Western china
West China is a vague geographical term. Often only the two western autonomous regions Tibet and Xinjiang are understood by this. Together they make up 32% of the area of the People's Republic of China , but only about 2% of the population. In the official Chinese geography, on the other hand, West China is made up of Northwest China and Southwest China and is therefore much larger than the two autonomous regions.
Tibet and Xinjiang
Tibet (1,268,947 km², 3.2 million inhabitants) was incorporated into China in 1950 and has since been politically patronized despite nominal autonomy . Many Tibetans have since fled or emigrated to India and other countries; a large part of the remaining approximately two million Tibetans still regard the Dalai Lama as their head .
The northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang (1,774,034 km², 19.99 million inhabitants) is mostly inhabited by Muslim Uyghurs , Kazakhs and Kyrgyz people, who have been pushing for real autonomy in recent years. In recent years, the formation of groups and organizations can be observed here, which try to achieve this goal both with non-violent resistance and more and more often with terrorist attacks .
Mountains and landscapes
The countries bordering "West China" are - from south to west clockwise - India , Bhutan and Nepal , Kashmir and Pakistan , the states of Central Asia ( Afghanistan , Tajikistan , Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan ) as well as Russia and Mongolia . They make up 10 of the 14 neighboring countries of the People's Republic of China.
The size of China (north-south extent approx. 4500 km, east-west approx. 4200 km) results in a variety of landscapes , peoples and cultures that are even more pronounced in the mountainous western half than in the flatter east. The climatic conditions and thus the habitability of the individual regions also differ greatly. The Tibetan Plateau (average over 4000 meters above sea level ) is sometimes very sparsely populated, the Uyghur Xinjiang little closer, the great desert Taklamakan and Dzungaria are - of oil -Trupps and some nomads and researchers aside - virtually deserted (the climatically similar desert Gobi is 1000 km further east on the Mongolian border).
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West China can be most clearly characterized - and in some cases also delimited - by the (low) precipitation . As can be seen from the map, the far west of China, along with Inner Mongolia, also has the driest regions of the state.
The highest and longest mountains in the region, which geographically belongs to Central Asia , but is rarely included for political reasons, are the
- in the south running Himalayas with the highest peak Mount Everest (8848 m) and another 10 eight-thousanders ,
- the Kunlun Shan (between Tibet and Xinjiang) with peaks up to 7000 m,
- the Tianshan (up to 7000 m) on the border with Kazakhstan.
Shorter, but hardly less high
- Karakoram with the K2 (8611 m),
- the Pamir on the border with Afghanistan with Kongur (7649 m) and the Lenin peak and
- the Alai Mountains on the border with Kyrgyzstan.
Overall, western China has a pronounced high mountain character with plateaus in between and a strongly pronounced continental climate . The largest rivers in South and East Asia also have their source here: Indus and Brahmaputra , Yalong and Mekong , the Pearl River , the Yangtze , which is so important for eastern China, and the Yellow River . Due to the topography of Central Asia, the two largest rivers flow almost exactly from west to east, that is, from the arid but snowy , glaciated high regions into the plains with a lot of precipitation and low elevations.
Of the 12 most important cities in China, only two - Chengdu and Lanzhou - are located in the center of the country, so just on the "eastern edge" of western China.