Many Landscapes

China is a vast land with various climates. China is 3.7 million square miles and is very diverse. It contains mountains, high plateaus, deserts, and forests. One-third of China's land is made of mountains, including the tallest mountain on Earth. Mount Everest is on the border between China and Nepal. The Qinghai Plateau in western China is the highest mountain plateau on Earth. The country has many rivers as well, namely the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. The Yangtze is the world's third longest river.

Zhangye

Zhangjiajie

Seasons and Climate

China's climate is as diverse as its landscapes. It has four main regions with their own distinct weather patterns. North China experiences cold winters and hot summers with limited rainfall. Sandstorms occur, though less often in late summer and autumn. The Qinghai-Tibet area is dry all year. It has cold winters and short, fairly warm summers. North West China has arid conditions with scarce rainfall. South China has a subtropical climate with high temperatures and a lot of summer rainfall, along with a typhoon season along the southeast coast.

Plants and Animals

This country is home to a large variety of plants and animals. However, despite being a large country in terms of land mass, only about 15% of China's land is arable. This has made it difficult for the country to produce rough crops to support their large population. Western China in particular is quite infertile and so much of the population is more in the eastern portion of the country and development has skewed heavily between the two regions because of this. China has great animal diversity and its environment is actually home to animals that do not live anywhere else in the world such as the paddlefish in the Yangtze River.

South China