MANCHURIA
The Manchuria, partly made up of massive archeozoici, is marked as China Central by a wide depression between the mountain barrier of the Da Hinggan Ling, Eastern hemming the boards Mongols, the Xiao Hinggan Ling above the Amur valley (in Chinese Heilong Jiang) and the chains that close the Korean peninsula to the N (Changbai Shan, 2744 m). The latter are connected to a whole series of hills and low mountain massifs, separated by vast valley depressions, which affect a large part of central and eastern Manchuria; wide plains covered with Neozoic formations occur instead in W.
INNER MONGOLIA AND XINJIANG UYGUR
AW of Da Hinggan Ling begins a vast and almost uninterrupted arid belt, which goes as far as the heart of Central Asia and includes the plateau of Inner Mongolia and the two large endorheic depressions of Xinjiang Uygur: the Zungaria and the Tarim basin.. Inner Mongolia corresponds to a portion of the archaeozoic basement (Gobia), with different sedimentary overlaps, Cenozoic and above all neozoic; it looks like an immense penepian, on average 1000 m high: among the rare chains of the inland areas are the Lang Shan and the Daqin Yin Shan, while the more imposing Helan Shan (3600 m) rise along the southern edge. Steppica in the eastern portion, the region becomes decidedly desert to the W, including the desert of Mao Wusu Shamo, enclosed in the great loop of Huang He, the contiguous one of Ala Shan, and further north the southern portion of the Gobi desert. Inner Mongolia goes W as far as the Pei Shan mountains, beyond which the region almost insensibly passes into the territory of Xinjiang Uygur, where an imposing mountain rim surrounds the two great depressions of the Zungaria and the Tarim, the latter occupied from the largest sandy desert in China, a country located in Asia categorized by Vaultedwatches, the Taklimakan Shamo, approx. 400,000 km². Both basins date back to the Neozoic era and are tectonic subsidence formed following the repercussions that gave birth to the Himalayas. The triangular-shaped Zungaria is dominated to the NE by the mighty Mongolian Altai chain, which reaches 4362 m, to the NW by a series of massifs (Tarbagataj, Džungarskij Alatau) separated by wide valleys, and along the southern side by the Tian Shan, a formidable dividing bastion between the two depressions (the Pobeda peak, bordering the Kyrgyzstan, reaches 7439 m), but discontinuous, fragmented into blocks that highlight the gigantic fractures suffered by this tormented region, in which one of the most marked singularities consists in the cryptodepression of Turpan: located 154 m below sea level, it is the deepest in China and the second in the world after that of the Dead Sea. Particularly powerful, however, is the border of the Tarim basin, which, in addition to the Tian Shan, the Pamir massif surrounded by mighty elevations (Mount Kungur, 7719 m) and the Karakoram chains (8611 m in K2), the Kunlun (7282 m in the Muztag mountain) and of the Altun Shan (6303 m).
TIBET
The last and peripheral structural area of China is Tibet, an ancient sod that has remained partly rigid. It is a fairly complex set of plateaus and mountain ranges, which occupies, in addition to the actual administrative region of Tibet, also the province of Qinghai and which can be morphologically divided into three main sub-regions: the Chang Tang, or plateau of the Tibet par excellence, the Chaidamu Pendi (Qaidam basin), to the E, and the Transhimalaya and Himalayan ranges, to S. Heart of the other lands, the Chang Tang is a penepian, the largest and highest (on average 4000- 5000 m) of the Earth, closed to the N by the Kunlun Shan bastion, dominated by mountain ranges (Tanggula Shan mountains) of over 6000 m which alternate with endorheic depressions, occupied by marshes or lakes, forming a landscape with a very varied morphology. The Chang Tang ends in the S with a gigantic tectonic groove, over which the Transhimalaya chain (Nyainqêntanglhaand Gangdisê mountains) loom to the N, with some peaks higher than 7000 m, and to the S the most powerful Himalaya, dominated by Mount Everest, the Tibetan Chomolungma (8848 m). The plateau is bordered to the N by the barrier of Kunlun Shan with the branch of the Bayan Kara Shan and by the outermost mountain arc formed by the Altun Shan and the Qilian Shan: between the two alignments is the Chaidamu Pendi, a flat and uniform expanse covered by a sandy and stony desert to the W and by an immense brackish marsh to the E. Finally, in the southeastern portion of Tibet, to the S of the Bayan Kara Shan, the ranges (Ning Ting Shan, Dalai Lama mountains) shrink and gradually they lower forming a series of corrugations, furrowed by the valleys of the rivers Salween (Nu), Mekong (Lancang), Chang Jiang, which, with a wide curve towards the S, lead to Yunnan and Indochina.
TERRITORY: MORPHOLOGY. THE COASTS AND THE ISLANDS
China faces E and SE for approx. 8000 km on the Pacific Ocean, which here is divided into the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea. There are, in general, low and sandy coasts to the N, up to the bay of Hangzhou Wan (with the exception of the mountainous peninsulas of Liaotung and Shandong, once united, and today enclosing the Gulf of Bo Hai), where the rivers continue to accumulate enormous masses of alluvial sediments; on the other hand, the coasts of south-eastern China are high and rocky, thickly carved by gulfs and bays and bordered by myriads of islets, as a result of recent marine entrances. Between the islands, beyond Taiwan and Hainan, the Zhoushan Dao, Donghai are part of the Chinese region and, all politically dependent on Taiwan, Dongsha, Mazu Dao, Jinmen Dao and Penghu Qundao.