Intro to Guangdong
Guǎngdōng (广东) province is one of the most prosperous and developed areas of China. The province accounts for 12% of China's national economic output. This prosperity is not only in modern times. It dates back centuries to when the Guangdong capital, Guangzhou, was the sole port for foreign trade in China. This monopoly on trade made the province rich. It also meant that Guangdong had greater foreign influences, creating a distinct culture. To the north of Guangdong lie the provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian. To the south of Guangdong is the South China Sea and the former foreign colonies of Hong Kong and Macau. They are now Special Administration Regions belonging to China but outside of Guangdong province control. To the west lies Guangxi province. The Pearl River runs through the Province and the area around the lower section of the river, known as the Pearl River Delta is a highly prosperous zone which including the cities of Guangzhou, Shenzhe, Zhouhai, Hong Kong and Macau.
The people of Guangdong have a distinct spoken dialect of Chinese which, within China, is known as Yueyu, and abroad known as Cantonese. This dialect is related to Mandarin but distinct. The written Chinese (Hanzi) is, however, the same for both Cantonese and Mandarin dialects. Guangdong is famous for its special food. It is food from this region that has influenced most Chinses style restaurants in the west (since many immigrants to the west came from Guangdong province.) However, Guangdong is also famous for more extreme types of food including monkey, snake, jellyfish and other items that outsiders would turn their noses up at.
Transport within Guangdong is very convenient. A good network of highways connect all the major cities. Many large international airports are located in Guangdong, especially in the Pearl River Delta area. High speed catamarans and hydrofoils also connect the main Cities across and along the river. Plans are under way to construct a massive bridge linking across the Delta between Guangdong, Macau and Hong Kong. The southern cities of Guangdong, namely Zhouhai and Shenzhen, are popular with day trippers from Hong Kong, who can pick up some bargains across the border. Equally, Guangdong is popular with Expats who can enjoy the lower cost lifestyle of Guangdong while still being convenient to Hong Kong.
History of Guangdong
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 Kradai and related to the Zhuang people in modern Guangxi.
Chinese administration in the region began with the Qin Dynasty. After establishing the first unified Chinese empire, the Qin 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 administered Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam as Jiaozhi Province. Under the Wu Kingdom 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 to Southeast Asia and the West, i.e. 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 US, 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.
In 1952, a small section of Guangdong's coastline was given to Guangxi, giving it access to the sea. This was reversed in 1955, and then restored in 1965. Hainan Island was originally part of Guangdong but it was separated as its own province in 1988.
Culture of Guangdong
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 She, Miao, Li, and Zhuang.
Within the Han Chinese, the largest group in Guangdong are the Cantonese people. Two other major groups are the Hakka people in Meizhou and the Teochew people in Chaoshan.
Guangdong is a multicultural province. The central region, which is also the political and economic center, is populated predominantly by Cantonese speakers, though the influx in the last three decades of millions of Putonghua-speaking immigrants has diminished Cantonese linguistic dominance somewhat. 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 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 comprising the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang in east Guangdong, known as Chaoshan, forms its own cultural sphere. The Teochew people here, alongside with Hailufeng people in Shanwei, 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 with a unique form.
In addition to their mother tongue of Cantonese, Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) is increasingly spoken, especially by the younger generation.
Industry of Guangdong
This is a trend of official estimates of the gross domestic product of the Province of Guangdong with figures in millions of Chinese Yuan:
| Year |
Gross domestic product |
| 1980 |
24,521 |
| 1985 |
55,305 |
| 1990 |
140,184 |
| 1995 |
538,132 |
| 2000 |
966,223 |
| 2008 |
3,570,000 |
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 2008 was 3.57 trillion yuan (US$514 billion).
In 2008, Guangdong's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were worth 197 billion yuan, 1.84 trillion yuan, and 1.53 trillion yuan respectively. Its per capita GDP reached 37,588 yuan (about US$5,410). Guangdong contributes approximately 12% of the total national economic output. Now, it has three of the six Special Economic Zones: Shenzhen, Shantou and Zhuhai. The affluence of Guangdong, however, remains very much concentrated near the Pearl River Delta.
In 2008 its foreign trade also grew 7.8% from the previous year and is also by far the largest of all of China. By numbers, Guangdong's foreign trade accounts for more than a quarter of China's US$2.56 trillion foreign trade or roughly US$683 billion.
Recently, more than 7000 factories based in southern Guangdong cities such as Shenzhen and Dongguan has shut due to rapidly falling demand from western consumers, stricter labour and environmental regulations and the global financial crisis.
