Chinese Natural Resources
5 min read1) Cultivated Land, Forest and Grassland
China’s cultivated lands, forests and grasslands are among the world’s largest in terms of sheer area. However, due to China’s large population, the per-capita areas of cultivated land, forest and grassland are small, especially in the case of cultivated land-only one third of the world’s average.
In China,130.04 million hectares of land are cultivated, mainly on the Northeast Plain, the North China Plain, the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain, the Pearl River Delta and the Sichuan Basin. The fertile black soil of the Northeast Plain, the largest plain in China with an area of more than 350,000 square kilometers, abounds in wheat, corn, sorghum, soybeans, flax and sugar beet. The deep brown topsoil of the North China Plain is planted with wheat, corn, millet and cotton. The Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain’s flat terrain and many lakes and rivers make it particularly suitable for paddy rice and freshwater fish; therefore, it is called “a land of fish and rice.”This area also produces large quantities of tea and silkworms. The purplish soil of the warm and humid Sichuan Basin is green with crops in all four seasons, including paddy rice, rapeseed and sugarcane. The Pearl River Delta abounds with paddy rice, harvested 2-3 times every year.
Forests cover about 175 million hectares of China. The Greater Hinggan Mountains, the Lesser Hinggan Mountains and Changbai Mountain Ranges in the northeast are China’s largest natural forest areas. Major tree species found here include conifers, such as Korean pine, larch and Korean larch, and coniferous-broadleaf trees such as white birch, oak, willow, elm and Northeast China ash. Major tree species in the southwest include the dragon spruce, fir and Yunnan pine, as well as teak, red sandalwood, camphor, nanmu and so on. Xishuangbanna, often called a kingdom of plants, in the south of Yunnan Province, is a rare tropical broadleaf forest area in China, playing host to more than 5,000 plant species.
Grasslands in China cover an area of 400 million hectares, stretching more than 3,000 kilometers from the northeast to the southwest. They are the centers of animal husbandry. TheInner Mongolian Prairie is China’s largest natural pastureland, and home to the famous Sanhe horses, Sanhe cattle and Mongolian sheep. The important natural pasturelands in north and south of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang are ideal for stockbreeding, where the famous Ili horses and Xinjiang fine-wool sheep are raised.
2) Mineral Resources
China has deposits of almost all the minerals known in the world. Minerals of 1 51 different kinds have been verified, which lead the world in the reserves of tungsten, antimony, rare earth, molybdenum, vanadium and titanium. Other deposits which are among the largestin the world are coal, iron, lead-zinc, copper, silver, mercury, tin, nickel, phosphorus and asbestos.
China’s basic coal reserves total 3 34.2 billion tons, mainly distributed in north, northwest, northeast and southwest China with Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Shanxi Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region heading the field. China’s 21.24 billion tons of the basic iron ore reserves are distributed mainly in northeast, north and southwest China such as Liaoning Province, eastern Hebei and western Sichuan provinces. Tungsten reserves are concentrated in southeastern Hunan, southern Jiangxi, and northern Guangdong, western Fujian and eastern Guangxi, though they are found in 19 provinces and autonomous regions across China.
China also abounds in petroleum, natural gas, oil shale, phosphorus and sulfur. Petroleum reserves are mainly found in northwest, northeast and north China, as well as in the continental shelves of east China.
3) Water Resources
Freshwater in China mainly comes from rivers and lakes. China’s territory includes numerous lakes, most of which are found on the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Freshwater lakes such as Poyang Lake, Dongting Lake, Taihu Lake, and Hongze Lake mostly lie in the former area, while in the latter are saltwater lakes, such as Qinghai Lake, Nam Co Lake and Siling Co Lake. Poyang Lake in the north of Jiangxi Province, with an area of 3,583 square kilometers, is the largest of its kind. Qinghai Lake, in northeast Qinghai Province and with an area of 4,583 square kilometers, is the largest one of its kind.
China’s rivers can be categorized as exterior and interior systems. The catchment area of the exterior rivers that empty into the oceans accounts for 64% of the country’s total land area.
The Yangtze, Yellow, Heilong, Pearl, Liaohe, Haihe and Huaihe rivers flow east, and empty into the Pacific Ocean. The Yarlung Zangbo River in Tibet, which flows first east and then south into the Indian Ocean, boasts the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, the largest canyon in the world,504.6kilometers long and 6,009 meters deep. The Ertix River flows north from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to the Arctic Ocean. The catchment area of the interior rivers that flow into inland lakes or disappear into deserts or salt marshes makes up about 36% of China’s total land area. Its length of 2,179 kilometers makes the Tarim River in southern Xinjiang China’s longest interior river.
The Yangtze River,6,300 kilometers long, is the largest river in China, and the third largest in the world, next only to the Nile in Africa and the Amazon in South America. Passing through high mountains and deep valleys, the upper section of the Yangtze River is abundant in water resources. Known as the “golden waterway,”the Yangtze is a transportation artery linking west and east, its navigation benefiting from excellent natural channels. The middle and
lower Yangtze River areas have a warm and humid climate, plentiful rainfall and fertile soil, making them important agricultural regions. The Yellow River is the second largest riverin China with a length of 5,500 kilometers. The Yellow River valley was one of the birthplaces o ancient Chinese civilization. It has lush pasturelands along its banks, flourishing agriculture and abundant mineral deposits.
The Heilong River is a large river in north China with a total length of 4,3 50 kilometers, ofwhich 3,420 kilometers are in China. The Pearl River,2,210 kilometers long, is a large river in south China. In addition to those bestowed by nature, China has a famous man-made river-the Grand Canal, running from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province in the south. Work first began on the Grand Canal as early as in the 5th century B.C. It links five major rivers: the Haihe River, Yellow River, Huaihe River, Yangtze River and Qiantang River. Witha total length of 1,801 kilometers, the Grand Canal is the longest as well as the oldest man-made waterway in the world.
