History of Guangdong

Physically separated from the early centres of Chinese civilization in North China, Guangdong was originally occupied by non-Han ethnic groups. It was first incorporated into the Chinese empire in 222 bce, when Shihuangdi, first emperor of the Qin dynasty, conquered the area along the Xi and Bei river valleys down to the Pearl River Delta. In 111 bce Chinese domination was extended to the whole of what is now Guangdong, including Hainan, during the reign (141–87 bce) of the Wudi emperor of the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). The conquest, however, was not followed by successful colonization, and Guangdong remained part of the empire only politically.

The military and agricultural colonization of Guangdong gradually took place during the five centuries of the Sui, Tang, and Bei (Northern) Song dynasties (i.e., from 581 to 1127). This colonization, combined with increasing overseas trade channeled through Guangzhou (Canton), led to an increase of migration into Guangdong and to the emergence of Guangzhou as a metropolis with a population of hundreds of thousands. At the end of the period, however, Guangdong was still occupied predominantly by its original ethnic population. The region was viewed as a semicivilized frontier, and disgraced officials often were exiled there.

The southward thrust of the Han was greatly intensified from 1126, when the Juchen of the Jin dynasty captured the Bei Song capital at what is now Kaifeng, forcing the Song to migrate south. Another major population movement followed a century and a half later as China fell to the Mongols. These migrations marked the beginning of effective Han occupation and the rapid cultural development of Guangdong. Especially after the 16th century the growth of population was so fast that by the late 17th century the Guangdong region had become a source of emigration. Migrants from Guangdong moved first to Guangxi, Sichuan, and Taiwan and then in the mid-19th century began to pour into Southeast Asia and North America, and some were also taken as indentured labourers to British, French, and Dutch colonies.

Since the mid-19th century, Guangdong has produced a number of prominent political and military, as well as intellectual, leaders. Many of the leaders of political movements during this period—such as Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64); Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao of the Reform Movement (1898); and Sun Yat-sen(Sun Zhongshan), who led the republican Chinese Revolution of 1911–12—had associations with Guangdong.

In the 1920s Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) made Guangzhou the base from which his program to reunify China under Nationalist rule was launched. Foreign privileges in the city were reduced, and modernization of the economy was undertaken. The almost simultaneous rise of the communist movement and the advent of Japanese aggression in the 1930s, however, thwarted the plans of Chiang and the Nationalists. From 1939 to 1945 the Japanese occupied southern Guangdong province. After World War II the conflict between the communists and the Nationalists erupted into full-scale civil war and continued until the communist victory in late 1949.