BEIJING, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- The 29th Summer Olympic Games are in full swing in China, the third largest country in the world in terms of territory size with 1.3 billion inhabitants.

    Here are basic figures and facts about China's geography:

    LOCATION: Eastern Asia along the coastline of the Pacific Ocean.

    AREA: 9.6 million square kilometers of land territory spanning about 50 degrees of latitude and 62 degrees of longitude. Its shape on the map is like a rooster.

    BOUNDARIES: A total of 22,117 km of land boundaries with 14 other nations including Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burma, India, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam.

    TERRAIN: About 67 percent mountains, high plateaus and hills, and the rest is plains and deltas.

    CLIMATE: Extremely diverse with sub-tropical in the south and sub-arctic in the north.

    ELEVATION EXTREMES: Turpan Basin (-154 m) is the lowest point and Mount Everest (8,844.43 m) is the highest.

    NATURAL RESOURCES: Coal, iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, mercury, tin, tungsten, antimony, manganese, molybdenum, vanadium, magnetite, aluminum, lead, zinc, uranium, hydropower potential.

    RIVERS AND LAKES: The Yangtze River is the longest in China and the third longest in the world. The Yellow River is the country's second longest. Natural salt-water lake Qinghai Lake is the largest in China. Most lakes in southeast China are fresh water, including Poyang Lake, Dongting Lake and Taihu Lake.

    NATURAL HAZARDS: Typhoons, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts and land subsidence.