OK, that should be an easy question right? But half the sources I consult say China is the world’s third largest country after Russia and Canada, the other half say the US is third. It seems to come down to whether you include the area of the Great Lakes; China’s “dry land” is slightly bigger than the US’s “dry land”.
Any cartographers or geography majors out there who want to weigh in?
It seems kind of silly to pluck out bodies of water when measuring such things, one reason being that they are a vital natural resource, so I’ll side with the “total” measurements: US 9631418 sq km; China 9596960 sq km.
I’ve often wondered if the disagreement hinges on whether one considers Taiwan to be a part of China. A Chinese coworker of mine does, but my Taiwanese coworker does not. It’s not a huge island, but it might make enough difference to put China ahead of the US. I’m too tired to do the math right now.
Then again, most sources that give the area of the US don’t include territories and such. If they were included (not that they should be), the US might pull into third place again.
Anyway, the difference is pretty trivial. Both are big countries, somewhat smaller than Canada and a lot smaller than Russia. Both are quite a bit bigger than Sealand.
China is more well defined, but the U.S. can bench press more.
This is more a matter of fact than opinion, so I’m moving this thread from IMHO to General Questions.
I had similar responses from two Chinese co-workers in my office. We always try to be careful how we put addresses on labels because we work with so many students from abroad, I put down Taiwan as a separate country from China on the advice of one, but then the other said it was Taiwan, a republic of China.
Using this table, and including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, China has an area of 9,634,057km[sup]2[/sup], still a good 4,000km[sup]2[/sup] smaller than the US including Puerto Rico.
If Puerto Rico is excluded, China is larger by 5,000km[sup]2[/sup]
Ignoring all territories, the United States is larger by 42,000km[sup]2[/sup], an area about the size of the Netherlands.
The data in Aesiron’s link pretty much settles it - as MrO suggested, at 36,000 sq. km, Taiwain is way bigger than any other territories that could be included/excluded. So it all depends on your political view of that one island.
Thanks, that’s great info.
As for Taiwan, The People’s Republic of China considers Taiwan one of its 23 provinces. The Republic of China (Taiwan) offically takes the stance that they are the legitimate government of the mainland as well as Taiwan.
It’s interesting that Puerto Rico seems to be the difference.
No. Sorry I gave that impression.
With no territories, the US is 42,000km[sup]2[/sup] larger than China but since MrO mentioned the inclusion of Taiwan as a possible reason for the ambiguity, I did the math and discovered that it would indeed tip the scales in China’s favor but then, trying to be fair, I included the US’ largest territory (which has more reason to be included than a disputed province) and discovered it would tip the scales back in its favor.
But the US has about a dozen other territories besides Puerto Rico totalling another ~1,000km[sup]2[/sup] so the US is bigger in almost every way possible except if its territories are ignored and Taiwan is counted for China.
Or if you ignore the Great Lakes as mentioned in your OP.