Jiangsu Ancient roots - modern trimmings

 Jiangsu is a province of eastern China bordering on the Yellow Sea.
 Densely populated and highly industrialized, it became a separate
 province in the 18th century. Nanjing is the capital.

 The name "Jiangsu" comes from Jiang, short for the city of Jiangning
 (now Nanjing), and Su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this
 province is 苏 (Hanyu Pinyin: Sū), the second character of its name.

 Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, and Zhejiang
 and Shanghai to the south. Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1,000 km
 along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through its
 southern parts.

 Land and Economy

 Jiangsu consists largely of the alluvial plain of the Chang River and
 includes much of its delta; in elevation it rarely rises above sea level,
 although there are hills in the southwest. The fairly warm climate,
 moderate rainfall, and fertile soil make Jiangsu one of the richest
 agricultural regions of China and one of the most densely populated.

 The province straddles two agricultural zones, with wheat, millet,
 kaoliang, corn, soybeans, and peanuts cultivated in the north and rice,
 tea, sugarcane, and barley raised in the south. Cotton is grown along
 the coast (north and south) in the saline soil, which is not suited for
 other crops. Tea is planted in the western hills, and some experimenting
 with oak trees for silk culture has been initiated.

 Intensive land reclamation has been accomplished, with extensive dikes
 and the use of the raised-field system. Fish are abundant in the many
 lakes (of which Tai is the most famous), in the streams and canals, and
 off the Chang River (Yangtze) delta; Jiangsu, which is known to the
 Chinese as “the land of rice and fish,” is rich in marine products. It is
 also a major salt-producing area. Jiangsu is bisected by the Chang,
 which can be navigated by steamers up to 15,000 tons, and by a portion
 of the Grand Canal. Its first-class roads and extensive railroad system,
 including the busiest railway in China, the Shanghai-Nanjing line, make
 for excellent communications. Perhaps the most prosperous province
 in China, Jiangsu is deficient only in timber and minerals.

 A major part of China's foreign trade clears through the port of Shanghai
 into Jiangsu. Shanghai, one of the world's great seaports and the chief
 manufacturing center of China, is in Jiangsu province but is an
 independent municipality administered directly by the central
 government. Nanjing has been developed into an industrial center,
 producing petrochemicals, motor vehicles, machinery, and construction
 materials. Suzhou, Wuxi, and Zhenjiang are known for their silk. Textile,
 food-processing, cement, and fertilizer industries are found throughout
 the province.

 Introduction to History

 Jiangsu was originally part of the Wu kingdom, and Wu is still the
 province's traditional name. Jiangsu received its present name, derived
 from Jiangning (Nanjing) and Suzhou (Soochow), in 1667, when it was
 formed from the old Jiangnan province. The gateway to central China,
 Jiangsu became the main scene of European commercial activity after
 the Treaty of Nanjing (1842). The capture of Jiangsu in 1937 was an
 important phase of Japan's effort to conquer all China (see Sino-
 Japanese War, Second). Liberated by the Chinese Nationalists in 1945,
 Jiangsu fell to the Communists in 1949. For a time Jiangsu was
 administered as two regional units, North and South Jiangsu, but in
 1952 the province was reunited. Many archaeological sites have been
 excavated in Jiangsu since 1956. In 1984 the province was made a part
 of the Shanghai special economic zone, which has increased
 investment in and exports from port cities like Nantong.

 History

 The province of Jiangsu was formed in the 17th century. Before then,
 the northern and southern parts of Jiangsu had little to do with each
 other. South Jiangsu is currently the dominant part, being much
 wealthier and more influential than the north, and has been so for
 centuries; it is also firmly a part of southern Chinese culture. North
 Jiangsu, on the other hand, is at the juncture between North China and
 South China. Culturally it is of North China, but it has influences from
 South China, and is indeed still a part of a province that is based in the
 south.

 During the earliest of the Chinese dynasties, Jiangsu was far removed
 from the center of Chinese civilization, which were to the northwest in
 Henan; it was home to the Huai Yi (淮夷), an ancient ethnic group.
 During the Zhou Dynasty more contact was made, and eventually a state
 of Wu (centred at Gusu, now Suzhou) appeared as a vassal to the Zhou
 Dynasty in south Jiangsu, one of the many hundreds of states that
 existed across north and central China at the time. Near the end of the
 Spring and Autumn Period, Wu became a great power under King Helu
 of Wu, and was able to defeat in 484 BC the state of Qi, a major power to
 the north in modern-day Shandong province, and contest for the
 position of overlord over all the states of China. The state of Wu was
 subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, another state that had
 emerged to the south in modern-day Zhejiang province. Yue was in turn
 subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC.
 Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states of China, and
 established China as a unified nation in 221 BC.

Under the reign of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), which brought
 China to its first golden age, Jiangsu was a relative backwater, far
 removed from the centres of civilization in the North China Plain.
 Jiangsu was at the time administered under two zhou (provinces):
 Xuzhou Province in the north, and Yangzhou Province in the south.
 Although southern Jiangsu was eventually the base for the kingdom of
 Wu, (one of the Three Kingdoms from 222 to 280), it did not become
 significant until the invasion by northern nomads during the Western Jin
 Dynasty, starting from the 4th century. As northern nomadic groups
 established kingdoms across the north, ethnic Han Chinese aristocracy
 fled southwards and set up a refugee Eastern Jin Dynasty in 317, in
 Jiankang (modern day Nanjing). From then until 581 (a period known as
 the Southern and Northern Dynasties), Nanjing in south Jiangsu was to
 be the base of four more ethnic Han Chinese dynasties facing off with
 the northern barbarian dynasties. In the meantime, north Jiangsu was a
 buffer of sorts between north and south; it initially started as a part of
 southern dynasties, but as northern dynasties gained more ground, it
 became part of northern dynasties.

 In 581 unity was re-established again, and under the Tang Dynasty (618
 – 907) China once more went through a golden age, though Jiangsu at
 this point was still rather unremarkable among the different parts of
 China. It was during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), which saw the
 development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market
 economy in China that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade.
 From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially major cities like Suzhou
 or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence and luxury in China.
 Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, and
 Shanghai, arguably the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan of mainland
 China cities, is a direct extension of south Jiangsu culture.

 The Khitan Jinn Dynasty gained control of North China in 1127, and the
 river Huai He, which used to cut through north Jiangsu to reach the
 Yellow Sea, was the border between the north, under the Jinn, and the
 south, under the Southern Song Dynasty. The Mongols took control of
 China in the 13th century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in
 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, initially put
 its capital in Nanjing. Following a coup by Zhu Di (later Yongle Emperor),
 however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north. (The naming
 of the two cities continue to reflect this: "Nanjing" literally means
 "southern capital", "Beijing" literally means "northern capital.) The
 entirety of modern day Jiangsu as well as neighbouring Anhui province
 kept their special status, however, as territory-governed directly by the
 central government, and were called Nanzhili (南直隸 "Southern
 directly-governed"). Meanwhile, South Jiangsu continued to be an
 important center of trade in China; some historians see in the
 flourishing textiles industry at the time incipient industrialization and
 capitalism, a trend that was however aborted, several centuries before
 similar trends took hold in the West.

 The Qing Dynasty changed this situation by establishing Nanzhili as
 Jiangnan province; in 1666 Jiangsu and Anhui were split apart as
 separate provinces, and Jiangsu was given borders approximately the
 same as today. With the start of the Western incursion into China in the
 1840s, the rich and mercantile south Jiangsu was increasingly exposed
 to Western influence; Shanghai, originally an unremarkable little town of
 Jiangsu, quickly developed into a metropolis of trade, banking, and
 cosmopolitanism, and was split out later as an independent
 municipality. South Jiangsu also figures strongly in the Taiping
 Rebellion (1851 – 1864), a massive and deadly rebellion that attempted
 to set up a Christian theocracy in China; it started far to the south in
 Guangdong province, swept through much of South China, and by 1853
 had established Nanjing as its capital, renamed as Tianjing
 (天 京 "Heavenly Capital").

 The Republic of China was established in 1912, and China was soon
 torn apart by warlords. Jiangsu changed hands several times, but in
 April 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek established a government at Nanjing; he
 was soon able to bring most of China under his control. This was
 however interrupted by the second Sino-Japanese War, which began
 full-scale in 1937; on December 13, 1937, Nanjing fell, and the combined
 atrocities of the occupying Japanese for the next 3 months would come
 to be known as the Nanjing Massacre. Nanjing was the seat of the
 collaborationist government of East China under Wang Jingwei, and
 Jiangsu remained under occupation until the end of the war in 1945.

 After the war, Nanjing was once again the capital of the Republic of
 China, though now the Chinese Civil War had broken out between the
 Kuomintang government and Communist forces, based further north,
 mostly in Manchuria. The decisive Huaihai Campaign was fought in
 northern Jiangsu; it resulted in Kuomintang defeat, and the communists
 were soon able to cross the Yangtze River and take Nanjing. The
 Kuomintang fled southwards, and eventually ended up in Taipei, from
 which the Republic of China government continues to administer
 Taiwan and its neighbouring islands, though it also continues to claim
 (technically, at least) Nanjing as its rightful capital.

 After communist takeover, Beijing was made capital of China and
 Nanjing was demoted to be the provincial capital of Jiangsu. The
 economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping initially focused on the south coast
 of China, in Guangdong province, which soon left Jiangsu behind;
 starting from the 1990s they were applied more evenly to the rest of
 China. Suzhou and Wuxi, two southern cities of Jiangsu in close
 proximity to neighbouring Shanghai Municipality, have since become
 particularly prosperous, being among the top 10 cities in China in gross
 domestic product and outstripping the provincial capital of Nanjing. The
 income disparity between north Jiangsu and south Jiangsu however
 remains large.