China is bordered to the east by the Yellow Sea , East China Sea and South China Sea with Hainan Island. Land borders exist with North Korea and Russia (northeast), Mongolia (north), Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (northwest), Afghanistan (Wakhan), Pakistan and India (west) as well as Nepal , Bhutan , India , Myanmar , Laos and Vietnam (south). The People’s Republic of China is separated from Taiwan by the Taiwan Strait.
Agriculture
According to allpubliclibraries, 14% of the total area is designated as arable land and 42% as pasture areas; the remaining land area is used for other types of use (settlement areas, forests) or fallow land (deserts, high mountain regions). The relatively small agricultural area makes it difficult to keep up with the increase in agricultural production with the population, which is growing by almost 6 million people every year. Due to rural industrialization and the expansion of the cities, the area under cultivation has decreased to around 0.1 ha per capita. This required a constant intensification of cultivation methods and an increasing use of artificial fertilizers. Insufficient investment in irrigation and drainage systems.
As a result of the increase in agricultural purchase prices and new income opportunities for farmers from rural industry, trade and transport, the per capita income of farmers rose significantly faster than that of the urban population in the first half of the 1980s. However, due to the rise in prices for agricultural and consumer goods, this trend came to a standstill again from the late 1980s. The gap between rural and urban average incomes remained large at a ratio of 1: 2.7. As a result, rural-urban migration increased. At the same time (2017) 286.5 million people were looking for a livelihood as migrant workers.
Rice, wheat and maize take up around 60% of the cultivated area. 90% of the country’s rice-growing areas are located in southern China, which allows up to three harvests with artificial irrigation. The main focus of wheat cultivation is in northern China. The main growing areas for cotton are the northwestern provinces of Sinkiang and Gansu as well as the central and northeastern provinces , especially Hunan , Hubei , Zhejiang , Jiangxi and Liaoning. As a result of family-based management and market incentives, both the volume and quality of cattle breeding and meat and animal production have increased continuously. Meat, fish, milk and eggs are increasingly appearing on the menu of city dwellers, and grain consumption has decreased significantly. The demand for feed grain can only be covered by imports.
Forestry: There is no reliable information on the size of the forest area. Forest cover is estimated to be around 22% of the total area of China and is particularly limited to northeast and southwest China. Despite increased reforestation, the increase in new forest areas remained limited. At the beginning of the 1990s, however, there was an increase for the first time since the founding of the People’s Republic. The “Green Great Wall” became particularly well known on the edge of the deserts and dry areas in western China, one of the largest afforestations to protect arable and grassland. However, the use as construction timber, other timber and firewood, especially in rural areas, remains problematic for the rest of the forest. Forests also officially include trees with fruit or nut harvests.
Fishing: There is a wide range of fish species caught in nearby marine areas. In rural areas, the number of farms increased, especially in regions with sufficient topographical conditions for fish ponds. Numerous new fishing techniques have been developed in so-called fishing villages, so that the breeding quota is around 90% of all freshwater fisheries. There was also a strong increase in sea fish farming; around three quarters of marine fishing is done in aquaculture. Thanks to the use of modern fishing methods and the massive expansion of fish farms, landings have increased sixfold since 1985.
Natural resources
China is one of the countries in the world that is endowed with a rich amount of mineral resources. Among the 163 types of minerals there are 149. All minerals are widely scattered across the country due to the geological structure. When it comes to important minerals such as coal, iron ore, crude oil, vangan, titanium, zinc, molybdenum, tungsten, tin and graphite, China is one of the world’s leading countries, in some cases also when it comes to mining. Nevertheless, iron ore, magnesium, bauxite, copper, but above all crude oil and natural gas, have to be imported. Unfavorable framework conditions also make it difficult to mine the rich non-ferrous (NF) metal deposits. Most of the deposits are located in remote areas with inadequate transport links, the mines are not very efficient and often have outdated equipment. Also, environmental aspects are hardly taken into account. China leads the world as an exporter of Rare earth metals that are needed in the high-tech industry. However, their promotion is associated with major environmental damage.
