Kunming
Kunming is the capital and largest city of the province of Yunnan in China. The political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province, Kunming is also a major tourism centre in China. It is nicknamed the "City of Eternal Spring" for its year-round mild climate. During World War II, Kunming was a Chinese military center and the location of the headquarters for the US Army Forces China-Burma-British Raj. Wujiaba Airport served as the home of the First American Volunteer Group of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers. Kunming was also a transport terminus for the Burma Road.
Kunming is at an altitude of above sea level and a latitude just north of the Tropic of Cancer, and is situated in the middle of the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau. Kunming is the fourth most populous city in Western China, after Chongqing, Chengdu, and Xi'an, and the third most populous city in Southwestern China after Chongqing and Chengdu. As of the 2020 census, Kunming had a total population of 8,460,088 inhabitants, of whom 5,604,310 lived in its built-up area made of all urban districts except Jinning. At the end of 2024, the resident population of the city was 8.687 million. It is at the northern edge of Dian Lake, surrounded by temples and lakes and karst topography.
Kunming consists of an old, previously walled city, several modern commercial districts, residential zones, and university areas. The city is also one of the major centers for scientific research and education in Southwestern China. As of 2024, it was listed among the top 100 cities in the world by scientific research output. The city has an astronomical observatory, and its institutions of higher learning include Yunnan University, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming Medical University, Yunnan Normal University, Yunnan Agricultural University and Southwest Forestry University. Kunming is also home to the Golden Temple, China's largest bronze temple dating from the Ming dynasty.
Kunming is a major economic center in Western China. The city's economic importance derives from its geographical position, as it shares a border with various Southeast Asian countries, serving them as a transportation hub in Southwest China, linking by rail to Vietnam and Laos, and by road to Myanmar and Thailand. This positioning also makes the city an important commercial center of trade in the region. The city also acts as a gateway to Southeast Asia and South Asia, the Kunming Changshui International Airport is one of the top 50-busiest airports in the world. As of 2026, the city is also home to seven consulates from Southeast Asia and South Asia.
The headquarters of many of Yunnan's biggest corporations are based in the city, such as Hongta Group, Yunnan Copper Group, Hongyunhonghe Group, Yunnan Power Grid Co, and Fudian Bank. Kunming also houses some manufacturing, chiefly the processing of copper, as well as various chemicals, machinery, textiles, paper and cement. Kunming has a nearly 2,400-year history, but its modern prosperity began in 1910, when the French built the Kunming–Haiphong railway connecting Yunnan to Vietnam. The city has continued to develop rapidly under China's modernization efforts. Kunming was designated a special tourism center and, as such, has experienced a proliferation of high-rises and luxury hotels.
Etymology
"Kunming" evolved from the name of an ancient ethnic group called the Kunming Yi or Kunming Barbarian. They were a branch of the Di-Qiang people. The Kunming Yi lived in the neighbouring region of Erhai Lake during the Western Han dynasty. The Han dynasty incorporated the territory of the Dian Kingdom and set up a commandery called Yizhou in 109 BC; the Han dynasty also incorporated the Kunming Yi into Yizhou Commandery soon after. Therefore, Kunming Yi expanded east to the Lake Dian area later. "Kunming" has acted as a place name since the Three Kingdoms period, but the reference was not clear because this ethnicity occupied a large region. In the Yuan dynasty, the central government set up "Kunming County" in modern Kunming; the name "Kunming" has continued to this day.A 2009 research paper proposes that the name "Kunming" of Kunming Yi is a cognate word of "Khmer" and "Khmu" that originally meant "people".
History
Early history
Kunming long profited from its position on the caravan route through to South Asia and Southeast Asia. Early townships on the southern edge of Lake Dian can be dated back to 279 BC, although they have been long lost to history. Early settlements in the area around Lake Dian date back to Neolithic times. The Dian Kingdom, whose original language likely belonged to the Tibeto-Burman languages, was also established near the area.Dian was ruled by the Chinese Han dynasty under the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in 109 BC. The Han dynasty incorporated the territory of the Dian into their Yizhou Commandery, but left the ruler of Dian with the title.
The Han dynasty, seeking control over the Southern Silk Road running to Burma, Pakistan and India, brought small parts of Yunnan into China's orbit, but subsequent dynasties could do little to tame what was then a remote and wild borderland until the 13th century. During the Sui dynasty, two military expeditions were launched against the area, and it was renamed Kunzhou in Chinese sources.
Medieval China
Founded in 765, Kunming was known to the ancient Chinese as Tuodong city in the Kingdom of Nanzhao during the 8th and 9th centuries. Tuodong later became part of the successor Kingdom of Dali. The possession of Tuodong changed hands when the city came under the control of the Yuan dynasty during its invasion of the southwest in 1252–1253. During the tenure of provincial governor Ajall Shams al-Din Omar, a "Chinese Style" city named Zhongjing was founded where modern Kunming is today. Shams al-Din ordered the construction of a Buddhist temple, a Confucian temple, and two mosques in the city. The Confucian temple, doubling as a school, was the first of its kind in Yunnan, attracting students from minority groups across the province. Coupled with his promotion of Confucian ceremonies and customs, Shams al-Din has been largely credited with the sinicization of the region. The city grew as a trading center between the southwest and the rest of China. It is considered by scholars to have been the city of Yachi Fu where people had used cowries as cash and ate their meat raw, as described by the 13th-century Venetian traveler Marco Polo. The area was first dubbed Kunming during the decline of the Yuan dynasty.Ming and Qing Dynasties
In the 14th century, Kunming was retaken from Mongolian officials when the Ming dynasty defeated the Yuan dynasty. The Ming later built a wall surrounding present-day Kunming. 300 years later, Ming turncoat Wu Sangui held the city as a Qing governor. During the beginning of Wu's rule, the entirety of Yunnan and Guizhou were ruled from Kunming by Wu. During the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, the seat of Wu's newly declared Zhou dynasty was moved to Hengzhou in Hunan. Later in 1678, when Wu died, his grandson Wu Shifan resisted Qing forces for two more months before committing suicide, reverting control of the city back into Qing hands. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was the seat of the superior prefecture of Yunnan.In 1832, the beginnings of a real city were acknowledged within the city walls and there were significant structures within their confines. The founding of the city can therefore be said to have been a predominantly 19th century affair. It was also in this century that the city grew to become the major market and transport centre for the region. Many of the city's inhabitants were displaced as a result of the 1833 Kunming earthquake.
The rebel leader Du Wenxiu, the Muslim Han ruler of Dali, attacked and besieged the city several times between 1858 and 1868. A great part of the city's wealth did not survive the 1856 Panthay Rebellion, when most of the Buddhist sites in the capital were badly damaged, converted to mosques, or were razed. Decades later, Kunming began to be influenced by the West, especially from the French Empire. In the late 1800s, the French started to build the Kunming-Haiphong railway between Kunming and Haiphong in what was then French Indochina. In the 1890s, an uprising against working conditions on the Kunming–Haiphong rail line saw many laborers executed after France shipped in weapons to suppress the revolt. The meter-gauge rail line, only completed by around 1911, was designed by the French so that they could tap into Yunnan's mineral resources for their colonies in Indochina.
Kunming was a communications center during this time and a junction of two major trading routes, one westward via Dali and Tengchong County into Myanmar, the other southward through Mengzi County to the Red River in Indochina. Eastward, a difficult mountain route led to Guiyang in Guizhou province and thence to Hunan province. To the northeast was a well-established trade trail to Yibin in Sichuan province on the Yangtze River. But these trails were all extremely difficult, passable only by mule trains or pack-carrying porters.
Republic
The opening of the Kunming area began in earnest with the completion in 1906–1910 of the Kunming-Haiphong Railway to Haiphong in north Vietnam.Kunming became a treaty port opening to foreign trade in 1908 and became a commercial center soon after. A university was set up in 1922. In the 1930s, the first highways connected to Kunming were built, linking Kunming with the rest of west China.
The local warlord General Tang Jiyao established the Wujiaba Aerodrome in 1922; an additional 23 airports would be established in Yunnan from 1922 to 1929.
Second World War (1937–1945)
Kunming was transformed into a modern city as a result of war refugees of World War II fleeing from the north and eastern coastal regions of China to move to Kunming, bringing much commerce and industry into the southwest of China, including Kunming. They carried dismantled industrial plants with them, which were then re-erected beyond the range of Japanese bombers. In addition, a number of universities and institutes of higher education were evacuated there. The increased trade and expertise quickly established Kunming as an industrial and manufacturing base for the wartime government in Chongqing.As the battles of Shanghai, Taiyuan and Nanjing were lost by the end of 1937, and with Wuhan falling into Japanese occupation by the end of 1938, many more of China's military forces and civilians retreated to cities outside the reach of the Japanese military ground forces a year prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe in 1939, including the relocation of the Chinese Air Force Academy from Jianqiao Airbase to Kunming's Wujiaba Airbase, where the airfield was vastly expanded, becoming the new training hub for the battered but regrouped Chinese Air Force in which Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault took command of cadet training duties in the summer of 1938. The Chinese Air Force command established the 41st Pursuit Squadron based in Kunming, also known as the French Volunteer Group squadron in June 1938, and with them they brought Dewoitine D.510 fighters, with the intention of securing the sale of the planes to the Chinese Air Force; the French participated in some combat engagements against Japanese raids, including dogfights against Mitsubishi A5M fighters with Chinese Hawk III fighters over Nanchang, but after several setbacks, including a fighter pilot KIA, the group was disbanded in October 1938.
Although Japan was focused on ending Chinese resistance at the Battle of Chongqing and Chengdu, Kunming was not out of the reach of Japanese air raids, facing attacks by IJAAF and IJNAF bombers. Chinese military assets and infrastructure were under regular attack, while the RoCAF 18th Fighter Squadron and units of the Air Force Academy at Wujiaba were tasked with aerial defense of Kunming. The city of Kunming was prepared as an alternate National Redoubt in case the temporary capital in Chongqing fell, with an elaborate system of caves to serve as offices, barracks and factories, but it was never utilised. Kunming was to have served again in this role during the ensuing Chinese Civil War, but the Nationalist garrison there switched sides and joined the Communists. Instead, Taiwan would become the last redoubt and home of the Republic of China government, a role it fulfills to this day.
When the city of Nanning fell to the Japanese during the Battle of South Guangxi, China's sea-access was cut off. However, the Chinese victory at the Battle of Kunlun Pass kept the Burma Road open. When the Japanese began occupying French Indochina in 1940, the Burma Road that linked Kunming and the outside-world with unoccupied China grew increasingly vital as much of the essential support and materials were imported through Burma. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the start of the Pacific War in December 1941, Kunming acted as an Allied military command center, which grouped the Chinese, American, British and French forces together for operations in Southeast Asia. Kunming became the northern and easternmost terminus of the vital war-supply line into China known as "The Hump", which stretched over the Himalayas from British bases in India to port-of-entry Kunming. The Office of Strategic Services' Service Unit Detachment 101 was also headquartered in Kunming. Its mission was to divert and disrupt Japanese combat operations in Burma.
Kunming, the northern terminus of all three of the Burma Road, the Ledo Road, and "The Hump" supply-line, was increasingly targeted by the IJAAF. When the Burma Road was lost to the Japanese, the Hump became China's primary lifeline to the outside world. The 1st American Volunteer Group, known as the "Flying Tigers", was based in Kunming and tasked with defense of The Hump supply-line against Japanese aerial interceptions.
Industry became important in Kunming as the large state-owned Central Machine Works was transferred there from Hunan, while the manufacture of electrical products, copper, cement, steel, paper, and textiles expanded.