China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is an East Asian country with over 1.4 billion people, making it the second-most populous globally. It spans five time zones and borders 14 countries, ranking as the third-largest by land area at nearly 9.6 million square kilometers. China is divided into 33 province-level divisions, including provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions. Beijing serves as the capital, while Shanghai is the most populous city and a major financial hub.
The anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901 further weakened the Qing dynasty.
In 1905, the first Chinese film, Dingjun Mountain, was released.
In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution ended the Qing dynasty.
On January 1912, the Republic of China was established, and Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang (KMT) was proclaimed provisional president.
In March 1912, the presidency was given to Yuan Shikai, a former Qing general.
In 1912, Puyi, the last Emperor, abdicated, marking the end of the Qing dynasty.
The Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China, lasted until 1912.
In 1915, Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself Emperor of China.
In 1916, Yuan Shikai was forced to abdicate and re-establish the republic after facing condemnation.
In 1927, the Chinese Civil War began when KMT forces purged members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In 1927, the alliance between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) broke down after Chiang violently suppressed the CCP in Shanghai, marking the beginning of the Chinese Civil War.
In November 1931, the CCP declared areas of the country as the Chinese Soviet Republic (Jiangxi Soviet) in Ruijin, Jiangxi.
China participated in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1932.
In 1934, the Jiangxi Soviet was eliminated by the KMT armies, causing the CCP to initiate the Long March and relocate to Yan'an.
In 1937, Japan invaded other parts of China, precipitating the Second Sino-Japanese War.
In 1937, the Empire of Japan invaded China, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War.
In 1947, constitutional rule was established in China, but many provisions of the ROC constitution were never implemented in mainland China due to the ongoing civil war.
On October 1949, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong formally proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
According to China's government, the forest coverage of the country grew from 10% of the overall territory in 1949 to 25% in 2024.
After the Communists came to power in 1949, efforts were made to organize science and technology based on the model of the Soviet Union.
In 1949, the Communists established control over most of China, proclaiming the People's Republic of China and forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to Taiwan.
When the PRC was founded in 1949, per capita income in China was one-fifth of the world average.
In 1950, the PRC captured Hainan from the ROC and annexed Tibet.
The Chinese population increased from 550 million in 1950.
In 1952, China participated in the Olympic Games as the PRC for the first time.
In 1953, males accounted for 51.8% of the total population in China.
In 1958, archaeologists discovered sites belonging to the Erlitou culture during the early Bronze Age.
The Chinese space program started in 1958 with some technology transfers from the Soviet Union.
The Great Leap Forward resulted in an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths between 1959 and 1961.
In 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics estimated that the population fell 850,000 from 2021 to 2022, the first decline since 1961.
The Great Leap Forward resulted in an estimated 15 to 55 million deaths between 1959 and 1961.
In 1964, China detonated its first atomic bomb.
In 1966, Mao and his allies launched the Cultural Revolution.
China launched the nation's first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong I, in 1970.
In October 1971, the PRC replaced the ROC in the United Nations and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council.
In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China (ROC) as the sole representative of China in the United Nations.
In 1971, the UN representative for China was changed from the ROC to the PRC.
In 1972, the Shanghai Communiqué would precipitate the normalization of relations with the United States.
The Chinese population reached 900 million in 1974.
After Mao's death in 1976, science and technology were promoted as one of the Four Modernizations.
The Cultural Revolution lasted until Mao's death in 1976.
After Deng Xiaoping began instituting economic reforms in 1978, the health of the Chinese public improved rapidly because of better nutrition.
Between 1978 and 2018, China reduced extreme poverty by 800 million.
From 1978 to 2018, the average standard of living multiplied by a factor of twenty-six. Real wages grew seven-fold from 1978 to 2007.
In 1978, China introduced economic reforms and its GDP was $150 billion.
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping took power and instituted large-scale political and economic reforms.
In 1979, China began to advocate for a strict limit of one child per family.
In 1979, China's literacy rate was 65.5%.
Regulations such as the 1979 Environmental Protection Law are fairly stringent, though they are poorly enforced, frequently disregarded in favor of rapid economic development.
In 1980, 20% of China's population lived in urban areas.
China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982.
In 1989, a movement for increased democracy and liberalization stalled after the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
From 1990 to 2018, the proportion of the Chinese population living with an income of less than $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) decreased from 66.3% to 0.3%, the share living with an income of less than $3.20 per day from 90.0% to 2.9%, and the share living with an income of less than $5.50 per day decreased from 98.3% to 17.0%.
In 1990, Beijing hosted the Asian Games.
In 1990, the number of air passengers in China was 16.6 million.
Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined from 33.1% in 1990.
British Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 as a special administrative region.
Portuguese Macau returned to China in 1999 as a special administrative region.
Since 2000, the growth of rapid transit systems in Chinese cities has accelerated.
China has been a member of the WTO since 2001.
China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
At the 16th CCP National Congress in 2002, Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang as the general secretary.
A Harvard University survey published in July 2020 found that citizen satisfaction with the government had increased since 2003.
Annual education investment in China went from less than US$50 billion in 2003.
China's large population and densely populated cities led to serious disease outbreaks, such as SARS in 2003.
In 2003, China became the third country in the world to independently send humans into space with Yang Liwei's spaceflight aboard Shenzhou 5.
As of 2005, China has over 2,349 nature reserves, covering a total area of 149.95 million hectares, 15 percent of China's total land area.
The Baiji was confirmed extinct on 12 December 2006.
In 2006, China's railways handled a quarter of the world's rail traffic volume on 6% of the world's tracks.
From 1978 to 2007, real wages grew seven-fold.
Increased restrictions by the Chinese Government slowed foreign adoptions significantly in 2007.
In June 2008, the Laogai Research Foundation estimated that there were nearly 1,422 reform through labor (laogai) facilities.
Around 30 million private businesses were recorded in China in 2008.
In 2008, China hosted the Summer Olympics in Beijing, receiving 48 gold medals.
In 2009, the government began a three-year large-scale healthcare provision initiative worth US$124 billion.
Between 2010 and 2020, the average population growth rate was 0.53%.
Compared with the 2010 population census, the Han population increased by 60,378,693 persons, or 4.93%, while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 11,675,179 persons, or 10.26%.
Harvard University's Economic Complexity Index ranked complexity of China's exports 24th in the world in 2010.
In 2010 China's National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan was received by the Convention on Biological Diversity.
In 2010, Guangzhou hosted the Asian Games.
In 2010, the annual education expenditure per secondary school student in Beijing totalled ¥20,023, while in Guizhou it only totalled ¥3,204.
Rates of stunting, a condition caused by malnutrition, have declined to 9.9% in 2010.
Since 2010, China has been the world's largest manufacturing nation, after overtaking the U.S.
By 2011, the healthcare provision initiative resulted in 95% of China's population having basic health insurance coverage.
From 1990 to 2018, the proportion of the Chinese population living with an income of less than $1.90 per day (2011 PPP) decreased from 66.3% to 0.3%, the share living with an income of less than $3.20 per day from 90.0% to 2.9%, and the share living with an income of less than $5.50 per day decreased from 98.3% to 17.0%.
In 2011, China launched its first space station testbed, Tiangong-1.
In 2011, Shenzhen hosted the Summer Universiade.
Xi Jinping took office as general secretary on 15 November 2012.
According to SIPRI, China's military spending from 2012 to 2021 averaged US$215 billion per year or 1.7 per cent of GDP.
As of 2012, China has an estimated 470 million bicycles.
China has been the second-largest high-tech manufacturing country since 2012.
China won the most medals at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, with 231 overall, including 95 gold.
China's BeiDou, started offering commercial navigation services across Asia in 2012.
In 2012, Mo Yan, a xungen literature author, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Xi Jinping succeeded Hu as paramount leader at the 18th CCP National Congress in 2012.
In December 2013, China allowed families to have two children if one parent is an only child.
China became the world's largest trading nation in 2013 by the sum of imports and exports.
China's rank of 35th in the Global Innovation Index in 2013.
In 2013, China hosted the East Asian Games in Tianjin.
In 2013, China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a large global infrastructure building initiative.
In 2013, a Chinese robotic rover Yutu successfully touched down on the lunar surface as part of the Chang'e 3 mission.
The state-imposed re-education through labor (laojiao) system was formally abolished in 2013.
In 2014, China hosted the Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing.
According to the Joint Monitoring Program, about 36% of the rural population in China still did not have access to improved sanitation in 2015.
China has had the world's largest middle-class population since 2015.
From the mid-1980s to 2015, China had a "1.5"-child policy, with some exemptions to the one-child limit, particularly in rural areas.
Increased restrictions by the Chinese Government slowed foreign adoptions significantly again in 2015.
By 2016, China was the largest trading partner of 124 countries.
China's academic publication apparatus became the world's largest publisher of scientific papers in 2016.
China's adaptation of renewable energy has increased significantly in recent years, with their share increasing from 26.3 percent in 2016 to 31.9 percent in 2022.
In 2016, the one-child policy was replaced in favor of a two-child policy.
Since 2016, China has had the largest number of movie screens in the world.
The Global Slavery Index estimated that in 2016 more than 3.8 million people were living in "conditions of modern slavery".
By 2017, China was producing around 40 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
In 2017 and 2020, the Pew Research Center ranked the severity of Chinese government restrictions on religion as being among the world's highest.
In 2017, the film Wolf Warrior 2 was released, and it became one of the top three highest-grossing films in China.
In 2017, the number of air passengers in China increased to 551.2 million.
Since 2017, the Chinese government has been engaged in a harsh crackdown in Xinjiang, with around one million Uyghurs and other ethnic and religion minorities being detained in internment camps.
According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received more applications than the U.S. did in 2018.
As of 2018, China Telecom served more than 145 million broadband subscribers and 300 million mobile users; China Unicom had about 300 million subscribers; and China Mobile had 925 million users. Combined, the three operators had over 3.4 million 4G base-stations in China.
By 2018, China had more than 1 billion 4G users, accounting for 40% of world's total.
China's BeiDou began offering global services by the end of 2018.
From 1978 to 2018, the average standard of living multiplied by a factor of twenty-six.
In 2018, China was the fourth-most-visited country in the world.
In 2018, the top three airlines in China, all state-owned, collectively made up 71% of the market.
The COVID-19 pandemic was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019.
According to the World Intellectual Property Indicators, China received more applications than the U.S. did in 2019.
In 2019, China became the first country to land a probe—Chang'e 4—on the far side of the Moon.
In 2019, China overtook the U.S. as the home to the highest number of people who have a net personal wealth of at least $110,000.
In 2019, China received 65.7 million international visitors and Chinese tourists made an estimated 6 billion travels within the country.
In 2019, the annual ridership of China's high-speed rail system was over 2.3 billion passengers, making it the world's busiest.
As of April 2020, the Belt and Road Initiative included 138 countries and 30 international organizations.
A Harvard University survey published in July 2020 found that citizen satisfaction with the government had increased since 2003.
As of October 2020, China has three out of the ten largest stock exchanges in the world—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen—that together have a market capitalization of over $15.9 trillion.
According to the 2020 census, ethnic minorities account for less than 10% of the population of China.
Annual education investment in China went to more than US$817 billion in 2020.
As of 2020, China boasted the five longest metro systems in the world with the networks in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenzhen being the largest.
In 2017 and 2020, the Pew Research Center ranked the severity of Chinese government restrictions on religion as being among the world's highest.
In 2020, Chang'e 5 successfully returned Moon samples to the Earth, making China the third country to do so independently.
In 2020, China became the largest cinema market.
In 2020, Harvard University's Economic Complexity Index ranked complexity of China's exports 17th in the world.
In 2020, the Chinese authorities cracked down on dissent in Hong Kong after the passage of a national security law, and a Foreign Policy report stated that China's treatment of Uyghurs meets the UN definition of genocide.
In 2020, the Chinese government announced its aims for the country to reach its peak emissions levels before 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 in line with the Paris Agreement.
The 2020 Chinese census recorded the population as approximately 1,411,778,724.
The 2020 census found that males accounted for 51.2% of the total population.
As of January 2021, China had 85 female billionaires, two-thirds of the global total.
On May 31 2021, a three-child policy was announced in China due to population aging.
In July 2021, all family size limits, as well as penalties for exceeding them, were removed in China.
According to SIPRI, China's military spending from 2012 to 2021 averaged US$215 billion per year or 1.7 per cent of GDP.
As of 2021, China has 17 megacities (cities with a population of over 10 million).
As of 2021, the infant mortality rate in China is 5 per thousand.
China leads the world in e-commerce, accounting for over 37% of the global market share in 2021.
China's Gini coefficient was 0.357 in 2021.
In 2021, 12 percent of global permanent meadows and pastures belonged to China, as well as 8% of global cropland.
In 2021, China became the third country to land a spacecraft on Mars and the second one to deploy a rover (Zhurong) on Mars.
In 2021, China's foreign exchange remittances were $US53 billion making it the second-largest recipient of remittances in the world.
In 2021, two of the top three highest-grossing films in China, The Battle at Lake Changjin and Hi, Mom, were released.
China completed its own modular space station, the Tiangong, in low Earth orbit on 3 November 2022. On 29 November 2022, China performed its first in-orbit crew handover aboard the Tiangong.
In December 2022, the government abandoned its strict public health measures intended to completely eradicate the virus after protests against the policy.
According to the World Values Survey (2022), 91% of Chinese respondents have significant confidence in their government.
As of 2022, China accounted for around 18% of the global economy by nominal GDP and China's GDP grew to $17.96 trillion.
As of 2022, China is the world's leader in electric vehicle consumption and production, manufacturing and buying half of all the plug-in electric cars.
By 2022, China had established itself as a key producer and exporter of pharmaceuticals.
By 2022, during Xi Jinping's tenure, a vast anti-corruption crackdown had prosecuted more than 2 million officials.
By 2030 the GHG emissions of China will return to 2022 levels.
China invested $546 billion in renewable energy in 2022; in that year it was also a major importer of Russian crude oil.
In 2022, Beijing and Zhangjiakou collaboratively hosted the Winter Olympics.
In 2022, China accounted for 18.6% of the world's total wealth, second highest in the world after the U.S.
In 2022, China overtook the US in the Nature Index, which measures the share of published articles in leading scientific journals.
In 2022, China was amongst the world's largest recipient of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), attracting $180 billion.
In 2022, China's highways reached a total length of 177,000 km, making it the longest highway system in the world.
In 2023, the National Bureau of Statistics estimated that the population fell 850,000 from 2021 to 2022, the first decline since 1961.
As of February 2023, China has the largest number of active cellphones of any country, with over 1.7 billion subscribers.
In May 2023, China announced a plan to land humans on the Moon by 2030.
As of December 2023, 55 Chinese cities have urban mass transit systems in operation.
As of December 2023, China had over 810 million 5G users and 3.38 million base stations installed.
According to studies published in 2023, compiling demographic analyses conducted throughout the 2010s and the early 2020s, 70% of the Chinese population believed in or practiced Chinese folk religion. 25.2% are fully non-believers or atheists, 2.5% are adherents of Christianity, and 1.6% are adherents of Islam.
As of 2023, China became the world's largest exporter of cars by number.
As of 2023, China has over 3,074 universities, with over 47.6 million students enrolled in mainland China, giving China the largest higher education system in the world. As of 2023, China had the world's highest number of top universities.
As of 2023, eighteen Chinese nationals have journeyed into space, including two women.
As of 2023, the life expectancy at birth in China exceeds 78 years.
As of 2023, the renminbi is a component of the IMF's special drawing rights and the world's fourth-most traded currency.
As of 2023, the top three highest-grossing films in China were The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021), Wolf Warrior 2 (2017), and Hi, Mom (2021).
China ranked at 148th out of 167 countries in 2023 on the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index.
In 2023, 60.5% of China's electricity came from coal, 13.2% from hydroelectric power, 9.4% from wind, 6.2% from solar energy, 4.6% from nuclear energy, 3.3% from natural gas, and 2.2% from bioenergy; in total, 31% of China's energy came from renewable energy sources.
In 2023, China's total outward FDI was $147.9 billion.
In 2023, Hangzhou hosted the Asian Games.
In 2023, text was taken from the World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2023, FAO, FAO.
In 2023, the total fertility rate was reported to be 1.09, ranking among the lowest in the world.
In March 2024, China ranked second in the world, after the U.S., in total number of billionaires and total number of millionaires, with 473 Chinese billionaires and 6.2 million millionaires.
As of March 2024, China's foreign exchange reserves reached US$3.246 trillion, making its reserves by far the world's largest.
China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May 2024, which conducted the first lunar sample return from Apollo Basin on the far side of the Moon.
In June 2024, the returner for Chang'e 6 landed on Inner Mongolia, completing China's far side extraterrestrial sample return mission.
As of December 2024, China has the largest number of internet and broadband users, with over 1.1 billion Internet users—equivalent to around 78.6% of its population.
According to China's government, the forest coverage of the country grew from 10% of the overall territory in 1949 to 25% in 2024.
According to the 2024 Global Financial Centres Index, China has three out of the world's ten most competitive financial centers — Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen.
As of 2024, China has one of the largest diplomatic networks of any country in the world.
As of 2024, China has the world's second-largest equity markets and futures markets.
China officially spent around 2.7% of its GDP on R&D in 2024, totaling to around $496 billion. It was ranked 11th in the Global Innovation Index in 2024.
In 2024, China had approximately 259 airports.
In 2024, over 67% of China's population lived in urban areas.
Since 2024, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) consists of four services: the Ground Force (PLAGF), the Navy (PLAN), the Air Force (PLAAF) and the Rocket Force (PLARF).
With current policies, the GHG emissions of China will probably peak in 2025.
By 2030 the GHG emissions of China will return to 2022 levels.
In 2020, the Chinese government announced its aims for the country to reach its peak emissions levels before 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 in line with the Paris Agreement.
In May 2023, China announced a plan to land humans on the Moon by 2030.
According to academics, in order to limit climate change in China to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), electricity generation from coal in China without carbon capture must be phased out by 2045.
In 2020, the Chinese government announced its aims for the country to reach its peak emissions levels before 2030, and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 in line with the Paris Agreement.