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China stretches some across the East Asian landmass. China is bordered in the east by the East China Sea, Korea Bay, Yellow Sea, Bohai Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea, and shares land borders with a total of 14 countries in the north, south and west. China has been officially and conveniently divided into 5 homogeneous physical macro-regions: Eastern China (subdivided into the Northeast plain, North plain, and southern hills), Xinjiang-Mongolia, and the Tibetan highlands. It has great physical diversity. The east and south of the country consists of fertile lowlands and foothills, and is the location of most of China's agricultural output and human population. The west and north of the country is dominated by sunken basins (such as the Gobi and the Taklamakan), rolling plateaus, and towering massifs. It contains part of the highest tableland on earth, the Tibetan Plateau, and has much lower agricultural potential population. Traditionally, the Chinese population centered on the Chinese central plain and oriented itself toward its own enormous inland market, developing as an imperial power whose center lay in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River on the northern plains. More recently, the coastline has been used extensively for export-oriented trade, causing the coastal provinces to become the leading economic center. With an area of about , the People's Republic of China is the 3rd largest country in total area behind Russia and Canada, and very similar in size to the United States. The exact land area is sometimes challenged by border disputes, most notably about Taiwan, Aksai Chin, the Trans-Karakoram Tract, and South Tibet.〔The CIA's ''The World Factbook'' gives ((【引用サイトリンク】 CIA World Fact Book - Geography Note )), the United Nations Statistics Division gives (), and the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' gives .((【引用サイトリンク】title=United States ))〕 ==Physical geography== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Geography of China」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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