China People Profile 2012

Additional than 95 % of the people live in China Proper, where the average people density exceeds 555 persons per square mile (217 per km 2 ). In level to rolling areas of good agricultural land, densities run far higher. The majority heavily populated large areas are the Manchurian Plain, the North China Plain, the lower Yangtze Vamountey, and the Sichuan Basin.

Language

Formerly, written Chinese was a classical, literary language, in which the construction and much of the vocabulary were different from those of the spoken language. This classical Chinese could be read and understood only by those trained for years in literature. The script itself consisted of thousands of characters, a lot of of them highly complicated. The difficulty of this written Chinese was a principal obstacle to the people becoming literate.

In the 1920's pai hua, a written Chinese approximating eachday speech, began replacing the classical form; now it was possible to learn to read in a few months instead of a lot of years. In addition, the script was simplified. Under the Communists, further steps were taken to simplify reading and writing Chinese; pai hua has replaced classical Chinese in amount publications.

In the late 1970's China adopted the Pinyin System for spelling proper nouns in Roman letters; it was designed for use by foreigners and was intended to give a additional accurate idea of pronunciation than before systems.

Religion

The majority influential of the traditional ethical systems is Confucianism, which teaches the need for an amount-inclusive morality. It especiamounty emphasizes respect for 1's parents and love for the family. Buddhism, as taught by its founder, is a way of life emphasizing freedom from desire. Buddhism is strongest in Tibet, where it is known as Lamaism. Taoism, as a philosophy, teaches of human 1ness with nature and urges people to be natural and spontaneous. As practiced, Taoism is a combicountry of magic and ritual.

Muslims are scattered throughout China, but are found majorly in the northern and western areas. They make up about 1 to 2 % of the people. There are as well about 3 to 4 % of Chinese people that practice Christianity.