How far is Central America from China? It's a long way from the United States. This place, where the eight rods can't hit, has been on the domestic hot search every three forks and five minutes. Today, let's find out what Central America is and what countries are in Central America. However, if you want to clarify Central America, you must first understand the composition of the American continent, after all, Central America is part of the American continent.
From Greenland in the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn, which faces Antarctica, the American continent is the continent with the most dimensions on Earth, second only to Eurasia in terms of earth. The full name of the Americas is America, and it is geographically divided into North and South America, and their dividing point is the Panama Canal, which connects the two oceans of the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. And the protagonist of this article, Central America, is the southernmost part of North America.
North America covers an area of more than 24 million square kilometers, but canada, the United States and Mexico alone account for nearly 90%, of the remaining less than 12%, greenland (which belongs to the nordic country of Denmark), the largest island on the earth, accounts for nearly 80%, and the remaining less than 800,000 square kilometers are divided by an archipelago and territory in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea, leaving only about 500,000 square kilometers left in Central America.
These 500,000 square kilometers are located in the narrow connection zone between South and North America, bordering the Pacific Ocean in the southwest and the Caribbean Sea in the northeast, and the narrowest point is only 61 kilometers, so it is also known as the Isthmus of Central America. The narrow strip of land of more than 500,000 square kilometers between mexico's southeast and south-west Colombia is divided between seven countries, each averaging less than 100,000 square kilometers, the largest in Nicaragua with an area of about 130,000 square kilometers, and the smallest El Salvador with only more than 20,000 square kilometers.
It should be noted that Panama, the southernmost of the seven Central American countries, is a country spanning two continents, South and North America, bounded by the Panama Strait, and the territory to the south does not belong to Central America, but to the boundary of South America; In addition, Central America in the broad sense also includes the following two parts: One is mexico, a neighboring country in the south of the United States, with a land area of nearly 2 million square kilometers; The second is the West Indies, which covers an area of only 240,000 square kilometers, but is distributed in more than 20 countries and regions.
The seven Central American countries can be divided into two parts, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize in the northwest, and El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in the southeast. With the exception of Belize, which borders the Atlantic Caribbean Sea and El Salvador facing the Pacific Ocean, the other five countries are two-ocean countries. Originally inhabited by Indian tribes, these countries have been Spanish colonies since the 16th century and independent since the 1820s.
The seven Central American countries, with the exception of Panama and Belize, also went through a phase of merging with Mexico and then forming the Central American Federation after breaking away from Spanish colonization. However, due to endless internal strife, the five countries became independent one after another; Belize became a Spanish and British colony, and belize, the only official language in Central America, where Spanish is commonly spoken, is a special presence.
Of the Seven Kingdoms, Panama has the most special history. After secession from Spanish colonization in 1821, Panama became a province of New Granada, Colombia's predecessor. The United States, coveting the location of the Isthmus of Panama, instigated Panama's independence from Colombia in 1903 and controlled the Panama Canal Zone for nearly a century. It was not until the last day of 1999 that Panama regained sovereignty over the Panama Canal from the Americans.
The terrain of the seven countries of Central America is dominated by mountains and hills, with a small number of basins and plains in between, and the western part belongs to the volcanic zone along the Pacific coast. Fertile volcanic soils are conducive to farming, and the economies of various countries are still dominated by agriculture. Eighty per cent of central American exports are the three main cash crops, coffee, bananas and cotton. The long-term political instability of the Central American countries and their vulnerability to the intervention and control of external forces are inseparable from their single economic status, so Central America is also the gathering place of the "banana republic".
Central America is the birthplace of Mayan culture, with a large number of ancient Indian civilizations and the remains of the Spanish colonial period, Guatemala's ancient Mayan city ruins include the famous "Jaguar Pyramid", and the Panama Canal, which has been excavated for more than a century, is known as the "Eighth Wonder". Central America also has natural landscapes such as coastal scenery and lakes and mountains, with the world's second largest barrier reef off the coast of Belize and the eruption of Mount Santa Ana in El Salvador known as the "Beacon of America and the United States".
Among the seven Central American countries, Nicaragua was the first to establish diplomatic relations with China, which was established in 1985, but five years later, in 1990, the two countries terminated diplomatic relations and resumed diplomatic relations in 2021; Costa Rica established diplomatic relations with China in 2007; Panama and El Salvador established diplomatic relations with China in 2017 and 2018. Guatemala, Honduras and Belize in northwestern Central America currently have no diplomatic relations with China, and Guatemala is the only country in Central America with a population of more than 10 million, with honduras having a population of 9.45 million in 2016.
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