The People's Republic of China     

China has a territory area of 9.6 million square km, second to Russia and Canada, with a sea area of about 4.73 million square km.

In East Asia, border on the west Pacific Ocean

8 hours earlier than the Greenwich Time

Most of the country is in the temperate zone, although geographically the country stretches from the tropical and subtropical zones in the south to the frigid zone in the north.

Beijing

Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, was elected president of the PRC on March 15, 2003. He was born  in December 1942,in Jixi, Anhui Province.

Wen Jiabao is a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and premier of the State Council. He was born in Tianjin in September 1942.

There are 56 ethnic groups in China. The Han people make up 92 percent of the country's total population, totaling 1159.4 million; and the other 55 ethnic groups, 8 percent, totaling 106.43 million.

Of the 56 ethnic groups in China , the Hui and Manchu use the same language as Han people, while the rest groups have their own spoken and written languages.

The full name of a Han Chinese is composed of two parts: the surname and the given name, while the opposite of the arrangement of names is widely practiced in many other countries outside Asia.Today, there are more than 8,000 Chinese surnames, of which 3,000 surnames are used by the Han Chinese. Among these names, Li, Wang and Zhang are the most commonly heard, given to about 250 million Chinese. There are also two-syllable surnames, or compound surnames, such as Ouyang, Zhuge, Sima and Gongsun. The given name is usually two words but also can consist of just one syllable. A full Chinese name always has two or three characters, but can also have four if there is both a compound surname and two-syllable given name.