continent ulba river
Xiao ' erjing or Xiao ' erjin or Xiaor jin or in its shortened form , Xiaojing , literally meaning " children ' s script " or " minor script " ( cf . " original script " referring to the original Perso - Arabic script , , Xiao ' erjing :    ; / Benjin ), is the practice of writing Sinitic languages such as Mandarin ( especially the Lanyin , Zhongyuan and Northeastern dialects ) or the Dungan language in the Perso - Arabic Script . It is used on occasion by many ethnic minorities who adhere to the Islamic faith in China ( mostly the Hui , but also the Dongxiang , and the Salar ), and formerly by their Dungan descendants in Central ___MASK65___ . Soviet writing reforms forced the Dungan to replace Xiao ' erjing with a Roman alphabet and later a Cyrillic alphabet , which they continue to use up until today . Central ___MASK65___ or Middle ___MASK65___ is the core region of the Asian continent and stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north . It is also colloquially referred to as " the ' stans " ( as the six countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix "- stan ", meaning " land of ") and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent . Kazakhstan ( " Qazaqstan ", " Kazakhstan "), officially the Republic of Kazakhstan (" Qazaqstan Respwblïkas " " Respublika Kazakhstan "), is a transcontinental country in northern Central ___MASK65___ and Eastern Europe . Kazakhstan is the world ' s largest landlocked country , and the ninth largest in the world , with an area of . Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central ___MASK65___ economically , generating 60 % of the region ' s GDP , primarily through its oil / gas industry . It also has vast mineral resources . Russia ( from the  Rus '), also officially known as the Russian Federation , is a country in ___MASK92___ . At , Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area , covering more than one - eighth of the Earth ' s inhabited land area , and the ninth most populous , with over 140 million people at the end of March 2016 . The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern , about 77 % of the population live in European Russia . Russia ' s capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world , other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg , Novosibirsk , Yekaterinburg , Nizhny Novgorod and Samara . The Ulba River is a river of Kazakhstan . It joins the Irtysh River at Oskemen . A landlocked state or landlocked country is a sovereign state entirely enclosed by land , or whose only coastlines lie on closed seas . There are currently 48 such countries , including four partially recognised states . Only two , Bolivia and Paraguay in ___MASK86___ , lie outside Afro - Eurasia ( the Old World ). China , officially the People ' s Republic of China ( PRC ), is a unitary sovereign state in East ___MASK65___ . With a population of over 1 . 381 billion , it is the world ' s most populous country . The state is governed by the Communist Party of China , and its capital is Beijing . It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces , five autonomous regions , four direct - controlled municipalities ( Beijing , Tianjin , Shanghai , and Chongqing ), and two mostly self - governing special administrative regions ( Hong Kong and Macau ), and claims sovereignty over Taiwan . The country ' s major urban areas include Shanghai , Guangzhou , Beijing , Chongqing , Shenzhen , Tianjin and Hong Kong . China is a great power and a major regional power within ___MASK65___ , and has been characterized as a potential superpower . The Kazakhs ( also spelled Kazaks , Qazaqs , , ; the English name is transliterated from Russian ) are a Turkic people who mainly inhabit the southern part of Eastern ___MASK32___ Ural mountains and northern parts of Central ___MASK65___ ( largely Kazakhstan , but also found in parts of Uzbekistan , China , Russia and Mongolia ), the region also known as Eurasian sub - continent . Kazakh identity is of medieval origin and was strongly shaped by the foundation of the Kazakh Khanate between 1456 and 1465 , when several tribes under the rule of the sultans Zhanibek and Kerey departed from the Khanate of Abu ' l - Khayr Khan . Eastern ___MASK32___ , also known as East ___MASK32___ , is the eastern part of the European continent . There is no consensus on the precise area it covers , partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical , geographical , cultural , and socioeconomic connotations . There are " almost as many definitions of Eastern ___MASK32___ as there are scholars of the region ". A related United Nations paper adds that " every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct ". The Irtysh River (" erchleh ", " twirl " ; Chinese :  , pinyin : " É ' rqís hé ", Xiao ' erjing :          ; Uyghur :  / Ertish /  Siber :  / Eyärtesh ) is a river in Russia , China , and Kazakhstan . It is the chief tributary of the Ob River .