Chapter 13: China the Giant
Hobbs, Joseph and Salter, Christopher. 2007. Essentials of World Regional Geography, Fifth or Sixth
Edition
Two important principles in the field of Human Geography are hearth areas and diffusion. The hearth is the
place where a new innovation affecting humans first appears and diffusion is its pattern and process of
spread across the landscape from the hearth area.
From the very first section of this chapter choose at least one innovation demonstrating China’s historical
role as a hearth and then discuss the diffusion of this “thing” across space. Next as you read the remaining
part of the chapter look for additional examples, look especially for a very, very recent one. Be aware that
not all innovations are human induced nor necessarily beneficial to humans.
For all following questions it will be assumed that we are looking at things from Hobbs and Salter’s
perspective, if you have questions on the accuracy of these you are free to raise that issue while citing your
own scholarly sources. This said, I find Hobbs and Salter pretty much in the scholarly mainstream and their
answers viewed by the profession as quite accurate.
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Is China a particularly fertile country for agriculture?
How many people are there in China?
What fraction of the world’s population lives in China?
13.1 Accomplishments…
 China in Chinese characters means Middle Kingdom. What does this mean? What is it between?
Think carefully and completely.
 What and where is the Huang He?
 What kind of agriculture has been practiced on the Huang He’s alluvial plains?
 The Shang dynasty is mentioned as one of the earliest regional dynasties in China. Approximately
when did it exist and how long did it last?
 When did the Qin dynasty unify China into a great land empire?
 What is the name of the main ethnic group in China (those mentioned as the conquerors)?
 What two nomadic invaders conquered China and established their own dynasties?
 During its early contact with European colonial powers China limited its trade to these countries to
one port, which one is it and where is it located?
 When was the Opium War? What economic item did Great Britain force China to accept in trade?
 What is extraterritoriality?
 What special things are mentioned about Treaty Ports?
 After the Chinese Revolution of 1911 which two political parties came to unify and then rule China?
Where are they today?
13. 2 Setting
Ignore the size comparison some scholars list China as larger then the USA. But they are very close in size
with only Russia and Canada being larger.
 What is the fraction of American population to China’s?
 What are the two main environmental areas of China? Be able to draw the boundary between the two
on a map and explain what this line generally corresponds to.
 What is the major environmental handicap in the western region in China?
Hobbs and Slater – China Study Notes 2009
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Arid China (see also discussion section in the sidebar)
Be able to locate and draw the perimeter of the following on a base map (see base map at bottom):
 Tibetan Plateau (locate and draw perimeter)
 Basins (locate and draw perimeter)
o Tarmim Basin
o Dzugarian Basin
o Red
 Following Mountain Ranges (north to south) (locate and draw as thick lines)
o Altai Mountains
o Tian Shan, Qilian Shan, Qinling Shan (joint system)
o Kunlun Shan
o Himalayan
 Deserts (west to east) (locate and draw perimeter)
o Taklamakan
o Gobi
 Rivers (locate from existing lines)
o Huang He (Yellow)
o Chang Jiang (Yangtze)
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What percent of China’s population lives in the western region? As a result what percent would be in
the eastern region?
What are the three main non-Han ethnic groups in this region?
There are three large regions that are related to autonomous provinces in this western area, what are
they? Among these three regions inside of which region is there still a non-Han ethnic group which
is the majority of the population? Why don’t the other two regions have such a majority?
About what fraction of China’s total land area is contained in the Tibetan Highlands?
Why is the Tarim Basin particularly dry?
What does the word Taklamakan translate as? What does this tell us about the Taklamakan desert?
A green belt is being planted to contain desertification and blowing sand from which deserts? (In fact
we sometimes find fine particles from these dust storms in our own rain storms in Bellingham.)
Approximately how big is this green belt going to be? What geographic region could you compare it
to?
Where is Xinjiang’s population concentrated? How would this demonstrate patterns and process?
How might the historical existence of these concentrations of population also demonstrate principles
of Site and Situation.
New transportation links through these area serve two major purposes what are they?
What kind of resources exist in Xinjiang province?
Although the majority of the population in Nei Mongolia is Han Chinese, they are highly
concentrated. Where? What site condition led to this concentration? Again can you also state this as
a pattern and process example?
At the height of their empire, when the Mongols ruled China how far west did their empire extend?
The Mongols and other “barbarians” had long been pulled towards China proper, especially for
conquest and raiding parties. In the 15th century what barrier was erected in an unsuccessful attempt
to limit this migration?
What major industrial center was opened in the main city of Nei Mongolia (Baotou) and who was
instrumental in opening it. We will return to this in section 13.4.
Hobbs and Slater – China Study Notes 2009
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Humid China
What are this region’s two major subregions? In addition what is the third region that straddles the Humid –
Arid boundary line?
“Third region”
 What is the common name for this region in the West?
 What countries border this region on the north and east?
 What important grain crop cannot be grown here and why?
 Why can’t winter grain crops grow here?
 When did Han Chinese first begin to move into this area in large numbers?
 They now make up the vast majority of the population, how big is that population?
North China
Note the low level of precipitation in this region, in comparison Bellingham gets about 32 inches per year,
even more important what about variability? We will discuss this in a class lecture.
What common winter grain crop is grown here (hint it is also grown as winter grain crop in Eastern
Washington which is also a semi-arid area)?
Because of the variability in precipitation what is there a history of in this region?
What river is most important in this region?
What does the book tell us about the loess soils in a large inland part of this region? Is loess good or bad for
the North China plain that this river flows across? Is the negative side of this situation somewhat similar to
what recently occurred in New Orleans (and here it has been occurring for several thousand years!)?
Despite the problems in this area is it the historical focus of Chinese civilization?
What is the Grand Canal and roughly when was it built? Relative to other canals on the face of the earth
how long is this canal?
Why was the Grand Canal built? What were the main grains traded on this canal and which moved south
and which moved south?
What will the new use of this canal be in the near future (originally this was planned to be completed in time
for the 2008 Olympics, but it may not be done in time)?
South China
What mountain range divides this region from North China? What river drainages or watersheds do these
mountains divide?
There are the three large basins of the Chang Jiang, lower or coastal plains, middle, and upper. What
industrial city is at the center of the middle one? Can you guess which major world urban center is on the
southern delta of the Chang Jiang? What divides the middle one from Upper one?
What is the other name for the upper basin, located above the Three Gorges?
Where is the real cultural heartland (or hearth) of Southern China? Note that this major Chinese city is on a
river delta, which one? Also this city is very close to Hong Kong.
West of the Guangzho lowlands is an area ethnically different then much of this region of China, how so?
Also, what crop had been grown here in the past (and once again is appearing) and what site and situation
conditions favored its cultivation in the past?
Inset on Ethnic Geography
 What is the current government policy towards the Uighar (mainly Muslim) and Tibetan (mainly
Budhist) minorities?
 What are the goals of the Western Big Development Project?
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What portion of Lhasa’s population is now Han Chinese? Likewise in Xinjiang what is the
proportion of Han?
Might we learn why China might be a supporter of America’s war on terror based on this reading?
What do you personally think about that?
Inset on the Three Gorges Dam
 The information here is a bit dated, but not too bad. I took WWU students to this area over three
different summers, it is a fascinating area to study. Convince me and I will take students again next
summer.
 We will spend a class period on this dam late in the semester.
 What are the expected benefits of the dam? What are some of the drawbacks (note that Bill Gates
spent his honeymoon in the Three Gorges – but don’t limit your thoughts only to the impacts on the
super rich)?
 Note the somewhat dated diagram of proposed water transfer schemes in this area (not unlike what
we have done in California a half a century ago). In the fall course we will discuss them in more
detail.
13.3 Issues of Chinese Agriculture
 What portion of Chinese population is currently supported by Agriculture (in comparison in the US
it’s around 1%)?
 What portion of Chinese land is not in agricultural cultivation?
 On the other hand compared to the quantity of arable land in the US does China have more or less
and what would be the comparative percentage?
 However, when we figure in irrigated land and multiple cropping patterns does this situation change?
Finally how many acres of arable land per person is available for the total population in China and
the US? Might this tell us something about which country utilizes its resource more efficiently?
 Hobbs and Salter gloss over the disastrous agricultural policies of Mao, without going into detail let
me say that when I would sit and talk to Chinese students your age and have them draw out family
trees, I was surprised to find that many of them had relatives that starved to death in the 1960s.
 Likewise Hobbs and Salter gloss over the disastrous water development policies that resulted in the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and destructive relocation of over ten million (but we
haven’t time here to discuss this, convince me to take another group of WWU students to China next
summer or take my fall course to learn more).
 Notice that only a small proportion of China remains forested (how much? Keep this in mind when
we study Japan.) but large areas are without significant vegetative cover – some due to entirely
natural causes and others human causes.
 In the video we will (or have) view about Nei Mongolia, we have some very good examples at
attempts at improving agriculture. Unfortunately, Hobbs and Salter do not really do justice to the
mixed results of many of these programs, but then how aware are we of the mixed nature of our own
agriculture practices in the US?
 Again on agricultural communes Hobbs and Salter tread very lightly, let me point out that at their
height is when people were starving to death in China. And the “backyard steel furnaces” were
extremely destructive on the environment and produced only what people generally referred to as
“dog turds” not steel.
 Although many industries did arrive in the countryside as a result of some past policies, this has been
a mixed result (like many things). In some cases they did provide jobs for underemployed
agricultural workers, but many current ones are among the most polluting in all of China (Why – take
my class in the fall).
Hobbs and Slater – China Study Notes 2009
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After 1978 what happened that caused a sudden 50% expansion in agricultural output during the
1980s and 1990s? What other factor when coupled with this increased the per capita food supply by
20%?
What percent of its consumption in grains like rice, corn, and wheat does China grow itself? When
we read Brown’s book we will learn much about the future of this situation.
Inset Medical Geography
 Might this be a modern example of a hearth area and diffusion?
 Why is China such a good incubator for this type of disease?
 By what modern means did it diffuse and how quickly?
 What particular animal is the most likely origin host for this disease?
 How dangerous is/was this disease and why?
 What were the economic consequences? How close to the US did it get?
 Do you think it could happen again?
13.4 China’s Industrial Geography
 Where does China rank in the world in economic industrial output?
 In the 19th and early 20th century who owned most of China’s industry? Where was it located?
 Where was China’s first center of heavy industry (things like steel mills) and who developed it?
 What were the four distinct national drives for economic development in post-liberation (after 1949)
China?
 During the second of these drives, who did the Chinese rely on for assistance and guidance? Did this
phase focus on producing more consumer goods or basic inputs for the over-all economy? Was this
period based on a free market or command economy? What is the difference? Where were many of
these new plants located and why? Did this have something to do with the construction of the steel
mill in Baotou, Nei Mongolia?
 What site considerations aided in the development of many of these new plants? What resources in
particular?
 What is the energy source for 75% of China’s electrical production? Why is this not necessarily a
good thing? (Whenever I’ve been in China, most days summer or winter have been gray and
overcast, can you guess why?)
 Where are the largest coal reserves? Might you then guess where the heavy industry is located in
China? Is this pattern and process?
 In what areas is China now the world’s largest producer? Do you think that means that you may soon
be driving a car with Chinese steel in it?
 Where is oil located? Might this have some effect on China’s policy towards a minority group?
Which one?
 On the world stage, what happened to Chinese oil imports in 2003?
 During phase three of development (late Maoism) how did the industrial economy fare?
 Since 1978 what has been happening to China’s industry? What sort of Situation characteristics have
been important during this phase of industrial development?
 Why does China have one of the …”earth’s most impressive building booms…” what is it worried
about?
 Two concerns are raised about the recent economic boom, what are they?
 Is China today a poor country on average? Explain.
Inset – Mao’s Cultural Revolution
 What was the Cultural Revolution?
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13.5 China’s Urban & Transportation Geography
 Approximately what percent of China’s population lives in urban areas (to nearest 10%)? How does
this compare to Japan (again round to nearest 10)?
 What are the four major clusters of urban areas?
 What two foreign countries battled over control of Manchuria during the first half of the 20th century?
 In North China there are three cities? Each of these is at an entryway to the North China plain, what
are these entryways?
 In the Chang Jiang Valley group, what city is the largest in China?
 What is the major city on the Xi River delta? What former British Colony is close by?
 What is the problem of regional imbalance? Explain.
 How many internal migrant workers are their in China (usually referred to as the floating
population)? What happens to many villages they leave behind?
 How is the government trying to address the problem of the floating population? Is this based on a
site or situation factor?
 Why might it be a good idea to build more railroads in China?
Be able to locate/draw the following on a base map (see base map at bottom):
Cities
Beijing, Tianjin, Xian, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong
Skip 13.6 and 13.7
Take a good look at the Summary on page 377 and review and discussion questions that follow that.
(interactive study maps available for use on-campus only in Arntzen Hall labs -- J:\Saldata\ENVS-333\InCLass-GIS\China )
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