China (listen (help·info); Traditional Chinese: 中國; Simplified Chinese: 中国; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhōngguó; Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhōngguó) is a geographical region in East Asia. With over one-fifth of the world's population, the majority of China exists today as a state known as the People's Republic of China, but it also refers to a long-standing civilization comprising successive states and cultures dating back more than 4,000 years.
With one of the world's longest periods of mostly uninterrupted civilization and the world's longest continuously used written language system, China's history has been largely characterized by repeated divisions and reunifications amid alternating periods of peace and war, and violent imperial dynastic change. The country's territorial extent expanded outwards from a core area in the North China Plain, and varied according to its changing fortunes to include multiple regions of East, Northeast, and Central Asia. For centuries, Imperial China was also one of the world's most technologically advanced civilizations, and East Asia's dominant cultural influence, with an impact lasting to the present day.
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