao, Jin and Song. The term Zhongguo came to be related to geographic, cultural and political identity and less to ethnic origin.

The Republic of China, as it controlled mainland China, and later, the People's Republic of China, have used Zhongguo as an entity existing theoretically to mean all the territories and peoples within their political control as well as those outside of it (people in the Republic of China on Taiwan now usually use Zhongguo to refer to the PRC and use Taiwan to refer to itself). Thus it is asserted that all 56 officially recognized ethnic groups are Zhongguo ren (中國人), or Zhongguo people. Their disparate histories are collectively the history of Zhongguo, while the overarching ethnicity that unites these different groups is known as "Zhonghua Minzu".

English and many other languages use forms of the name China (also spelled Kina in Europe) and the prefix Sino- or Sin-, which is believed to have derived from the name of the Qin dynasty that first unified the country, although this is still highly controversial. Despite the fact that the Qin dynasty was short-lived and often regarded as overly tyrannical, it unified the written language in China and gave the supreme ruler of China the title of "Emperor"; hence the subsequent Silk Road traders might have identified themselves by that name.

The term "China" can narrowly mean China proper or, often, China proper and Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang, a combination essentially coterminous with the 20th and 21st century political entity China; the boundaries between these regions do not necessarily follow provincial boundaries. In many contexts, "China" is commonly used to refer to the People's Republic of China or mainland China, while "Taiwan" is used to refer to the Republic of China. Informally, in economic or business contexts, "the Greater China region" refers to Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Sinologists usually use "Chinese" in a more restricted sense, more akin to the classical usage of Zhongguo, or to the meaning of the "Han ethnic group", who make up the bulk of population in China.In some contexts it may be more appropriate to speak of "mainland China" (中國大陸,zhōngguó dàlù in Mandarin), especially when contrasting it with other, politically different regions like Hong Kong, Macau, and territories administered by the Republic of China (Taiwan).