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Compare/contrast china and the united states?

Why is the abbreviation of China "CHN", instead of "PRC", yet America is "USA", exactly the same as in "the United States of America"?

  • We call "the States“ "the U.S.", "the U.S.A.", "America", either way it comes from the full name of "the United States of America". While China is now called "the People's Republic of China" as its full name, therefore, we should use "the P.R.C." instead of "CHN", the short for "China", why they use the different way? Is it because China was named much earlier than "the People's Republic of China", which was founded later? And America was founded the name of  "the United States of America" at the first beginning?

  • Answer:

    Logic has never had a place in language. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not the UKGBNI, rather just the UK. Lanuage is inconsistent. You need only look at English spellings to see that. However, people do use the abbreviation P.R.C. to refer to China. Your CHN is the lesser used format.

Derek Harkness at Quora Visit the source

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IOC_country_codes Codes were only standardized by 1972. Each code identifies a National Olympic Committee and each committee was likely consulted on acceptability of the name. The names are often similar to ISO 3166 codes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_IOC,_FIFA,_and_ISO_3166_country_codes China may prefer an abbreviation of "China" over PRC to emphasize the claim to all of China including Taiwan which has never been under PRC administration. Latin American countries have never liked the use of "America" to simply mean the North American USA, and a code like AME would offend them.

Joseph Boyle

When ISO-3166 codes were first assigned in the 1970's, not all countries recognized the PRC as the legitimate government of China, many recognized ROC as the government of China.  In particular, the United States did not switch until 1979.

Joseph Wang

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