It was discovered on 30 October 1957, by astronomer Zhāng Yùzhé (Y. C. Chang, 张钰哲) at the Chinese Purple Mountain Observatory (紫金山天文台) in Nanjing, and named in honor of the country China.

[3] The assumed C-type asteroid has a short rotation period of 5.4 hours and measures approximately 26 kilometers (16 miles) in diameter.

[2][14] China is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements.

[10] In February 2009, a rotational lightcurve of China was obtained from photometric observations by Kenneth T. Menzies at the Tigh Speuran Observatory (I14) in Massachusetts, United States.

[12] In October 2013, Robert Stephens measured a similar period of 5.45 hours and an amplitude of 0.62 magnitude at the Center for Solar System Studies (U81) in California (U=3-).