Name: 地理Now!中国 (Geography Now! China)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:50:18.000Z
Duration: 19 min 50 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

基礎受動態

This episode is brought to you by 24houranswers.com.

Hey everyone! China is a big country with lots of history and culture.

様態の副詞

Obviously, in this video, I won't be able to cover everything.

But, I'll try my best to explain. Okay? Good?

China, China, China... or the People's Republic of China.

Everybody knows something about this place, and everybody has something to say about it.

Now let's see what the flag has to say about itself.

The flag is a simple red banner with five yellow stars in the upper hoist or canton corner;

a large star surrounded by four smaller ones in a semi-circular pattern to the right.

According to the governmental interpretation,

the red background symbolizes the revolution,

and the five stars were made yellow to radiate against the red.

The stars represent unity of the Chinese people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

The largest star symbolizes the Communist Party of China,

and the four smaller stars that surround the big star symbolize the four social classes:

the working class, the peasantry, the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie.

Well, that was pretty easy. Unfortunately, that will be the only easy part of this video.

Okay Geograpeeps, get your popcorn and notebooks,

because this is where things are gonna get really complicated, messy and dramatic and confusing.

First of all, mainland China is located in and dominates the heart of East Asia.

At over 22,000 kilometres, it has the world's longest combined land border with 14 other countries.

The country spans all the way from the Taklamakan Desert to the coast of Fujian.

China could either be the second, third, or fourth largest country in the world by total area.

If you include all the water territories, Canada is the second,

even though China has slightly more land mass,

and if you include Alaska, Hawaii and all the official territories, the US is slightly larger than China,

but if China's disputed and confusing territories are all included, then China is a little bit larger.

It's only been a couple of minutes and I'm already making it look like:

Speaking of territories, let's stick our hands in the first layer of mud!

China has some of the most complex administrative divisions in the world,

and it all has to do with certain types of people and the rise of the 20th century.

First of all, the country is divided into 22 official provinces,

China also has five autonomous regions, four municipalities,

and two special administrative regions that mostly self-govern themselves.

First, let's talk about the autonomous regions.

Guangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia.

The strange thing is that each of these regions has incredibly distinct and contrasting cultural traits

that differ from the rest of Han-dominated Chinese culture.

Because of the minority prevalency in these areas,

they have kind of like a weird legislative membrane in which they are still under full sovereignty of China,

but have extra special rights that don't apply to the rest of the provinces.

These are like the complete opposite of autonomous regions,

because they hold pretty much the highest governmental administrative classification in the country.

And even though they are cities, they hold provincial status.

In short, these guys are like the big shots of China!

the capital Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing.

Yeah, try saying that in five times fast.

(Tries saying it five times fast, like a tongue twister)

Furthermore, we have 2 special administrative regions that kinda self-govern themselves,

but they all kind of fall under Chinese sovereignty.

CGP Grey does an amazing video explaining the whole scenario on this,

but I'll try to summarise it in the quickest way I can.

These places used to be operated by the British and Portuguese,

until they were ceded back to China back in 1997 and 1999 respectively,

and have a weird "one country, two systems" policy,

even though it should be 3 systems... but hey.

Each of these areas has their own passports, currency language and even government.

Then you have the strange 6 economic zones,

which, even though they do not have their own autonomy,

they have flexible government regulation and free market policies

that allow them to manage business transactions in a more liberal manner.

These zones are cities along the coast and the entire island region of Hainan,

otherwise known as the "Hawaii of China".

Now, if there's one thing China knows how to do, it's getting people's attention and not in a ..

And one way to get attention is by making territory disputes.

Let's just get the biggest one off of our chests -Taiwan.

Hey hey hey!... It's called Chinese Taipei.

Taiwan... is in a weird jurisdiction limbo with China,

because both sides kind of technically claim sovereignty over the other.

As in mainland China claims they own Taiwan,

yet Taiwan believes, ultimately, that they are the sole proprietor of the entire mainland as well.

It all had to do with the Chinese civil war and the opposing political parties, yaddi yaddi yadda...

The communist party took over the mainland and the nationalist party took over Taiwan.

As we already mentioned in the Bhutan video,

China has two disputed regions with them.

Sometimes China and India are like two monstrous titans slamming into each other at high velocity.

It's very difficult to really approach this topic without somebody getting angry or upset,