CHINA
RESTRICTED ACCESS NATION

China is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and a national or multinational entity in East Asia. The civilization is one of the world's oldest, consisting of states and cultures dating back more than six millennia.
Chinese civilization is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations. It has the world's longest continuously used written language system, and the source of such major inventions as what the British scholar and biochemist Joseph Needham called the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

The stalemate of the last Chinese Civil War has resulted in two political states using the name China: the People's Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China, which controls mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau; and the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as Taiwan, which controls the island of Taiwan and its surrounding islands.

HISTORY:

China credits it's earliest rule to the Xia dynasty, which is assumed to trace back to the 18th century BC. China was then ruled by many different dynasties until the 1600's when the Qing dynasty would rule. The last Qing Empress, Dowager Longyu signed a decree in 1912, ending imperial rule in China. On January 1, 1912, the Republic of China was established.

In 1919, military strikes were made against the European presence and control that was prevalent in certain areas of China, and in 1921 the Communist Party of China was founded. In 1927, war erupted between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, which was compounded by the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War II) in 1937.

Following WWII, in 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded under Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. The Nationalist Party retreated with approximately 1.3 million people to Taiwan. The communist party ruled in agreement with the Soviet Union until 1960 when they split over communist policies. The start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution happened in 1966 when a crackdown by communist party members against political insurgents led to the persecution of many revolutionaries, intellectuals, and religious figures. An estimated 500,000 people were killed during the chaos of this period in China.

In 1976, Mao Zedong died, which led to the Chinese government officially opening their borders in 1978. Due to the size of the Chinese population, in 1979 the government enacted the one-child policy in an effort to slow the population growth rate. The Tiananmen Square incident occured in 1989, where student protests were violently shut down by military force during a 15 day period of martial law.

In 1997, Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule after 156 years under the British Crown. Today, the People's Republic of China is led by the Chinese Communist Party making it one of a handful of remaining communist nations.

RELIGION:

China is officially an Atheist country, with about 60% to 70% of the country being non-religious. Meanwhile, the majority of religious Chinese adhere to the Buddhist or Taoist faiths. Only about 1% of Chinese people claim to be Christian. Christianity in China is highly persecuted and it is not uncommon for followers to be jailed, beaten, or executed, making missionary work both difficult and dangerous.