Talk:Geography of China

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== Map ==ALEX CORTELLESSA IS COOLkick push kick push and coast he's just a rebal looking for a place to go == VINCENT CORTELLESSA IS COOL == VINCENT CORTELLESSA IS COOL == ALEX CORTELLESSA IS COOL == kick push kick push and coast he's just a rebal looking for a place to go


The map on this page needs some NPOVing to be like Image:Smaller_map_of_China.png. --Jiang 07:24 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Done. --[So how your going tooday??
That would be me. You see, a lot of the articles had american comparisons, so I wanted to NPOV that. this being the english wikipedia, I added english countries. You will see these comparisons on some articles, but most of them dont have it yet. Earl Andrew 19:21, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Meaning of the word "China"..

The term "China" in this article is obviously referring to the PRC, which is not following the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)#Political NPOV. The set of conventions says

"Wikipedia reflects the neutral reality and considers the term "China" not to coincide with any particular sovereign state or government. In particular, the word "China" should not be used to be synonymously with areas under the current administration of the People's Republic of China or with Mainland China.", and

"Wikipedia treats the Republic of China as a sovereign state with equal status with the People's Republic of China, yet does not address whether they are considered separate nations.".

In my opinion this article should either be rewritten, to refer to China as a region, or have the title changed. — Instantnood 18:16, Feb 17 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fourth Largest

The article says that China is the Fourth largest country in the world after the US. It then states that China is slightly larger than the US. Make up your mind.

Quite correct - I've removed those unnecessary, and self-contradictory, size comparisons. - DavidWBrooks 18:52, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_the_United_States

This link states US is the 3rd largest country in the world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_China

This link states China is the 3rd largest country in the world

Which one is the largest country in the world?

Quote:

Chinanews, Mar. 31 - The page introducing China on the website www.cia.gov of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) shows that China is "slightly smaller than the US" in territory. According to statistics released by CIA, the area of China's territory is 9,596,960 square kilometers while that of the United States is 9,631,418 square kilometers.
This saying disagrees with Chinese people's common sense in geography. Doesn't China rank third in the world behind Russia and Canada in territory, but fourth behind the US?
Investigations find that all other authoritative websites and publications of the US declare that the US's territory is larger than China's. The US national geographic website www.nationalgeographic.com and the electronic encyclopedia produced by Microsoft also make the same statement.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, China has an area of 9,572,900 square kilometers and the US's territory is 9,518,287 square kilometers.
Mr. Wu, spokesman from the Basic Mapping Management Office of the National Territory Mapping Department of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, revealed that the task aiming to confirm the accurate area of the Chinese territory had been completed. It will be clear which country is the third largest in territory when the figure is published at an opportune time

Schrödinger's cat 16:55, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

There isn't a definite answer as to which one is larger, as there are different ways to measure the area. For example, if you measured the surface area, china would probably be bigger, but when measuring it "the simple way" USA turns out to be bigger. Also, do you count in the lakes? rivers? ponds? islands? overseas territories? disputed territories? the ice in alaska? and the list goes on and on. --HJV 01:30, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Area of a political entity is always counted 'the simple way', by which I assume you mean projecting boundaries onto the earth spheroid and integrating area across the spheroid surface. (Conversely, the 'hard way' would be to integrate area over the 3d surface formed by mountains, etc.). As for the categories of area to include:
 non-dependent-territory islands -- always yes
 rivers, ponds, wholly internal lakes -- always yes
 border lakes (great lakes, caspian sea) -- judgment call
 coastal, 'internal' waters -- judgment call, what matters most is a consistent definition of 'internal'
 territorial sea -- generally no
 contiguous zone, EEZ -- always no
 dependent territories -- debatable but probably not. if anything, quote with and without
 disputed territories -- safest to quote with and without, generally disputed territory is included under a country that has had long-term control
 sea ice -- irrelevant, depends on what sea classification it falls under

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.177.126.183 (talk) 03:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Just because there is not a definite answer, so I suggest to add a disputed tag after the rank number, and list the both answers to the readers. — Schrödinger's cat 16:38, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who knows this mountain range?

In the WikiProject Wikipedia:Nuttall_Encyclopedia_topics, we hit on the "Yung-Ling" mountains,

Yung-Ling is a mountain range running north and south, which forms the eastern buttress of the tableland of Central Asia.

Does anybody know, what the current name of these mountains is? The source is from 1907, and Google doesn't help much. Is it Da Hinggan Ling? Thanks--J heisenberg 15:47, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

i think Yung-Ling = 雲嶺


[edit] Great wall length

Is there a reason why the Great Wall is listed as 3300 km long here? Other sources (including Great Wall of China) put it at ~6350 km. i don't want to change it since i don't know if this is a reference to a particular part of the wall ... --Sbmehta 07:06, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Borders

I summed up measures of each border but got a strange result...

{{#expr:76+470+3380+1533+1416+858+423+4673+2185+1236+523+3605+40+414+1281}} = 22113

According to the article are Chinese Land boundaries: total: 22,143.34 km. What's the point? --Miincee 11:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gobi Desert

The article currently states that the Gobi Desert is "one of the world's largest and hottest", while Gobi Desert states "The Gobi desert is a cold desert", and Geography of Mongolia states extreme temperatures of 38C in the Gobi. The later quoted 45C here is not attributed to any source. Temperatures in the interior of Australia, or the Middle East, or the Sahara, and indeed elsewhere in China, regularly go into the high 40's, and even the low 50's, which would seem to make the claim that the Gobi is one of the hottest dubious at best. High temperatures attributed to Western China would seem to be better attributed to the Tarim Basin & its associated Taklamakan Desert, which indeed has anecdotal high temperatures of 50+C, but which is not considered geologically to be a part of the Gobi. This is supported in the article Gobi Desert in the geography section.

Additionally, List of deserts by area puts the Gobi at #4 for size. I'm proposing this line should be changed to the factual statement "the world's fourth largest desert", with a link to the appropriate Gobi Desert wiki page. Fehrgo 15:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, the reference to the size of the Gobi is better left to the Gobi Desert article. Update made with unsupported statements removed. Fehrgo 15:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)