Beijing  - With 1.3 billion inhabitants, the People's Republic of China is the world's most populous country.

The large majority of its citizens (92 per cent) are ethnic Han Chinese while China's 55 official minorities make up 8 per cent of the population.

Dominating variations of the Chinese language are Mandarin, which is spoken by more than two-thirds of the population; Wu; Min; Xiang; Hakka; and Cantonese, or Yue. A number of dialects and minority languages are also spoken in China.

At a size of 9.6 million square kilometres, China is Asia's largest country and the world's third-largest after Russia and Canada.

An estimated 15 million people live in the capital, Beijing.

The People's Republic was founded on October 1, 1949, after the Communists' victory over the Nationalists and the Nationalist government's flight to Taiwan.

"Eternal revolutionary" Mao Zedong united the country but at the same time plunged China into devastating socio-political campaigns, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which cost the lives of tens of millions of people.

After the chaos and anarchy of the Cultural Revolution and Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping led the country toward economic reform and an opening toward to the rest of the world in the late 1970s.

However, political reforms did not follow the economic liberalization although the Chinese enjoy more personal freedom today.

In 1989, a popular uprising and calls for democracy were brutally suppressed, ending with a massacre around Tiananmen Square on June 4.

International criticism of the human rights situation in China increasingly takes a back seat to China's economic rise as the country is poised to replace Japan as the world's second-largest economy next year.

China is divided into 22 provinces, five autonomous regions and four municipalities - Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing - which are under direct control of the central government. The former British and Portuguese colonies of Hong Kong and Macao form special administrative regions that enjoy considerable autonomy.  (dpa)