China works hard to convey an image of monolithic unity to the world and to its own people. But the reality is more complex.
China is still wrestling with how to rule over a diverse, ethnically mixed population that does not necessarily accept the dominance of the Han or the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] narrative.
The challenge for the CCP is that ethnic minorities constitute only about 10 percent of the total population but inhabit 60 percent of the land mass, much of which is in sensitive border areas (the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region).
The national language is a recent construct and has priority in schools over the local languages. About 30 percent of the population speaks a language at home other than the national language.
From Tony Saich, "Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party" (July 6, 2021).
Some linguists call the various varieties of the Chinese language, which shares a common logographic script "topolects" which are sometimes described as "dialects" but many of which are really at least as different from each other as different languages within a language family like the Romance languages or Germanic languages or the Dravidian languages.
From here. The areas in white are arid regions of the extremely high altitude Tibetan plateau that have almost no permanent residents.
From here.
China's political subdivisions and neighbors (from Landsat):
China by elevation (Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0) from Hui Zhao, et al., "Preliminary study on alterations of altitude road traffic in China from 2006 to 2013"(February 2017):
For reference (rounded to the nearest foot):
1,609 meters = 5,280 feet (1 mile) = Denver
2,000 meters = 6,562 feet
Aspen = 8,000 feet
Vail = 8,150 feet
3,000 meters = 9,843 feet
4,000 meters = 13,123 feet
5,000 meters = 16,404 feet
Ecological regions of China:
From Yuanyuan Yin, "Risk and contributing factors of ecosystem shifts over naturally vegetated land under climate change in China" (February 2016).
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