Country Distance
China United States
The capital-to-capital great-circle distance between any two countries — kilometres, miles, an honest flight-time estimate and the route shown on an interactive globe.
The measurement starts at this country's capital city.
Measured to this country's capital city.
China to United States, capital to capital: 11,144 km (6,925 mi) as the great circle flies.
11,144 km6,925 mi
- Approx. flight time at 900 km/h (typical jet cruising speed)
- 12.4 hours
- Share of Earth's equatorial circumference (40,075 km)
- 27.8%
- Capitals
- Beijing → Washington, D.C.
- By geographic center (centroid):
- 11,452 km
- China centroid
- 37.3°N, 105.7°E
- United States centroid
- 38.3°N, 90.4°W
How this tool works
- Pick the country you measure from (A) and the country you measure to (B) — the numbers update instantly.
- Read the capital-to-capital great-circle distance in kilometres and miles (with the centroid distance shown for comparison), the estimated flight time at a typical cruising speed, and how far it is around the Earth.
- Share the exact measurement by copying the URL — every choice is encoded in the query string.
The state lives in the URL (?a=china&b=united-states-of-america),
so any measurement can be shared, bookmarked, or indexed directly.
Data & method (no-JS fallback)
Capitals: the headline figure is the capital-to-capital great circle — the international convention for country-to-country distance. Capital coordinates come from Natural Earth's populated places dataset (public domain), joined by Natural Earth's own ADM0_A3 codes, plus a small committed set of manually sourced overrides. Geographic centres: computed from Natural Earth 1:110m boundaries (public domain) as the vertex average of each country's largest ring — an honest, reproducible geographic centre, shown as a secondary line for comparison (countries whose centroid sits offshore from far-flung islands show it clearly there). Distances: the haversine great-circle formula on a sphere of radius 6,371.0088 km (about 0.3% off WGS84 geodesics). Miles are derived from kilometres with the exact international factor 1 mile = 1.609344 km. Flight times divide the distance by 900 km/h, a typical jet cruising speed — an estimate that ignores winds, airspace and routing. The numbers above are rendered at build time for the default pair (China to United States) — they are complete without JavaScript; the interactive pickers are an enhancement.
Embed this tool
Add the distance calculator to your own site: paste the snippet below into your HTML and it loads the same interactive tool inside an iframe, with a small non-removable “Powered by” attribution link back to this page. The embed is available in English.
<iframe src="https://globevs.com/embed/distance" width="800" height="600" title="Country Distance — GlobeVS" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups"></iframe>FAQ
Is this the straight-line distance between the countries?
It is the great-circle distance — the shortest path between the two points along the Earth's surface, which is what "as the crow flies" means on a sphere. It is always shorter than any routed distance: roads avoid mountains and borders, flights follow airways and winds. On the default pair, China to United States is 11,144 km.
Which two points are being measured?
The headline is measured capital to capital — the international convention for the distance between two countries, with each country represented by its capital city (coordinates from Natural Earth's populated places dataset). The secondary line shows the same measurement between the two countries' geographic centres: for China that is 37.3°N, 105.7°E, for United States it is 38.3°N, 90.4°W. The centre is a vertex average of the largest boundary ring (Natural Earth 1:110m), so it is a reproducible geographic centre rather than a hand-picked midpoint; countries with far-flung islands can see it sit offshore.
How should I read the flight time?
It is the great-circle distance divided by 900 km/h — a typical cruising speed for a jet airliner — so on the default pair it comes out at about 12.4 hours. Real flights take longer: winds, airspace restrictions and departure routing routinely add time. Treat it as a lower-bound estimate, not a timetable.
Related
Compare China and United States metric by metric →
See China and United States's true size on a drag-and-drop map →