China vs Cuba

China is 87 times larger than Cuba — 9,596,960 against 110,860 km². China is 129 times more populous than Cuba — 1,406,585,000 against 10,937,203 people.

Side by side

Population density

China is 1.5 times more densely populated than Cuba — 147 against 99 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Chinese yuan and the Cuban peso.
• Different continents — Asia and North America.

China

The largest country in the world using a single time zone, so the sun rises in the far west around three hours later by the clock than in Beijing. China has a land border with fourteen countries — more than any other state except Russia, which also has fourteen. Its terrain runs from Mount Everest on the Nepalese border to the Turpan Depression at 154 m below sea level.

Cuba

The largest island in the Caribbean, roughly 1,250 km long but as little as 31 km wide. The Viñales valley in the west is a karst landscape of mogotes — steep limestone humps left standing when the rock around them dissolved. The bee hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world at about 5 cm, lives only here.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.