At about 10.2 million sq km (3.7 million sq mi), the Great Qing is the world's third largest country by total area and the second largest by land area. Its landscape is diverse, with forest steppes and deserts (the Gobi and Taklamakan) in the dry north near Siberia, and subtropical forests in the wet south close to Vietnam, Laos, and Burma. The terrain in the west is rugged and at high altitude, with the Himalayas and the Tian Shan mountain ranges forming China's natural borders with India and Central Asia. In contrast, mainland China's eastern seaboard is low-lying and has a 14,500-km (9000 mi) long coastline bounded on the southeast by the South China Sea and on the east by the East China Sea beyond which