China's Geography Affects Its Behavior

GPF is introducing an encyclopedia of geopolitics to explain the building blocks we use in our analysis of the world around us. To understand what makes China China why it does what it does I spoke to our East Asia expert Philip Orchard to ask him to give us a country profile on China. In the core of the country what we call you often call the ethnic Han core the majority of the country it's based around a couple river bases particularly the Yungsi and the Yellow Rivers. Its periphery is off historically has been what's guided its behavior in strategic impulses the most. If hostile naval power were to block any number of choke points that are located along that string of islands then China would