Published on : 22/02/2023
China is not only a major land country, but also a major maritime country, with a sea area approximately one-third the size of its land area. The vast sea holds over 7,600 large and small islands.
Do you know which of these islands is the largest? How can Hong Kong Island and Lantau Island be ranked?
Maritime border of 3 million square kilometres
The southeast part of China faces the ocean, and the four major sea areas from north to south are the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea. They are connected to the Pacific Ocean. The jurisdictional sea area claimed by China currently reaches 3 million square kilometres.
"Jurisdictional sea" is a collective term for the internal waters, territorial sea, contiguous zone, continental shelf, and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the coastal countries.
The area of the territorial sea under China's claim of jurisdiction, which has the same legal status as the territory, is 380,000 square kilometres.
What is the concept of a 3 million square kilometre sea area?
As the area of the sea involves calculating the territorial waters of the islands, and China's islands are scattered and may not be linked together, it is therefore difficult to locate the sea area directly on the map.
We can take a look at the Mediterranean Sea between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its area is about 2.5 million square kilometres, slightly smaller than China's territorial sea.
According to official statistics, China has 7,600 islands, including Taiwan and its affiliated islands, the Penghu Islands, the Dongsha Islands, the Xisha Islands, the Zhongsha Islands, the Nansha Islands, etc.
Read more: Chinese Geography｜How big is China? Its area is close to the whole of Europe!
China's largest island - Taiwan
Some of these islands are big, and some are small. The largest island is known to be Taiwan, which is about 36,000 square kilometres, equivalent to 32.5 times the total area of Hong Kong. The second largest is Hainan Island, which is about 33,000 square kilometres.
Taiwan and Hainan Islands are familiar to everyone, especially Taiwan, which is a popular travel destination for many Hong Kong residents.
The third largest island might be hard for many people to name. It is Chongming Island in Shanghai (a small part of the island belongs to Jiangsu Province) located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, but it is a lot smaller than Taiwan and Hainan Islands, with only over 1,200 square kilometres, about the same area as the whole of Hong Kong.
Chongming Island is the largest in Asia and the second largest river delta island in the world. A delta island is an island formed by river silt, and Chongming Island is formed by the Yangtze River siltation over thousands of years.
And the fourth, Zhoushan Island in Zhejiang Province, named for its shape, like a "large ship floating on the sea", is the main island of the Zhoushan Archipelago. Its area after reclamation is about 500 square kilometres.
Land reclamation and seawall construction - have some islands disappeared?
Near Zhoushan Island, Zhoushan Fishing Ground is China's largest fishing ground and is very rich in aquatic resources.
Famous people from Zhoushan include Mr. Tung Chee Hwa, the first Chief Executive of the HKSAR, and famous film director Wong Kar-wai. Their ancestral home is both Zhoushan.
The next in line are Donghai Island in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, Haitan Island in Pingtan, Fujian Province, Dongshan Island in Dongshan County, Fujian Province, Yuhuan Island in Yuhuan County, Zhejiang Province, Changxing Island in Shanghai, and Lantau Island in Hong Kong with an area of about 147 square kilometres.
According to the above order, Lantau Island ranks tenth, but it should be remarked that Donghai Island and Yuhuan Island, ranked before it, have connected to Mainland China due to sea wall construction and land reclamation.
Therefore some people believe that they are no longer islands, and Lantau Island can be considered as the eighth largest island in China.
China has a coastline of 32,000 km
What about Hong Kong Island, the second-largest island in Hong Kong with an area of over 78 square kilometres?
If we exclude the four islands that are connected to the mainland before her, Hong Kong Island is currently the 19th largest island in China.
Lastly, to add a few words, China's continental coastline is about 1.8 kilometres, and together with the island coastline, there are more than 32,000 kilometres. Neighbouring countries facing China across the sea are Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
In addition, China's islands are obviously "less in the north and more in the south". Nearly 86% of the islands are located in the near sea of the continent and in the South China Sea, south of Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang Province.
