The Republic 国家概况

Hulian lies in the central-northern part of the continent, with the land sloping from the north-west towards the south-east. Its territory falls into three natural regions: the northern highlands, the central river valley plains, and the hills along the south-eastern coast. The northern highlands stand on average above 1,800 metres and are Hulian's principal water-conservation area; the central plains are fertile and well irrigated and hold more than sixty per cent of Hulian's arable land; the south-eastern coastal hills have an indented shoreline with many natural deep-water ports.

Hulian has numerous rivers, the principal systems being the Yangtze and the Yellow River and their tributaries, which flow eastward into the East China Sea and the Bohai Sea. The climate is mainly temperate and subtropical monsoonal, with four distinct seasons and rain and heat in the same season; annual precipitation declines from more than 2,000 millimetres along the south-eastern coast to less than 200 millimetres in the inland north-west. Hulian has established a system of protected natural areas centred on national parks, with protected land accounting for 18.6 per cent of the national territory.

The region now forming Hulian was for a long period divided among the polities of several nationalities. In the first half of the twentieth century, in the course of striving for national independence and social progress, the peoples gradually reached a consensus on founding a single state. On 12 March 1951 the People’s Congress of All Nationalities convened in Wenzhou, proclaimed the Hulian Federal People’s Republic and adopted the Common Programme, a document of a provisional constitutional character that established a federal people’s democratic system.

The first Hulian Constitution was promulgated and entered into force in 1954, giving definitive shape to Hulian’s legislative, executive, judicial and prosecutorial systems. The Hulian subsequently completed the groundwork of its industrialisation and adjusted its national economic system, and from the 1990s it progressively opened itself to the outside world. The present Constitution continues in force as amended in 2018; from 2026 the 2026–2030 plan outline is being implemented across Hulian, with coordinated development of the provincial-level divisions designated a key task.