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China (Traditional Chinese: 中國; Simplified Chinese: 中国; Hanyu Pinyin: Zhōngguó (help·info); Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguó) is a cultural region and ancient civilization in East Asia. China refers to one of the world's oldest civilization comprising successive states and cultures dating back more than 6,000 years. Due to the stalemate of the last Chinese Civil War following World War II, China is currently divided into two separate countries: the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Republic of China (ROC). The PRC administers and governs mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, while the ROC administers and governs Taiwan and its surrounding islands.

China has one of the world's longest periods of mostly uninterrupted civilization and one of the world's longest continuously used written language systems. The successive states and cultures of China date back more than six millennia. For centuries, China was the world's most advanced civilization, and the cultural center of East Asia, with an impact lasting to the present day. China is also the source of many great technical inventions developed throughout world history, including the four great inventions of ancient China: Paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

Names

"Zhongguo"

China is called Zhongguo (also Romanized as Chung-kuo or Jhongguo) in Mandarin Chinese. The first character zhōng (中) means "central" or "middle" while guó (国 or 國) means "country" or "region". The term is commonly translated into English as "the Middle Kingdom". However, there have been arguments that it should be translated as "the Central Kingdom", based on the archaic meaning of the term Zhongguo as "center part ".

The term has not been used consistently throughout Chinese history, and has carried varying cultural and political connotations.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, it was used only to describe the states politically descended from the Western Zhou Dynasty, in the Yellow River (Huang He) valley, to the exclusion of states such as the Chu along the Yangtze River and the Qin to the west. However, by the time of the Han Dynasty, the states of Chu, Qin and others had linked themselves to the politics of Zhongguo and were already considered integral parts of a newer Zhongguo.

Read more at Wikipedia.org