Chinese Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers About China

Trivia quiz questions with answers about China

Chinese Trivia Questions With Answers About China

What is China?
A: China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion.

How big is China?
A: Covering approximately 9,600,000 square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third or fourth largest country by total area.

China emerged as one of the world's earliest what?
A: Civilizations.

Where?
A: In the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain.

For millennia, China's political system was based on what?
A: Hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE.

Since then, China has what?
A: It has expanded, fractured, and re-unified numerous times.

In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin reunited core China and established what?
A: The first Chinese empire.

The succeeding Han dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC until 220 AD, saw some of the most advanced what at the time?
A: Technology at that time, including paper making and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.

The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty (618–907) and Northern Song (960–1127) completed the what?
A: The Four Great Inventions.

Tang culture spread widely in Asia, as the new Silk Route did what?
A: It brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and Horn of Africa.

Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution, when a what replaced the Qing dynasty?
A: Republic.

The Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established what?
A: The People's Republic of China, a unitary one-party sovereign state on Mainland China, while the Kuomintang-led government retreated to the island of Taiwan.

The political status of Taiwan remains what?
A: Disputed.

Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been what?
A: One of the world's fastest-growing with annual growth rates consistently above 6 percent.

According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to by 2017?
A: $12.24 trillion.

Since 2010, China has been the world's second-largest economy by what?
A: Nominal GDP and, since 2014, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP).

China is also the world's largest what?
A: Exporter and second-largest importer of goods.

China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has what?
A: The world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget.

The PRC is a permanent member of what?
A: The United Nations Security Council.

The word "China" has been used in English since when?
A: The 16th century.

It is not a word used by whom?
A: The Chinese themselves.

It has been traced through Portuguese, Malay, and Persian back to what Sanskrit word?
A: Cīna, used in ancient India.

"China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of whom?
A: The Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa.

Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the what?
A: The Mahābhārata (5th century bce) and the Laws of Manu (2nd century bce).

In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived ultimately from the name of what?
A: The Qin dynasty (221–206 BC).

What is the official name of the modern state?
A: It is the "People's Republic of China".

Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China how long ago?
A: Between 2.24 million and 250,000 years ago.

Where were the fossilized teeth of Homo sapiens (dated to 125,000–80,000 years ago) discovered?
A: In Fuyan Cave in Dao County, Hunan.

Some scholars have suggested that the Jiahu symbols (7th millennium bce) constituted what?
A: The earliest Chinese writing system.

According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was what?
A: The Xia, which emerged around 2100 bce.

The dynasty was considered mythical by historians until what?
A: Scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959.

It remains unclear whether these sites are what?
A: The remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period.

The succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be what?
A: Confirmed by contemporary records.

When did the Shang rule the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China?
A: From the 17th to the 11th century bce.

Their oracle bone script (from c. 1500 bce) represents what?
A: The oldest form of Chinese writing yet found, and is a direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters.

The Shang was conquered by whom?
A: The Zhou, who ruled between the 11th and 5th centuries bce, though centralized authority was slowly eroded by feudal warlords.

Some principalities eventually emerged from the weakened Zhou, no longer fully obeyed the Zhou king and continually did what?
A: Waged war with each other in the 300-year spring and autumn period.

By the time of the Warring States period of the 5th–3rd century’s bce, there were how many powerful sovereign states in what is now China, each with its own king, ministry and army?
A: Seven.

China's First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is famed for having done what?
A: United the Warring States' walls to form the Great Wall of China.

Most of the present structure, however, dates to when?
A: The Ming dynasty.

The Warring States period ended in 221 bce after the state of Qin did what?
A: Conquered the other six kingdoms, reunited China and established the dominant order of totalitarian autocracy.

King Zheng of Qin proclaimed himself what?
A: The First Emperor of the Qin dynasty.

He enacted Qin's legalist reforms throughout China, notably what?
A: The forced standardization of Chinese characters, measurements, road widths (i.e., cart axles' length), and currency.

His dynasty also conquered what tribes?
A: The Yue tribes in Guangxi, Guangdong, and Vietnam.

The Qin dynasty lasted how long?
A: Only fifteen years, falling soon after the First Emperor's death, as his harsh authoritarian policies led to widespread rebellion.

Following a widespread civil war during which the imperial library at Xianyang was burned, the Han dynasty emerged to do what?
A: To rule China between 206 bce and ce 220, creating a cultural identity among its populace still remembered in the ethnonym of the Han Chinese.

The Han expanded the empire's territory considerably, with military campaigns reaching where?
A: Central Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, and Yunnan, and the recovery of Guangdong and northern Vietnam from Nanyue.

Han involvement in Central Asia and Sogdia helped establish the land route of what?
A: The Silk Road, replacing the earlier path over the Himalayas to India.

Han China gradually became what?
A: The largest economy of the ancient world.

After the Han dynasty, a period of strife known as what followed?
A: Three Kingdoms.

At its end, Wei was swiftly overthrown by whom?
A: The Jin dynasty.

The Jin fell to civil war upon the ascension of a what?
A: A developmentally-disabled emperor.

Five Barbarians then did what?
A: Invaded and ruled northern China as the Sixteen States.

In the south, the general Liu Yu secured the abdication of the Jin in favor of whom?
A: The Liu Song.

The various successors of these states became known as the what?
A: The Northern and Southern dynasties, with the two areas finally reunited by the Sui in 581.