East Asia · Empire, war and the modern states
People's Republic of China
drawn on the map 1950–2024
The People's Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed by Mao Zedong on 1 October 1949 after the Communist victory. Its early decades saw land reform, the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (mass famine), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
- Shown on the map
- 1950–2024
- Peak area
- 9.4M km²
- Region
- East Asia
Overview
The People's Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed by Mao Zedong on 1 October 1949 after the Communist victory. Its early decades saw land reform, the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (mass famine), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Under Deng Xiaoping's "reform and opening" (from 1978), it transformed into a market-oriented economic superpower while retaining one-party CCP rule. Today it is the world's second-largest economy and a leading global power.
Common questions
- What was the People's Republic of China?
- The People's Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed by Mao Zedong on 1 October 1949 after the Communist victory. Its early decades saw land reform, the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (mass famine), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
- When is the People's Republic of China shown on the map?
- The border data draws the People's Republic of China 1950–2024. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the People's Republic of China?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the People's Republic of China covered about 9.4 million km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia article for each polity as the basis of these profiles, supplemented by Encyclopaedia Britannica, chinaknowledge.de, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and university sources, and the academic works it lists. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — China en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
See the People's Republic of China in its world
Open the atlas at 1987 and every neighbour, rival and successor is on screen with it — then drag the slider and watch what happens next.
Open the map at 1987 →