1. Languages of China
Spoken Chinese
Chinese is a family of closely-related but mutually unintelligible languages called dialects:
In all over 1.2 billion people speak one or more varieties of Chinese.
All varieties of Chinese are tonal. For example Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has between 6 and 9 and Taiwanese has 7 tones.
Most people in China and Taiwan speak Mandarin as a 2nd language
In Hong Kong and Macau many use English to communicate with people from other parts of China

2. Languages of China II .Major varieties of Chinese include:
Mandarin is spoken by more people than any other language: over 1 billion. It is the main language of government, the media and education in China and Taiwan, and Singapore.

Shanghainese: Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces and in Shanghai and Hong Kong by about 77 million people.
Cantonese is spoken by about 66 million people.
Southern Min Mĭn is in the south of Fujian province, Guangdong province, southern Hainan Island
Yŭ is spoken mainly in Shanxi province and also in Shanxi and Henan provinces by about 45 million people.
Dungan is spoken by the Muslim Hui people in China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. There are 50,000 speakers. It is written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

3. Compare US and China
How does the size of China compare with the US?

4. Compare US and China SIZE China 3.69 million square miles
USA 3.68 million square miles
LAND USE
40% of the U.S. land can be cultivated
11% of China's land is arable.
POPULATION
  273 million population in the U.S., less than 3% are engaged in farming
U.S. has about 80% more farmland than does China and 10 times more farmland per capita.

5. Compare US and China China is not an urban society
311,000,000 URBAN POPULATION exceeds the actual total population of the United States.
The urban population of the U.S. is approximately 194,7000,000, some 75% of the country's total
74% of China's population is still primarily engaged in agriculture and living in rural areas
Like China, the US has a densely populated east coast. Unlike the US, however, China's farmland is not concentrated in a relatively under populated central section of the country.

6. Population Density
Like China, the US has a densely populated east coast. Unlike the US, however, China's farmland is not concentrated in a relatively under populated central section of the country

7. Population Comparison
China’s population of 1,300,000,000 nearly exceeds the COMBINED populations of
Europe (579,700,000)
South America (311,500,000)
United States (272,573,000)
Japan (125,200,000)
By comparison, the population of the United States is equivalent to only 22% of China's population.

8. How have Chinese borders changed over time?