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re: Sergio Aguero Trains In PUMA evoSPEED CAMO

sergiop9 — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:36:50 GMT

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re: Podolski Trains In Forthcoming adizero Colourway

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re: Podolski Trains In Forthcoming adizero Colourway

nik oyou — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:25:46 GMT

China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state located in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing.[14] It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau).[15] The PRC also claims Taiwan – which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity – as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War.

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, China is the world's second-largest country by land area,[16] and the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the definition of total area.[17] China's landscape is vast and diverse, with forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts occupying the arid north and northwest near Mongolia and Central Asia, and subtropical forests prevalent in the wetter south near Southeast Asia. The terrain of western China is rugged and elevated, with the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separating China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, have their sources in the Tibetan Plateau and continue to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.

The ancient Chinese civilization – one of the world's earliest – flourished in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, known as dynasties, beginning with the semi-mythological Xia of the Yellow River basin (c. 2000 BC). Since 221 BC, when the Qin Dynasty first conquered several states to form a Chinese empire, the country has expanded, fractured and been reformed numerous times. The Republic of China overthrew the last dynasty in 1911, and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949. After the defeat of the Empire of Japan in World War II, the Communist Party defeated the nationalist Kuomintang in mainland China and established the People's Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, while the Kuomintang relocated the ROC government to Taipei. The ROC's jurisdiction is now limited to Taiwan and several outlying islands, including Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, and it now receives limited diplomatic recognition.

Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China has become the world's fastest-growing major economy. As of 2013, it is the world's second-largest economy by both nominal total GDP and purchasing power parity (PPP), and is also the world's largest exporter and importer of goods.[18] China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army, with the second-largest defense budget. The PRC has been a United Nations member since 1971, when it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the BCIM and the G-20. China has been characterized as a potential superpower by a number of academics,[19] military analysts,[20][21] and public policy and economics analysts.[22][23]

Contents

[hide] 1 Etymology

2 History 2.1 Prehistory

2.2 Early dynastic rule

2.3 Imperial China

2.4 Late dynastic rule

2.5 Republic of China (1912–1949)

2.6 People's Republic of China (1949–present)

3 Geography 3.1 Political geography

3.2 Landscape and climate

3.3 Biodiversity 3.3.1 Fauna

3.3.2 Flora

3.3.3 Fungi

3.4 Environmental issues

4 Politics 4.1 Administrative divisions

4.2 Foreign relations 4.2.1 Trade relations

4.2.2 Territorial disputes

4.2.3 Emerging superpower status

4.3 Sociopolitical issues and reform

5 Military

6 Economy

7 Science and technology 7.1 Historical

7.2 Modern era

8 Infrastructure 8.1 Communications

8.2 Transport

9 Demographics 9.1 Ethnic groups

9.2 Languages

9.3 Urbanization

9.4 Education

9.5 Health

9.6 Religion

10 Culture 10.1 Cuisine

10.2 Sports

11 See also

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External links

Etymology

Main article: Names of China

China

Chinese name

Simplified Chinese:

中国

Traditional Chinese:

中國

Literal meaning:

Middle Kingdom[24][25]

[show]Transliterations

People's Republic of China

Alternative Chinese name

Simplified Chinese:

中华人民共和国

Traditional Chinese:

中華人民共和國

[show]Transliterations

Mongolian name

Mongolian:

[show]Transliterations

Tibetan name

Tibetan:

ཀྲུང་ཧྭ་མི་དམངས་སྤྱི

མཐུན་རྒྱལ་ཁབ

[show]Transliterations

Uyghur name

Uyghur:

جۇڭخۇا خەلق جۇمھۇرىيىت

[show]Transliterations

Zhuang name

Zhuang:

Cunghvaz Yinzminz Gunghozgoz

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

The word "China" is derived from Persian Cin (چین), which is from Sanskrit Cīna (चीन).[26] It is first recorded in 1516 in the journal of Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa.[27] It appears in English in a translation published in 1555.[28] The Sanskrit word was used to refer to China as early as AD 150.[29] There are various scholarly theories regarding the origin of this word. The traditional theory, proposed in the 17th century by Martino Martini, is that "China" is derived from "Qin" (秦), the westernmost of the Chinese kingdoms during the Zhou Dynasty, or from the succeeding Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC).[30] The word Cīna is used in two Hindu scriptures – the Mahābhārata of the 5th century BC and the Laws of Manu of the 2nd century BC – to refer to a country located in the Tibetan-Burman borderlands east of India.[31][32]

In China, common names for the present country include Zhōngguó (Chinese: 中国; literally "the Middle State(s)") and Zhōnghuá (Chinese: 中华), although the country's official name has been changed numerous times by successive dynasties and modern governments. The term Zhongguo appeared in various ancient texts, such as the Classic of History of the 6th century BC,[33] and in pre-imperial times it was often used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia tribes from perceived "barbarians". The term, which can be either singular or plural, referred to the group of states or provinces in the central plain but was not used as a name for the country as a whole until the nineteenth century. The Chinese were not unique in regarding their country as "central", since other civilizations had the same view of themselves.[34]

re: Podolski Trains In Forthcoming adizero Colourway

nik oyou — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:22:33 GMT

The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books") is a canonical collection of texts considered sacred in Judaism or Christianity. Different religious groups include different books within their canons, in different orders, and sometimes divide or combine books, or incorporate additional material into canonical books. Christian Bibles range from the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon to the eighty-one books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church canon.

The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, contains twenty-four books divided into three parts; the five books of the Torah ("teaching" or "law"), the Nevi'im ("prophets"), and the Ketuvim ("writings"). The first part of Christian Bibles is the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible divided into thirty-nine books and ordered differently than the Hebrew Bible. The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches also hold certain deuterocanonical books and passages to be part of the Old Testament canon. The second part is the New Testament, containing twenty-seven books; the four Canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, twenty-one Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation.

By the 2nd century BCE Jewish groups had called the Bible books "holy," and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible" (τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια, tà biblía tà ágia) or "the Holy Scriptures" (η Αγία Γραφή, e Agía Graphḗ). Many Christians consider the whole canonical text of the Bible to be divinely inspired. The oldest surviving complete Christian Bibles are Greek manuscripts from the 4th century. The oldest Tanakh manuscript in Hebrew and Aramaic dates to the 10th century CE,[1] but an early 4th-century Septuagint translation is found in the Codex Vaticanus.

The Bible was divided into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton and into verses in the 16th century by French printer Robert Estienne[2] and is now usually cited by book, chapter, and verse. The Bible has estimated annual sales of 25 million copies,[3][4] and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where it was the first mass printed book

re: Podolski Trains In Forthcoming adizero Colourway

nik oyou — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:22:33 GMT

re: Podolski Trains In Forthcoming adizero Colourway

nik oyou — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:22:33 GMT

re: Podolski Trains In Forthcoming adizero Colourway

nik oyou — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:22:22 GMT

re: Sergio Aguero Trains In PUMA evoSPEED CAMO

7V1K0LA1 — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:55:15 GMT

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re: Sergio Aguero Trains In PUMA evoSPEED CAMO

stenkio — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:29:24 GMT

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