China has a varied and complicated topography. It has low, flat and wide plains, gently undulating hilly areas, mountainous regions with towering peaks, high and vast plateaus and bowl-shaped basins.

Generally speaking, China has more mountainous regions than flat ones. Mountainous areas make up about two-thirds of the country land area, while the flats are less than one third. Regions higher than 500 m cover about 3/4 of the national land area (among which regions higher than 3,000 m make up 26%), and regions lower than 500m account for 1/4.

Chinese land slopes from west to east and can be divided into three zones. The first zone is Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which has an average altitude around 3,000 to 5,000 m. The second zone has a mean altitude ranging from 1,000 to 2,000, including Inner Mongolia, Loess and Yunnan-Guizhou plateaus, and Tarim, Junggar, Szechuan and other basins which dot the plateaus. East of the mountains Da Xing'anling, Taihang, Wushan, and Snow Peak, the third zone consists of three big plains, and low hills around the lower reaches of Yangtze River and Southeast China. The plains are usually lower than 200 m, and the low hills are less than 500 m in altitude.

High mountains and plateaus are situated to the west of the line formed by mountains Daxing'anling, Taihang, Wushan, and Snow Peak; and to the east of this line are hilly areas and plains. Some of Chinese major rivers, such as Yellow River, Yangtze River and Zhujiang River, originating from the plateaus and mountains in the west, follow the slope of the topography, and flow east to the sea.

This characteristic yields two results. On the one hand, the sloping topography can make warm and humid sea ari streams penetrate deep into the inland, impacting on east China climate, plants, soil and hydrology. On the other hand, the sloping topography leads to the rivers conspicuous drop in elevation step by step, producing rich hydraulic resources which can be exploited at various levels.