China is a large country located on the vast Euroasian plain.  It borders Mongolia, Russia, the former Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakstan, Kyrgizistan, and Tajikistan), Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, and North Korea.  It's close proximity to Japan has also been important historically.  Since the 1949 Communist Revolution, China has been at odds with Taiwan (formerly Formosa), which is where the Kuomintang (or Nationalist) forces of Chiang Kai-shek fled after losing the Civil War to Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party.  In the early 1950s, China invaded and occupied Tibet, claiming that it was historically part of the Chinese empire.  In the early 1960s it invaded India and seized part of the disputed Kashmir region, which it still occupies.  After the Sino-Soviet split of about the same time, China and the Soviet Union had a number of border disputes as well.  All of these disputes remain unsettled.  Source:  Instructional Resources Corporation, The World History CD-Rom (non-European history).