China dwarfs Libya: about 9,371,225 km² km² against 1,626,369 km² km². At true size China is about 5.8× larger — the whole of Libya fits into China roughly 5 times.
China sits in Asia, Libya in Africa. On the old Mercator map the latitude gap distorted how large each felt beside the other; at true size the answer is simply 5.8×.
The old Mercator map treated both about equally (1.6× vs 1.3× inflation), so at least their relative sizes were preserved — even if both were drawn at the wrong absolute scale.
Libya fits 5× into China.