Hey everyone! China is a big country with lots of history and culture.

Obviously, in this video, I won't be able to cover everything.

But, I'll try my best to explain. Okay? Good?

Alright... Let's get started!

It's time to learn Geography... NOW!

Hey everyone, I'm your host, Barby.

China, China, China... or the People's Republic of China.

Everybody knows something about this place, and everybody has something to say about it.

Now let's see what the flag has to say about itself.

The flag is a simple red banner with five yellow stars in the upper hoist or canton corner;

a large star surrounded by four smaller ones in a semi-circular pattern to the right.

According to the governmental interpretation,

the red background symbolizes the revolution,

and the five stars were made yellow to radiate against the red.

The stars represent unity of the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

The largest star symbolizes the Communist Party of China,

and the four smaller stars that surround the big star symbolize the four social classes:

the working class, the peasantry, the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie.

Well, that was pretty easy. Unfortunately, that will be the only easy part of this video.

Let's get messy in...

Okay Geograpeeps, get your popcorn and notebooks,

because this is where things are gonna get really complicated, messy and dramatic and confusing.

This is why I watch Geography Now!

First of all, mainland China is located in and dominates the heart of East Asia.

At over 22,000 kilometres, it has the world's longest combined land border with 14 other countries.

The country spans all the way from the Taklamakan Desert to the coast of Fujian.

Depending on your method of measurement,

China could either be the second, third, or fourth largest country in the world by total area.

If you include all the water territories, Canada is the second,

even though China has slightly more land mass,

and if you include Alaska, Hawaii and all the official territories, the US is slightly larger than China,

but if China's disputed and confusing territories are all included, then China is a little bit larger.

Yeah, I know!

It's only been a couple of minutes and I'm already making it look like:

*fighting*

Speaking of territories, let's stick our hands in the first layer of mud!

China has some of the most complex administrative divisions in the world,

and it all has to do with certain types of people and the rise of the 20th century.

First of all, the country is divided into 22 official provinces,

but THEN we get to the subdivisions!

China also has five autonomous regions, four municipalities,

and two special administrative regions that mostly self-govern themselves.

First, let's talk about the autonomous regions.

They are:

Guangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia.

The strange thing is that each of these regions has incredibly distinct and contrasting cultural traits

that differ from the rest of Han-dominated Chinese culture.

Because of the minority prevalency in these areas,

they have kind of like a weird legislative membrane in which they are still under full sovereignty of China,

but have extra special rights that don't apply to the rest of the provinces.

Then we hit the municipalities!

These are like the complete opposite of autonomous regions,

because they hold pretty much the highest governmental administrative classification in the country.

And even though they are cities, they hold provincial status.

In short, these guys are like the big shots of China!

And they are: the capital Beijing,

the capital Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing.

Yeah, try saying that in five times fast.

(Tries saying it five times fast, like a tongue twister)

Furthermore, we have 2 special administrative regions that kinda self-govern themselves,

but they all kind of fall under Chinese sovereignty.

They are: Hong Kong and Macau.

CGP Grey does an amazing video explaining the whole scenario on this,

but I'll try to summarise it in the quickest way I can.

These places used to be operated by the British and Portuguese,

until they were ceded back to China back in 1997 and 1999 respectively,

and have a weird "one country, two systems" policy,

even though it should be 3 systems... but hey.

Each of these areas has their own passports, currency language and even government.

Then you have the strange 6 economic zones,

which, even though they do not have their own autonomy,

they have flexible government regulation and free market policies

that allow them to manage business transactions in a more liberal manner.

These zones are cities along the coast and the entire island region of Hainan,

otherwise known as the "Hawaii of China".

Ha! Thought that was heavy?

Now things are gonna get reeally ugly.

Now, if there's one thing China knows how to do, it's getting people's attention and not in a ..

"Hey guys, look at me."

...type of way but more of like a ...

"Hey guys, look at me!"

...kind of way.

And one way to get attention is by making territory disputes.

Let's just get the biggest one off of our chests -Taiwan.

[Punches]

Hey hey hey!... It's called Chinese Taipei.

Taiwan... is in a weird jurisdiction limbo with China,

because both sides kind of technically claim sovereignty over the other.

As in mainland China claims they own Taiwan,

yet Taiwan believes, ultimately, that they are the sole proprietor of the entire mainland as well.

It all had to do with the Chinese civil war and the opposing political parties, yaddi yaddi yadda...

The communist party took over the mainland and the nationalist party took over Taiwan.

Now we go inland.

As we already mentioned in the Bhutan video,

China has two disputed regions with them.

Then we get to India.

"Yess!"

Sometimes China and India are like two monstrous titans slamming into each other at high velocity.

It's very difficult to really approach this topic without somebody getting angry or upset,

so I'm just gonna report the plain and simple claims as they stand,

and you make the decisions, okay?

That way, the worst that you can do is say:

"Geography Now, although not directly advocating,

mentioned claims to one side of an argument that I do not agree with."

In the east we reach Arunachal Pradesh,

which is to this day pretty much a state of India,

however, China still believes it is part of south Tibet.

In the Uttarakhand area by Tibet,

you have the Niti Pass by Chamoli and the Valley of Jadh Ganga.

In Pradesh, you have the Reo Purgyil mountains and the Spiti River valley,

and finally we reach Jammu and Kashmir,

a.k.a. the most messed up no man's land in the entire planet.

Here, China lays claim to the Shaksgam Valley,

the Fukche valley, the mouth of the river by Chumar,

and the largest chunk of highlands - the Aksai Chin region,

which Chinese national highway 2-19 passes through.

In addition, further up north, pretty much all of Tajikistan's southeast border with China is disputed.

*sigh*

and then we reach the Spratly Islands.

*singing* Spratly Islands, Islands,

*singing* who you will own you now?

I don't know! *almost crying*

In the South China Sea, things get really messy.

Imagine, if you will, a bunch of people walking towards each other,

each one on their phones looking at pictures of Bob Saget,

and then suddenly they all bump into each other, and notice a pile of money on the ground right at their feet.

They drop their phones and immediately lunge for the pile,

disagreeing on whose money is whose, and how much belongs to which person.

That's the Spratly Islands!

Essentially, these islands are claimed by 5 separate countries in area,

6, if you consider Taiwan sovereign,

and the whole deal is just an enormous mess of convoluted claim squabbling.

This is what the Philippines' claims.

This is Vietnam's, Brunei's, Malaysia's,

and then China just kinda does this.

Basically the Spratlys are an international battle royale,

and when one side doesn't really pay attention to one island that they claim,

another side sweeps in and builds a military station.

It gets ugly sometimes.

Oh, yeah, and there's a cluster of rocks called the Diaoyu or the Senkaku islands

that both China and Japan both think is theirs.

Alright! That's it!

Kind of. I mean, we didn't really talk about the whole North Korea thing,

and how the entire country operates under one time zone,

but we'll just have to save that for a social media comment war.

In the meantime, we gotta get this gravy train rolling.

China is a big big country, so naturally you're gonna get deep geographic divisions all over,

but in general, if you look at China from space,

you'll notice that the east is significantly greener than that of the arid, rocky north and west.

Situated right on the eastern third of the Eurasian landmass,

China's inner and coastal domain is kind of shielded by this arid, sparsely populated highlands

in the south-west, west and north, encapsulating the fertile lowlands inside.

I like to call this "the Chinese shield".

"Nobody's gonna touch my plants!"

This is partially why it took Europeans so long to develop solid ties and interactions with the east.

I mean, sure, the Silk Road had existed for centuries prior,

but crossing all the mountains and deserts and rocky pass[es] was less favorable to sea exploration for them.

And by the way, no,

Marco Polo did not bring the concept of pasta to Italy by bringing back Chinese noodles from his travels.

Pasta had already existed in the Mediterranean for centuries prior to the excursion.

THE LESS YOU KNEW ⋆

China has a vast domain of biodiversity and climate;

the west and north will be radically different from the coast and south.

So let's start with the inland and coast.

On the east side of China and the coasts, you have the heavily populated alluvial plains that are generally flat,

with numerous spots for shipping and harbours and beaches with the cool looking ones,

like Panjin Red Beach that blossoms every autumn.

Head a little bit north, up to the provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang, and half of Inner Mongolia

along the borders of Russia and North Korea, and you hit the coldest spot in all of China.

In fact, every year the city of Harbin, named the "ice city",

has a huge ice sculpting festival that draws in millions of tourists in the winter months.

Fun fact: this general area of China was commonly referred to as "Manchuria" in the past,

named after the Manchu people, which is where the Fu Manchu moustache gets its name from,

which is where I get back to the video.

Head a little east, and you reach the rest of the Inner Mongolian autonomous region,

which is dominated by the Mongolian plateau, which is a highland consisting of dry steppes, hills,

and yes, the Gobi desert, which, fun side note: is where all those beautiful caravan raiding and

"gimme back my comb or I will kill you" chasing scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were filmed.

Head a little west, and things get a little more intense.

Congratulations, you've reached the largest subdivision in China - the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region.

This is basically the wild west of China.

At over 1 and a half million square kilometers, only about 5% of the area is fit for human habitation.

This area is strange, rocky, rugged, mountainous, and loaded with oil,

making it China's largest gas producing region.

Then you head a little south, and you reach the strange Taklamakan desert or the "cold desert".

This huge basin of shifting sand dunes is almost completely surrounded by the snow-capped mountains

trapping in the frigid winds, however, it still lies in the rain shadow zone,

so it rarely receives any precipitation.

However, the funny thing is: if you look closely, you can see the ice melt from the Tian Shan

and Kunlun Mountains in the north and south feeding into the valleys below by the desert,

until they create a dry riverbed that looks like a strange Angeline Jolie forehead vein in the desert.

Head south, and then we reach the most notable autonomous region - the Tibetan plateau.

As the highest region on earth, with an average elevation of nearly 5,000 meters / 16,000 feet,

this area is situated on the Himalayan Mountains, the tallest mountain range on the planet,

and the tallest mountain in the world - Mount Everest - straddles the border with Nepal.

The funny thing is, the Tibetan plateau, and to some extent, the Qinghai province,

is so high that the snow melt runoff doesn't really have much to go in the arid north,

so it just kind of flows into the empty crevices,

creating China's largest network of freshwater lakes speckled throughout the entire area,

including the largest lake in China - Qinghai Lake.

Many speculate that these are actually the sources of many of the major rivers in China,

including the Yellow and Yangtze [rivers].