China is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and a national or multinational entity in East Asia.China has one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations, consisting of states and cultures dating back more than six millennia. It has the world's longest continuously used written language system, and the source of such major inventions as what the British scholar and biochemist Joseph Needham called the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China: paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.The stalemate of the last Chinese Civil War has resulted in two political entities using the name China: the People's Republic of China, commonly known as China, which controls mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau; and the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan, which controls the island of Taiwan and some nearby islands.