Mr Sha, the company's best manager, who ran a rubber-parts factory in the mountains of Anhui province in central China, secretly set up a rival plant down the valley which he financed by siphoning money from the Asimco joint venture.

ECONOMIST: A disorderly heaven

When you think of China, one of the first things you think about are those hazy mountains and dragons everywhere.

CNN: WOMAN WARRIOR

It came, unexpectedly, on a side trip into the mountains of northern Vietnam, near the border with China and Laos.

NPR: World Traveler Learns Climate Complexities

Although endowed with mountains and cold winter weather, China largely lacked a couple of things that resort skiing in A.D. 2002 requires: people with money in their pockets and the freedom to live it up.

FORBES: All uphill from here

Purves is very concerned about the glaciers in the Himalayan mountains that are the main source of water for irrigation and drinking in China and India, well over 2 billion people.

FORBES: 500 Million People Will Be Displaced By Glaciers Melting In Greenland And The Himalayas

Niubeiliang, China, is located at the eastern segment of the Qinling Mountains, with a typical temperate broad-leaved mixed mountain forest system.

UNESCO: EDUCATION

Jinggangshan, China , has a mid-subtropical humid monsoon climate and diverse landscapes of mountains, valleys, structural basins and Karst with elevation varying from 381 m to 1, 779 m above sea level.

UNESCO: EDUCATION

Ringed by mountains and surrounded by water, Yuhuan County is literally an island and is cut off from the rest of China.

FORBES: China's Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities: Part II

In Tajikistan, on the southern fringes of the ex-Soviet Union, 250 shift-workers are slowly bulldozing a 32-kilometre (20-mile) road from Murgab in the Pamir mountains, eastwards across the rock, salt and sand wilderness of no-man's land, towards China.

ECONOMIST: Tajikistan