ABSTRACT
In mid-1994 China had 1,192 million inhabitants, 21.4 per cent of the total population of the world, compared with India’s 912 million. Its land area of 9,597,000 sq km (3,705,000 sq miles) makes it similar in extent to Canada, the USA and Europe (including the European part of the former USSR). It occupies just over 7 per cent of the world’s land surface. For administrative purposes China is divided into thirty units (see Figure 16.2), of which three are Municipalities, five are Autonomous Regions, and twenty-two are Provinces. In this chapter each of these major administrative divisions starts with a capital letter. In places, for simplicity Province refers to all three types.
