Autonomous regions of China in the context of "Hotan"

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the second-most populous country after India, representing 17% of the world population. China borders fourteen countries by land across an area of 9.6 million square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), making it the third-largest country by area. The country is divided into 33 province-level divisions: 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, and 2 semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the capital, while Shanghai is the most populous city by urban area and largest financial center.

China saw the first humans in the region arriving during the Paleolithic era. By the 2nd millennium BCE dynastic states had emerged in the Yellow River basin. The 8th–3rd centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature and philosophy. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor, ushering in two millennia of imperial dynasties. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the Great Wall, Chinese culture flourished and has heavily influenced its neighbors and lands further afield. China began to cede parts of the country in the 19th century, to European powers by a series of unequal treaties. The 1911 Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China was established the following year. The country was unstable and fragmented during the Warlord Era, which ended upon the Northern Expedition conducted by the Kuomintang to reunify the country.

The People's Republic of China is officially divided into 34 province-level administrative divisions, the first level of administrative division in the country. There are four types of divisions at the province level:

• Provinces (23)
• Autonomous regions (5)
• Municipalities (4)
• Special administrative regions (SARs, 2)

In China, the governor (Chinese: 省长; pinyin: shěngzhǎng) is the head of government of a province. There are currently 22 provincial governors. In the five autonomous regions, the official title of the analogous head of the provincial government is chairman.

The Afghanistan–Tajikistan border is 1,357 km (843 mi) in length and runs from the tripoint with Uzbekistan in the west to the tripoint with the Xinjiang region of China in the east, almost entirely along the Amu Darya, Pyanj and Pamir Rivers, except for the easternmost section along the Wakhan Corridor and divides the ethnic Tajik community into citizens of two separate countries.

Miao is a word used in modern China to designate a category of ethnic groups living in southern China and Mainland Southeast Asia. The Miao are the largest ethnic minority group in China without an autonomous region. The Miao live primarily in the mountains of southern China encompassing the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Hainan. Some sub-groups of the Miao, most notably the Hmong people, migrated out of China into Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Northern Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand). Following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975, a large group of Hmong refugees resettled in several Western nations, mainly in the United States, France, and Australia.

Miao is a Chinese term referring to many groups that have their own autonyms such as Hmong, Hmu, Xong (Qo-Xiong), and A-Hmao. These people (except those in Hainan) speak Hmongic languages, a subfamily of the Hmong–Mien languages (Miao-Yao) including many mutually unintelligible languages such as the mother tongues of the four primary groups that make up the Miao: Hmong, Hmub, Xong and A-Hmao.

Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia, as well as a small section with Russia (Zabaykalsky Krai). Its capital is Hohhot; other major cities include Baotou, Chifeng, Tongliao and Ordos.

The autonomous region was established in 1947, incorporating the areas of the former Republic of China provinces of Suiyuan, Chahar, Rehe, Liaobei, and Xing'an, along with the northern parts of Gansu and Ningxia.

Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), in the northwest of the country at the crossroads of Central Asia and East Asia. The largest province-level division of China by area and the 8th-largest country subdivision in the world, Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 sq mi) and has about 25 million inhabitants. Xinjiang borders the countries of Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, and Tajikistan. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun, and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. The Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract regions are claimed by India but administered by China. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The best-known route of the historic Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border.

High mountain ranges divide Xinjiang into the Dzungarian Basin (Dzungaria) in the north and the Tarim Basin in the south. Only about 9.7% of Xinjiang's land area is fit for human habitation. It is home to a number of ethnic groups, including the Han Chinese, Hui, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Russians, Sibe, Tajiks (Pamiris), Tibetans, and Uyghurs. There are more than a dozen autonomous prefectures and counties for minorities in Xinjiang. Many older English-language reference works call the area Chinese Turkestan, Chinese Turkistan, East Turkestan or East Turkistan.

A nāḥiyah (Arabic: نَاحِيَة [ˈnaːħijah], plural نَوَاحِي, nawāḥī [naˈwaːħiː]), also nahiyeh, nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. The Ottoman nahiye, also called a bucak, was a third-level or lower administrative division, and remains as such in some successor states such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, with the Balkan states of Serbia and Montenegro having preserved the term for a while after liberation for the highest administrative unit as nahija. In Tajikistan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang, both from the Turco-Persian or Turkic regions of Asia, it is a second- and third-level division, respectively. A nahiyah can constitute a division of a qadaa, mintaqah or other such district-type division and is sometimes translated as "subdistrict".