Southern China

Southern China has two distinct sections (Figure 9.36). The first is made up of the mountainous and mostly rural provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou to the southwest. The second includes the Guangxi Zhuangzu Autonomous Region and Guangdong and Fujian provinces on the southeastern coast, where the booming cities of China’s evolving economy are located.

FIGURE 9.36 The Southern China subregion. (A) Yuantong Temple in Kunming is one of the few Buddhist temples that was not significantly damaged during the Cultural Revolution. Today it is a major destination for pilgrims and tourists. In surveys, between 11 and 16 percent of Chinese profess to be Buddhists, which makes it the largest organized religion in China (most Chinese, however, do not have a religious affiliation). Courtesy Bruce Yuanyue Bi/Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images

The Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau

The provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou share a plateau noted for its natural beauty and mild climate and for being the home of numerous indigenous groups that are culturally distinct from the Han Chinese. Some of them also practice Buddhism, which is a prominent religion in nearby Southeast Asia (see Figure 9.36A). The plateau is a rough land of deeply folded mountains that trend north-south, through which the Nu (Salween) and Mekong rivers flow. The heavily forested valleys are deeper than they are wide. Although people can call to one another across the valleys, it may take more than a day’s difficult travel to reach the other side. The north-south orientation naturally connects the region more to Southeast Asia than to the Chinese coast. In some places, rope and bamboo bridges have been slung across the chasms. The landforms here are unstable, and earthquakes cause heavy damage to the stairstep terraces of rice paddies.

The valuable natural resources of the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau are primarily biotic. Yunnan Province, with its fertile soil, is an important source of produce and meat for the bustling cities on the southeastern coast (Figure 9.37). Yunnan is called “the national botanical garden” because many of China’s plant species and one-third of its more than 400 bird species are native to the area’s exotic landscapes. Guilin is noted for its fantastic formations of eroded limestone, known as karst (Figure 9.38). The flora, fauna, and geologic treasures of these provinces have been severely threatened by human disturbance of the environment. A British team of biologists traveling in Yunnan in the mid-1980s reported that by then “birds were absent even in the reserves.” Until the 1970s, the tropical forests of far southern Yunnan (close to Burma, Thailand, and Laos) harbored elephants, bears, porcupines, gibbons, and boa constrictors. The province was long required to supply wood for China’s industrialization, but now its most heavily forested regions as well as parts of southern Sichuan are protected as habitat for the giant panda. As of 2010, China had 40 panda preserves.

FIGURE 9.37 A restaurant in Yunnan. The vegetables that will make up much of the meal are displayed prominently at the entrance of a restaurant in Dali, Yunnan. A mild climate and fertile soils make Yunnan an important source of vegetables for much of China. Courtesy Christian Kober/AWL Images/Getty Images

FIGURE 9.38 The fantastic karst landscapes of Yunnan’s Stone Forest. The region is composed of karst (limestone) formations that have been eroded by water and wind to form jagged peaks jutting out from the surrounding land. This phenomenon is found in its most extreme form near Kunming in the Stone Forest (called the Shilin in Chinese), which has become a world-renowned tourist attraction. Courtesy Best View Stock/Getty Images

Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, lies at the heart of a booming heroin trade that flows from major producers in the mountains of Burma and Laos to China’s northern and eastern coastal cities, where the heroin is shipped to the global market. The cheap local price has left many local youths addicted, and Kunming is now also a center for the treatment of drug addiction, where herbal medicine is the chief therapy.

The Southeastern Coast

The southeastern coastal zone of China has long been a window to the outside world. During the Tang Dynasty (618–907 c.e.), its ports began launching ships that journeyed as far as the Persian Gulf and the northern and eastern coasts of Africa. Around the same time, Arab traders began to visit this part of China. By the fifteenth century, some of the first Europeans in the region described a string of flourishing trading towns all along the coast. The overwhelming majority of Overseas Chinese have their roots along China’s southeastern coast. The people of this area, as well as many Overseas Chinese, speak Cantonese, which is distinct from the Mandarin Chinese spoken in most other parts of China. In the 1980s, the central government decided to take advantage of this tradition of outside contact by designating several of the old coastal fishing towns as SEZs, with special rights to conduct business with the outside world and to attract foreign investors. The quick result was a chain of cities attracting millions of migrants to work in light industries that supply the world with a variety of consumer products.

Much of this development is along the principal river of Southern China, the Zhu Jiang (Pearl River), which is joined by several tributaries to form one large delta south of the city of Guangzhou (Canton) in Guangdong Province. The lowlands along the rivers and delta have a subtropical climate and a perpetual growing season. The rich delta sediment and the interior hinterlands are used to cultivate sugarcane, tea, fruit, vegetables, herbs, timber, and mulberry trees for sericulture (the raising of silkworms), all of which are sold in the various SEZs and exported to global markets.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, has packed most of its 7.1 million people into only 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) of the city’s total of 380 square miles (985 square kilometers). Hong Kong has the world’s third-largest container port (after Shanghai and Singapore) and the world’s eleventh-largest trading economy. It is also the world’s largest producer of timepieces. Hong Kong residents have China’s highest per capita income; its annual GDP per capita (adjusted for PPP) was similar to that of the United States in 2010, at U.S.$47,500.

Hong Kong was a British crown colony until July 1997, when Britain’s 99-year lease ran out and Hong Kong became a special administrative region (SAR) of China. A SAR has more autonomy than other provinces and it operates under an independent (and in reality more democratic) political and legal system. Even so, many wealthy citizens left, worried that China would no longer allow economic and political freedom in Hong Kong. Authoritarianism has been curtailed, however, because of Hong Kong’s important role as China’s unofficial link to the outside world of global trade. Before 1997, some 60 percent of foreign investment in China was funneled through Hong Kong; in 2010, it was more than 50 percent (see Figure 9.18). Given the very obvious success of many cities along China’s southeastern coast, from Macao to Shanghai, Hong Kong will probably continue in its role as a financial hub in the development of this very rapidly growing region. As a de facto city-state, Hong Kong’s position as a business center resembles that of Singapore in Southeast Asia.

Macao

Macao (also spelled Macau), built on a series of islands across the Zhu Jiang estuary from Hong Kong, is the oldest permanent European settlement in East Asia. Portuguese traders arrived in about 1516, and by 1557 had established a raucous colonial trading and gambling center. Macao remained a Portuguese colony until the Chinese government regained control of it in 1999, just like it did with Hong Kong. Macao grew rapidly after 1949 with the influx of refugees from the Communist Revolution, but today its population has shrunk to just 440,000—primarily workers who earn a living mainly from the manufacture of clothing and textiles and from the tourism industry. Macao remains China’s only gambling center; some of its casinos are managed by Las Vegas firms. Macao’s GDP per capita is similar to Hong Kong’s and many times that of the mainland.