Guangdong
Guangdong is a coastal province in South China, on the north shore of the South China Sea with Guangzhou as the capital. With a population of 127.06million across a total area of about, Guangdong is China's most populous province and its 15th-largest by area, as well as the third-most populous country subdivision in the world.
Guangdong's economy is the largest of any provincial-level division in China, with a GDP of in 2024, contributing approximately 10.5 percent of mainland China's economic output. It has a diversified economy, and was known as the starting point of ancient China's Maritime Silk Road. It is home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of Chinese and foreign corporations. Guangdong has benefited from its proximity to the financial hub of Hong Kong, which it borders to the south. Guangdong also hosts the largest import and export fair in China, the Canton Fair, in Guangzhou. The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, a Chinese megalopolis, is a core for high tech, manufacturing and international trade. In this zone are two of the four top Chinese cities and the top two Chinese prefecture-level cities by GDP: Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the first special economic zone in the country. These two are among China's most populous and important cities, and have become two of the world's most populous megacities and leading financial centres in the Asia–Pacific region.
Guangdong surpassed Henan and Shandong to become China's most populous province in January 2005, registering 79.1 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year; the total population was 126,012,510 in the 2020 Chinese census, accounting for 8.93 percent of mainland China's population. This makes it the most populous first-level administrative subdivision of any country outside South Asia. The vast majority of the historical Guangdong Province is administered by the People's Republic of China. Pratas Island in the South China Sea is part of Cijin District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan ; the island was part of Guangdong before the Chinese Civil War.
After the unification of Lingnan region during the Qin dynasty, immigrants from the Central Plains moved in and formed a local culture with a unique style. With the outward movement of the Guangdong people, the Cantonese, Hakka and Teochew languages, music, cuisine, opera and tea ceremony have spread throughout the nation, Southeast Asia, and other countries. Guangdong was also the birthplace of the father of modern China and the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen. He declared a military government there in the Warlord Era. The two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau fall within the scope of Guangdong's cultural influence, and its culture still has profound influences on the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia, with the vast majority of the Chinese diaspora in the two countries claiming ancestry from Guangdong.
Guangdong is also one of the leading provinces in research and education in China. It hosts 160 institutions of higher education, ranking first in the South Central China region and second among all Chinese provinces/municipalities, after Jiangsu. As of 2025, two major cities in the province ranked in the world's top 20 cities by scientific research output.
Name
"Guǎng" means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "Guang" ultimately came from Guangxin, an outpost established in Han dynasty near modern Wuzhou, whose name is a reference to an order by Emperor Wu of Han to "widely bestow favors and sow trust". Together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called Loeng gwong During the Song dynasty, the Two Guangs were formally separated as Guǎngnán Dōnglù and Guǎngnán Xīlù, which became abbreviated as Guǎngdōng Lù and Guǎngxī Lù."Dōng" means "east".
"Canton", though etymologically derived from Cantão, usually by itself refers to the provincial capital Guangzhou. Historically, Canton was also used for the province itself, but often either specified as a province, or written as Kwangtung in the Wade–Giles system and now most commonly as Guangdong in Pinyin. The local people of the city of Guangzhou and their language are called Cantonese in English. Because of the prestige of Canton and its accent, Cantonese can also be used, in a wider sense, for the phylogenetically related residents and Chinese dialects outside the provincial capital.
History
Prehistory
The Neolithic era began in the Pearl River Delta 7,000 years before present, with the early period from around 7000 to 5000 BP, and the late period from about 5000 to 3500 BP. In coastal Guangdong, the Neolithic was likely introduced from the middle Yangtze River area. In inland Guangdong, the Neolithic appeared in Guangdong 4,600 years before present. The Neolithic in northern inland Guangdong is represented by the Shixia culture, which occurred from 4600 to 4200 BP.Imperial
Originally inhabited by a mixture of tribal groups known to the Chinese as the Baiyue, the region first became part of China during the Qin dynasty. Under the Qin Dynasty, Chinese administration began and along with it, reliable historical records about the region. 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. The region was later controlled by an independent kingdom known 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; southernmost Jiaozhi Province was used as a gateway for traders from the west—as far away as the Roman Empire. Under the Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, Guangdong was made its own province, the Guang Province, in 226 CE.Canton was a prosperous port city along a tropical frontier region beset by disease and wild animals, but rich in oranges, banyan, bananas, and lychee fruits. They traded slaves, silk and chinaware with Persians, Brahmans and Malays in exchange for their renowned medicines and fragrant tropical woods. Shi'a Muslims who had fled persecution in Khorasan and Buddhists from India lived side by side in the thriving town each erecting their own houses of worship. A foreign quarter sprang up along the river where many traders of diverse backgrounds including Arabs and Singhalese took up residence.
The port's importance declined after it was raided by Arabs and Persians in 758 and the foreign residents were at times troubled by the corrupt local officials, sometimes responding violently. During one incident in 684, for example, a merchant vessel's captain murdered a corrupt governor who had used his position to steal from the merchant.
Together with Guangxi, Guangdong was made part of Lingnan Circuit, or Mountain-South Circuit, in 627 during the Tang dynasty. The Guangdong part of Lingnan Circuit was renamed Guangnan East Circuit in 971 during the Song dynasty. "Guangnan East" is the source of the name "Guangdong".
As time passed, the demographics of what is now Guangdong gradually shifted to Chinese dominance as the populations intermingled due to commerce along the great canals. From the fall of the Han dynasty onwards, it shifted more abruptly through massive migration from the north during periods of political turmoil and nomadic incursions. 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 the 740s–750s and 800s–810s. As more migrants arrived, the local population was gradually assimilated to Han Chinese culture or displaced.
As Mongols from the north engaged in their conquest of China in the 13th century, the Southern Song court fled southwards from its capital in Hangzhou. The defeat of the Southern Song court by Mongol naval forces in The Battle of Yamen 1279 in Guangdong marked the end of the Southern Song dynasty.
During the Mongol Yuan dynasty, large parts of current Guangdong belonged to 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 1557.
In the 19th century, the opium traded through Guangzhou triggered the First Opium War, opening an era of Western imperialists' incursion and intervention in China. In addition to Macau, which was then a Portuguese colony, Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and Kouang-Tchéou-Wan to the French.
Due to the large number of people that emigrated out of the Guangdong province, and in particular the ease of immigration from Hong Kong to other parts of the British Empire, many overseas Chinese communities have their origins in Guangdong and/or Cantonese culture. In particular, the Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew dialects have proportionately more speakers among overseas Chinese people than Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Additionally, many Taishanese-speaking Chinese emigrated to Western countries, with the results that many Western versions of Chinese words were derived from the Cantonese dialects rather than through the mainstream Mandarin language, such as "dim sum". Some Mandarin Chinese words originally of foreign origin also came from the original foreign language by way of Cantonese. For example, the Mandarin word ', meaning "Lemon", came from Cantonese, in which the characters are pronounced as '. In the United States, there is a large number of Chinese who are descendants of immigrants from the county-level city of Taishan, who speak a distinctive dialect related to Cantonese called Taishanese.
During the 1850s, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, whose leader Hong Xiuquan was born in Guangdong and received a pamphlet from a Protestant Christian missionary in Guangdong, was allied with a local Guangdong Red Turban Rebellion. Because of direct contact with the West, Guangdong was the centre of anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist activity. The generally acknowledged founder of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was also from Guangdong.