Ancient Map of China

The ancient people mainly lived in the Yellow River area in per-historic times, which was known as Zhonghua (meaning China) to the later generation, and it covered a vast area with Shaanxi Province in the east, the Yellow Sea in the east Liaoning Province in the north and the Yangtze River in the south.
The war broke out frequently during the Warring State Period (475 B.C.-221 B.C.), and all rulers of the bigger kingdoms were busy with expanding their territories, who captured Mongolia in the north, Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan Provinces in the southeast, Gansu and Qinghai Provinces in the east and the Yangtze River in the south. Emperor Qinshihuang attacked the Huns in the north and invaded Baiyue area (present Guangxi Province) in the south during the Qin dynasty (221-206), incorporating Guangdong Province, Guangxi Province and Vietnam into its territory. On the basis of the Qin dynasty, the Han emperor annexed the present North Korea in the west, the Western Regions (present Xinjiang) in the west and Hainan Island in the south, while some areas unsuitable for people's living were unoccupied by the Han army, such as Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Thailand, Burma and Taiwan. The rulers were busy with domestic wars and relaxed their grips on alien races in the Three Kingdom Period (220-280), which directly led to five ethnic groups' rebellion in the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420), and the Han ethnic group fell back on the Yangtze River area and south of the Five Ridges (Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces) owing to the fall of North China.
The Sui regime (581-618) replaced the alien regime and resumed Chinese culture by unifying China, whose territory was far smaller than that in the Han dynasty (206-220), excluding Liaodong in the north, Xijiang in the west, Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces in the southwest and Vietnam in the south. The territory was expanded in a large scale in the early period of the Tang dynasty (618-907), covering an area of 230,7000,000 square kilometers, which included Goguryeo (the present Korea) and Heilongjiang Province, but much of its territory was lost owing to the consecutive invasions from the nomadic tribes in North China, resulting in the national economic center transferring from North China to South China,
The Song-era rulers did not resume the lost territory taken by the alien races, only covering Hebei Province, middle part of Shanxi Province in the north, east part of Gansu Province in the west, Sichuan Province and Guizhou Province in the southwest and Guangdong Province and Guangxi Province in the south, whose territory in the north of the Huai River was taken by the Jin Empire. The Song Empire had been at war with the Mongolia ethnic group for 50 years, resulting in being conquered by the latter
The Ming-era territory stretched the Yalu River in the east, Waixing'anling in the northeast, the Mongolian plateau in the north, Xijiang in the west, Tibet in the southwest, Yunnan, Burma, Laos and Vietnam in the south, and Taiwan became an integral part of the Ming Empire. After the foundation of the People's Republic of China, China covers an area of 960,000,000 square kilometers.

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