Hotel - GEOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE - Info

The PRC is the largest country in area in East Asia (excluding Russia) and the third largest in the world by land-and-sea area. (However, the United States of America disputes this and instead believes itself to be the third largest.) It borders 14 nations (counted clockwise from south): Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (commonly known as Burma), India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan[2], Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and North Korea. The PRC contains a large variety of landscapes. In the east, along the shores of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, are found extensive and densely populated alluvial plains; the shore of the South China Sea is more mountainous and southern China is dominated by hill country and lower mountain ranges. In the central-east are found the deltas of China's two major rivers, the Huang He and Yangtze River (Chang Jiang). Other major rivers include the Xijiang River, Mekong, Brahmaputra and Amur. To the west, major mountain ranges, notably the Himalaya with China's highest point Mount Everest, and high plateaus feature among the more arid landscape of deserts such as the Taklamakan and the Gobi Desert. Barrier tree lines adjacent in desert lands planted since the 1970s reduced the frequency of sandstorms, although prolonged drought and poor agricultural practices dust storms still produce dust storms and sometimes mud rain each spring. According to China's Environmental Protection Agency, the Gobi Desert has been expanding "like a tsunami" and is a major source of dust storms which affect Mainland China and other parts of northeast Asia such as Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Dust from the northern plains has been tracked to the West Coast of the United States. River management (human waste dumping, factory pollution, and water extraction for irrigation and drinking) and dust erosion are problems affecting other countries that have become recent important concerns for relations between China and its neighboring countries.