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The record, not a single number

Many walls

Length figures for the Great Wall disagree until you ask what is being counted: one dynasty or all of them, constructed wall or natural barriers, a traditional line or a later survey.

Encyclopaedia Britannica says the Great Wall actually consists of numerous walls — many of them parallel to each other — built over some two millennia across northern China and southern Mongolia. [Britannica]

UNESCO’s Statement of Outstanding Universal Value gives the Great Wall a total length of more than 20,000 kilometres, built from the 3rd century BC to the 17th century AD as the military defence project of successive Chinese empires. [UNESCO]

On 6 June 2012 the BBC, reporting state media, wrote that the wall measures 21,196.18 km (about 13,170.7 miles) based on the latest state survey results, as reported by the news agency Xinhua. [BBC News] The same report says the State Administration of Cultural Heritage released the results based on an archaeological survey done since 2007, and that this was the first time such a definitive figure had been released. [BBC News] Tong Mingkang, deputy chief, said the survey revealed a total of 43,721 heritage sites that included stretches of the Great Wall, the BBC reported, citing Xinhua. [BBC News]

A UNESCO periodic report on the property gives the Ming Great Wall as 8,851.8 km, and gives the Great Wall of the Qin, Han and other dynasties as a separate figure. [UNESCO] The most extensive and best-preserved version, Britannica says, dates from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and runs for some 5,500 miles (8,850 km) east to west from Mount Hu near Dandong, in southeastern Liaoning province, to Jiayu Pass west of Jiuquan, in northwestern Gansu province. [Britannica] About one-fourth of that Ming length, Britannica says, consists solely of natural barriers such as rivers and mountain ridges; about 70 percent is actual constructed wall, and the small remaining stretches are ditches or moats. [Britannica]

A preliminary study released in 2009, the BBC reported, estimated the wall to be 8,850 km long — a figure close to the Ming length given in the UNESCO periodic report, and not the later all-periods total. [BBC News]

Traditionally, Britannica says, the eastern terminus of the wall was considered to be Shanhai Pass (Shanhaiguan) in eastern Hebei, on the coast of the Bo Hai; later government-sponsored investigations revealed sections of wall in Liaoning, and the greater total length of the Ming wall was announced in 2009. [Britannica]

The desk repeats the sources already quoted above. It does not add a new figure.

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