Country Peoples Republic of China
County-level divisions 18
Township divisions 273
Settled ca. 473 BC
Area (ranked 29th)
- Municipality 16,808 km2 (6,489.6 sq mi)
Elevation 43.5 m (143 ft)
Population (2004) 
- Municipality 14,930,000 (26th)
- Density 888/km2 (2,299.9/sq mi)
- Urban approx. 7.5 million
- Mun. Density rank (4th)
- Major nationalities Han - 96%
Manchu - 2%
Hui - 2%
Mongolian - 0.3%
Time zone China Standard Time (UTC+8)
Postal code 100000 - 102600
Area code(s) +86/10
License plate prefixes 京A, C, E, F, H, J
京B (taxis)
京G (outside urban area)
京O (police and authorities)
京V (military headquarters & central government)
Beijing (Chinese: 北京; pinyin: Běijīng; Wade-Giles: Peiching or Pei-ching; literally "Northern capital"; pronunciation), a metropolis in northern China, is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). It was formerly known in English as Peking (English pronunciation). Beijing is also one of the four municipalities of the PRC, which are equivalent to provinces in Chinas administrative structure. Beijing Municipality borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and for a small section in the east, and Tianjin Municipality to the southeast. Beijing is Chinas third largest city in terms of population, after Chongqing and Shanghai. It is a major transportation hub, with dozens of railways, roads and expressways passing through the city. It is also the focal point of many international flights to China. Beijing is recognized as the political, educational, and cultural center of the Peoples Republic of China, while Shanghai and Hong Kong predominate in economic fields.
Names
Beijing (北京) literally means "Northern capital", in line with the common East Asian tradition whereby capital cities are explicitly named as such. Other cities similarly named include Nanjing (南京), China, meaning "southern capital"; Tokyo (東京), Japan, and Kinh (東京, known to Europeans as Tonkin; now Hanoi), Vietnam, both meaning "eastern capital"; as well as Xian (西安), which is considered the "western capital". Kyoto (京都), Japan, and Gyeongseong (京城; now Seoul), Korea, both meaning simply "capital". Peking is the name of the city according to Chinese Postal Map Romanization, and the traditional customary name for Beijing in English. The term originated with French missionaries four hundred years ago and corresponds to an older pronunciation predating a subsequent sound change in Mandarin from, and is still used in some languages (as in Dutch, German, Hungarian, Polish and Spanish).
In China, the city has had many names. Between 1368 and 1405, and again from 1928 and 1949, it was known as Beiping (北平; Pinyin: Beiping; Wade-Giles: Pei-ping), literally "Northern Peace". On both occasions, the name changed — with the removal of the element meaning "capital" (jing or king, 京) — to reflect the fact the national capital had changed to Nanjing, the first time under the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and the second time with the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China, so that Peking was no longer the capital of China.
The Communist Party of China reverted the name to Beijing (Peking) in 1949 again in part to emphasize that Beijing had returned to its role as Chinas capital. The government of the Republic of China on Taiwan has never formally recognized the name change, and during the 1950s and 1960s it was common in Taiwan for Beijing to be called Beiping to imply the illegitimacy of the PRC. Today, almost all of Taiwan, including the ROC government, uses Beijing, although some maps of China from Taiwan still use the old name along with pre-1949 political boundaries.
Yanjing (燕京; Pinyin: Yānjīng; Wade-Giles: Yen-ching) is and has been another popular informal name for Beijing, a reference to the ancient State of Yan that existed here during the Zhou Dynasty. This name is reflected in the locally-brewed Yanjing Beer as well as Yenching University, an institution of higher learning that was merged into Peking University. During the Yuan Dynasty, Beijing was known as Khanbaliq which is the Cambuluc described in Marco Polos accounts.
