Kwangtung n : a province in southern China [syn: Guangdong, Guangdong province]

Guangdong (; EFEO : Kouangtong; pinyin Guǎngdōng; Postal map spelling: Kwangtung) is a province on the southern coast of China. It overtook Henan and Sichuan to become the most populous province in China in January 2005, registering 79 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months. The provincial capital of Guangzhou and economic hub Shenzhen are among the most populous and important cities in China.

Guangdong is the country's richest province with the highest total GDP among all provinces. Its nominal GDP for 2003 was US$165 billion, increased to US$265 billion in 2005 (about the same size as Denmark). In 2006 that number increased to US$329.07 billion and by 2007 its GDP has grown another 14.5% to reach 3.06 trillion yuan (US$422 billion). Guangdong contributes approximately 12.5% of national economic output. Guangdong also hosts the largest Import and Export Fair in China called the Canton Fair which is hosted by the city of Guangzhou - Guangdong's capital city.

The province was the homeland and base of operations of Sun Yat-Sen, the widely accepted founder of modern China.

Name

"Guang" itself means "expanse" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. "Guangdong" and neighboring Guangxi literally mean "expanse east" and "expanse west". Together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called the "Dual-Guangs" (兩廣 liăng guăng). The modern abbreviation 粵/粤 (Yue) is related to the Hundred Yue (百越), a collective name for various peoples that lived in Guangdong and other areas in ancient times.

Prior to the introduction of Hanyu Pinyin, the province was known as Canton Province based on a Portuguese-derived transliteration of "Guangdong". Canton refers to the city Romanized as Guangzhou in Pinyin, the provincial capital. The local people of Guangzhou and their language are still commonly referred to as Cantonese.

History

Guangdong was far away from the center of ancient Chinese civilization in the north China plain. It was populated by peoples collectively known as the Hundred Yue, who may have been Tai-Kadai and related to the Zhuang people in modern Guangxi.

Chinese administration in the region began with the Qin Dynasty, which, after establishing the first unified Chinese empire, expanded southwards and set up Nanhai Commandery at Panyu, near what is now part of Guangzhou. It used to be independent as Nanyue between the fall of Qin and the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. The Han Dynasty(汉朝) administered Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam as Jiao Province. Under the Wu Kingdom（吴国） of the Three Kingdoms period, Guangdong was made its own province, the Guang Province, in 226.

As time passed, the demographics of what is now Guangdong slowly shifted to (Han) Chinese-dominance, especially during several periods of massive migration from the north during periods of political turmoil and/or nomadic incursions from the fall of the Han Dynasty onwards. For example, internal strife in northern China following the rebellion of An Lushan resulted in a 75% increase in the population of Guangzhou prefecture between 740s-750s and 800s-810s. As more migrants arrived, the local population was gradually assimilated to Han Chinese culture, or displaced.

Together with Guangxi, Guangdong was made part of Lingnan Circuit (political division Circuit), or Mountain-South Circuit, in 627 during the Tang Dynasty. The Guangdong part of Lingnan Circuit was renamed Guangnan East Circuit guǎng nán dōng lù in 971 during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). "Guangnan East" is the source of "Guangdong".

As Mongols from the north engaged in their conquest of China in the 13th century, the Southern Song Dynasty retreated southwards, eventually ending up in today's Guangdong. The Battle of Yamen 1279 in Guangdong marked the end of the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279).

During the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, Guangdong was a part of Jiangxi. Its present name, "Guangdong Province" was given in early Ming Dynasty.

Since the 16th century, Guangdong has had extensive trade links with the rest of the world. European merchants coming northwards via the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, particularly the Portuguese and British, traded extensively through Guangzhou. Macau, on the southern coast of Guangdong, was the first European settlement in China since 1557. It was the opium trade through Guangzhou that triggered the Opium Wars, opening an era of foreign incursion and intervention in China. In addition to Macau, which was then a Portuguese colony, Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and Kwang-Chou-Wan to the French.

In the 19th century, Guangdong was also the major port of exit for labourers in south-east Asia and the western United States and Canada. As a result, many overseas Chinese communities have their origins in Guangdong. The Cantonese language therefore has proportionately more speakers among overseas Chinese people than mainland Chinese. In the USA, there is a large number of Chinese who are descendants of immigrants from the otherwise unremarkable Guangdong region of Taishan (Toisan in Cantonese), who speak a distinctive dialect of Cantonese called Taishanese (or Toishanese).

During the 1850s, the first revolt of the Taiping Rebellion by the Hakka people took place in Guangdong. Because of direct contact with the West, Guangdong was the center of anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist activity. The generally acknowledged founder of modern China, Sun Yat-Sen, was from Guangdong.

During the early 1920s of the Republic of China, Guangdong was the staging area for Kuomintang (KMT) to prepare for the Northern Expedition, an effort to bring the various warlords of China back under the central government. Whampoa Military Academy was built near Guangzhou to train military commanders.

In recent years, the province has seen extremely rapid economic growth, aided in part by its close trading links with Hong Kong, which borders it. It is now the province with the highest gross domestic product in China.

Hainan Island was originally part of Guangdong but it was separated as its own province in 1988.

Geography

Guangdong faces the South China Sea to the south and has a total of 4,300 km of coastline. Leizhou Peninsula is on the southwestern end of the province. There are a few inactive volcanoes on Leizhou Peninsula. The Pearl River Delta is the convergent point of three upstream rivers: the East River, North River, and West River. The river delta is filled with hundreds of small islands. The province is geographically separated from the north by a few mountain ranges collectively called the Southern Mountain Range (南岭). The highest point in the province is about 1,600 meters above sea level.

Guangdong borders Fujian province to the northeast, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces to the north, Guangxi autonomous region to the west, and Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions to the south. Hainan province is offshore across from the Leizhou Peninsula.

Cities around the Pearl River Delta include Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Shunde, Taishan, Zhongshan and Zhuhai. Other cities in the province include Chaozhou, Chenghai, Kaiping, Nanhai, Shantou, Shaoguan, Xinhui, Zhanjiang and Zhaoqing.

Guangdong has a humid subtropical climate (tropical in the far south), with short, mild, dry, winters and long, hot, wet summers. Average daily highs in Guangzhou in January and July are 18C (64F) and 33C (91F) respectively, although the humidity makes it feel much hotter in summer. Frost is rare on the coast but may happen a few days each winter well inland.

Economy

This is a trend of official estimates of the gross domestic product of the Province of Guangdong with figures in millions of Chinese Yuan: After the communist takeover and until the start of the Deng Xiaoping reforms in 1978, Guangdong was an economic backwater, although a large underground, service-based economy has always existed. Economic development policies encouraged industrial development in the interior provinces which were weakly linked to Guangdong via transportation links. The government policy of economic autarchy made Guangdong's access to the ocean irrelevant.

Deng Xiaoping's open door policy radically changed the economy of the province as it was able to take advantage of its access to the ocean, proximity to Hong Kong, and historical links to overseas Chinese. In addition, until the 1990s when the Chinese taxation system was reformed, the province benefited from the relatively low rate of taxation placed on it by the central government due to its post-Liberation status of being economically backward.

Although Shanghai is often cited as evidence of China's success, Guangdong's economic boom exemplifies the reality of the vast labor-intensive manufacturing powerhouse China has become, and all the rewards and shortcomings that come with it. Guangdong's economic boom began with the early 1990s and has since spread to neighboring provinces, and also pulled their populations inward. The economy is based on manufacturing and export.

The province is now one of the richest in the nation, with the highest GDP among all the provinces, although wage growth has only recently begun to rise due to a large influx of migrant workers from neighboring provinces. Its nominal GDP for 2006 was 2.60 trillion yuan (US$329.07 billion), a rise of 12.9% on a year-on-year basis. By 2007 its GDP has grown yet another 14.5% to reach US$422 billion.

In 2005, Guangdong's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were worth 137.46 billion yuan, 1.08 trillion yuan, and 957.94 billion yuan respectively. Its per capita GDP reached 28,007 yuan (US$3,509), more than double than in 2000. Guangdong contributes approximately 12.5% of the total national economic output.

Demographics

Guangdong officially became the most populous province in January 2005. Official statistics had traditionally placed Guangdong as the 4th most populous province of China with about 80 million people, but recently released information suggests that there are an additional 30 million migrants who reside in Guangdong for at least six months every year, making it the most populous province with a population of more than 110 million. The massive influx of migrants from other provinces, dubbed the "floating population", is due to Guangdong's booming economy and high demand for labor.

Guangdong is also the ancestral home of large numbers of overseas Chinese. Most of the railroad laborers in Canada, Western United States and Panama in the 19th century came from Guangdong. Emigration in recent years has slowed with economic prosperity, but this province is still a major source of immigrants to North America and elsewhere in the world.

The majority of the province's population is Han Chinese. There is a small Yao population in the north. Other smaller minority groups include Miao, Li, and Zhuang.

Because of the high population density and the close proximity in which humans and animals live, Guangdong has often been the source of respiratory diseases such as influenza. In late 2002, Guangdong was suspected as the initial source of SARS.

Politics

During the 1980s, the Guangdong provincial government had a reputation of resisting central government directives, especially those regarding the economy. At the same time, the good economic situation of Guangdong has made it relatively quiet in the area of political and economic activism. Although some in the West assume that Guangdong's economic growth and distinctive language would give rise to separatism, this is not the case, and there has never been any significant support for separatism.

Relations with Hong Kong and Macau

Although both Hong Kong and Macau have historically been part of Guangdong before becoming colonies of the United Kingdom and Portugal, they became special administrative regions, a first-order administrative division, when their sovereignty was transferred to the People's Republic of China.

Media

Guangdong and the greater Guangzhou Province is served by several Guangdong Radio stations and Guangdong TV. There is an international station Radio Guangdong which broadcasts information about this region to the entire world through the World Radio Network.

Culture

Guangdong is a multicultural province. The central region, which is also the political and economic center, is populated predominantly by Cantonese-speakers. This region is associated with Cantonese cuisine (simplified Chinese: 粤菜; traditional Chinese: 粵菜). Cantonese opera (simplified Chinese: 粤剧; traditional Chinese: 粵劇) is a form of Chinese opera popular in Cantonese speaking areas.

The SARS virus is thought to have originated in Guangdong, due to the cuisine of the region, which famously includes "anything that walks, crawls or flies".

The Hakka people live in large areas of Guangdong, including Huizhou, Meizhou, Shenzhen, Heyuan, Shaoguan and other areas. Much of the Eastern part of Guangdong is populated by the Hakka people except for the Chaozhou and Hailufeng area. Hakka culture include Hakka cuisine (客家菜), Han opera (simplified Chinese: 汉剧; traditional Chinese: 漢劇), Hakka Hanyue and sixian (traditional instrumental music) and Hakka folk songs (客家山歌).

The area composed of the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang in eastern Guangdong, known as Chaoshan, forms its own cultural sphere. Here, the Teochew people and the people in Hailufeng speak Teochew (simplified Chinese: 潮语, traditional Chinese: 潮語), which is closely related to Min-nan and their cuisine is Teochew cuisine. Teochew opera (simplified Chinese: 潮剧, traditional Chinese: 潮劇) is also very famous and has a unique form.

In addition to their mother tongue, most people also speak Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese).

Education

Colleges and universities

• Foshan University (Guangzhou, Foshan)
• Jinan University (Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Shenzhen)
• Shantou University (Shantou)
• South China University of Technology (Guangzhou)
• Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, Zhuhai)
• Shenzhen University (Shenzhen)
• South China Normal University (Guangzhou)
• Dongguan University of Technology (Dongguan)
• Shunde University (Shunde)
• Zhaoqing University
• South China Agricultural University (Guangzhou)
• Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (广东外语外贸大学)
• South China Agricultural University (华南农业大学) (founded 1909)
• Zhongkai Agrotechnical College (仲恺农业技术学院) (founded 1927)
• South China Normal University (华南师范大学)
• Guangzhou Medical College (广州医学院)
• Guangzhou University of TCM (广州中医药大学) (English-language site)
• Guangdong College of Pharmacy (广东药学院)
• Guangdong University of Technology (广东工业大学)
• Guangzhou University (广州大学)
• Guangdong Institute of Science and Technology (广东省科技干部学院)
• Guangdong Business College (广东商学院)
• Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (广州美术学院)
• Xinghai Conservatory of Music (星海音乐学院)
• GuangDong Polytechnic Normal University (广东技术师范学院)
• Guangzhou Physical Education Institute (广州体育学院)

Sports

Professional sports teams based in Guangdong include:

• Chinese Basketball Association
  • Guangdong Hongyuan Southern Tigers
• Chinese Football Association Jia League
  • Guangzhou Rizhiquan
• Chinese Football Association Super League
  • Shenzhen Jianlibao

Tourism

Notable attractions include Danxia Mountain, Yuexiu Hill in Guangzhou, Star Lake and the Seven Star Crags, and Dinghu Mountain.

Administrative divisions

The current immediate administrative divisions of Guangdong consist of 21 prefecture-level cities:

The sub-province-level cities:

• Guangzhou (广州) (Canton)
• Shenzhen (深圳) (Sumzun)

The prefecture-level cities:

• Chaozhou (潮州) (Teochew)
• Dongguan (东莞) (Donggoon)
• Foshan (佛山) (Futsaan)
• Heyuan (河源) (Hoyun)
• Huizhou (惠州) (Waizao)
• Jiangmen (江门) (Gongmoon)
• Jieyang (揭阳) (Keetyeung)
• Maoming (茂名) (Mohming)
• Meizhou (梅州) (Muizao)
• Qingyuan (清远) (Tsingyun)
• Shantou (汕头) (Swatow)
• Shanwei (汕尾) (Seenmei)
• Shaoguan (韶关) (Seeoogoon)
• Yangjiang (阳江) (Yeunggong)
• Yunfu (云浮) (Wunfao)
• Zhanjiang (湛江) (Sumgong)
• Zhaoqing (肇庆)
• Zhongshan (中山) (Zhongsan)
• Zhuhai (珠海) (Zuhoi)

The above division govern, in total, 49 districts, 30 county-level cities, 42 counties, and three autonomous counties. For county-level divisions, see the list of administrative divisions of Guangdong.

See also

• Governors of Guangdong
• List of laojiaos in Guangdong
• Teochew people

References

External links

• Guangdong Government website
• Guangdong Statistical Yearbook