Square Kilometers to Mu (Chinese) (km² to mu)

1 square kilometer equals 1,500 mu (Chinese) exactly.

1 square kilometer = 1,500 mu (Chinese)

How to convert square kilometers to mu (Chinese)

To convert square kilometers to mu (Chinese), multiply the number of square kilometers by 1,500. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply mu (Chinese) by 0.0006666666667 (rounded).

mu (Chinese) = square kilometers × 1,500

Example: 10 square kilometers = 15,000 mu (Chinese).

About these units

Square Kilometer (km²)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One million square meters (100 hectares). Used for the area of cities, countries and lakes.

Metric land measure took a surprisingly long time to settle on the kilometer. The meter was defined in 1799, yet people initially preferred the myriameter, 10,000 meters, and the French phrase myriamètres par heure was still in print in 1802. The Netherlands adopted the kilometer in 1817 under the name mijl. Once the kilometer was established, the square kilometer followed naturally as the unit for areas too large to count comfortably in hectares or square meters.

One square kilometer is 1,000,000 square meters, or 100 hectares, about 0.3861 square miles or 247.1 acres. A useful picture comes from history: many medieval European cities were enclosed by walls around roughly a square kilometer, with Delft at about 0.9 km² and Lucca at about 1.09 km². A standard 18-hole golf course of 6,000 meters needs about 0.8 km². The symbol km² means the square of a kilometer, not a thousand square meters. The planned Square Kilometre Array radio telescope takes its name from the collecting area it aims for.

1 square kilometer = 1,000,000 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square kilometre; Wikipedia: Kilometres per hour

Mu (Chinese) (mu)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 10,000/15 m² (666.67 m²), one fifteenth of a hectare. The standard unit of farmland in China.

A mu was once a plot defined by a square count of bu, the double pace used as a surveying step. Han-era writers recalled that in earlier times 100 square bu made a mu, while in their own day 240 were needed, and calculations from Han rulers give a mu of roughly 461 m². The size kept shifting. The 1915 Beiyang government law defined it as 60 square zhang, about 614.4 m².

The Republic's 1930 market system settled on 1/15 of a hectare, which is the 666.67 m² used here, and the mu is the only traditional Chinese area unit that survived the 1959 State Council decree. Farmland statistics in China are still given in mu, so that 15 mu make one hectare and 1,500 mu a square kilometre. Hong Kong and Macau use a mou of about 761.4 m², while Taiwan and Japan use a unit of about 99.17 m². The idiom of one mu and three fen of land describes a person's small personal patch.

1 mu (Chinese) = 666.6666667 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Mu (unit); Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement

Related conversions

See all area units.