China vs Mexico

China is 4.9 times larger than Mexico — 9,596,960 against 1,964,375 km². China is 11 times more populous than Mexico — 1,406,585,000 against 131,946,900 people.

Side by side

Population density

China is 2.2 times more densely populated than Mexico — 147 against 67 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 Mexican peso.
• Mexico spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• 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.

Mexico

Mexico has the fourth-highest count of vertebrate and plant species of any country, and more reptile species than anywhere else. Chicxulub, under the northern Yucatán, is the roughly 180 km crater left by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. The Sistema Sac Actun beneath the same peninsula is the longest known underwater cave system in the world, over 370 km surveyed.

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.