Guangdong Province covers an area of ??179,700 square kilometers;
It has jurisdiction over 21 prefecture-level cities (including 2 sub-provincial cities), 119 county-level administrative districts (60 municipal districts , 20 county-level cities, 36 counties, and 3 autonomous counties).
Guangdong, whose name evolved from Lingnan East Road and Guangnan East Road, is referred to as "Guangdong". The provincial capital of Guangzhou is a province on the southern coast of mainland China. Located to the south of Nanling, on the coast of the South China Sea, it borders Hong Kong, Macau, Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian, and faces Hainan across the sea. It has jurisdiction over 21 prefecture-level cities (including 2 sub-provincial-level cities) and 119 county-level administrative districts (60 municipal districts, 20 county-level cities, 36 counties, and 3 autonomous counties).
Most of the ancestors of the Guangdong people are Han people who immigrated from the Central Plains. At the same time, they brought the more advanced technology and culture of the Central Plains to the Lingnan region, which promoted the development of the Lingnan region and the integration of various ethnic groups, and gradually formed Unique Lingnan culture. Cantonese, Hakka and Min are spoken in Guangdong, and the centers of the two major dialects of Cantonese and Hakka are in Guangdong. Guangdong is also the most populous province in China.
Guangdong is the southern gate of China and is located at the shipping hub of the South China Sea. Since the Qin and Han Dynasties, the people of Guangdong have embarked on the road of communication with other parts of the world through the ocean, becoming the earliest birthplace of the Maritime Silk Road. After the reform and opening up, Guangdong has become the forefront of reform and opening up and a window for the introduction of Western economy, culture, and technology. It has entered into a more extensive and profound process of contact, exchange, absorption, and integration with the West, and has achieved remarkable results.
Since 1989, Guangdong’s GDP has continuously ranked first in the country and has become China’s largest economic province. Its total economic output accounts for 1/8 of the country’s total, and it has reached the level of an upper-middle-income country. , the level of moderately developed countries. The comprehensive competitiveness of Guangdong's provincial economy ranks first in the country. In 2016, the number of high-tech enterprises in Guangdong reached 19,857, ranking first in the country; Guangzhou added 2,820 new high-tech enterprises, ranking second in the country in terms of increase, second only to Beijing. Guangdong has led the country in the number of PCT international patent applications for 15 consecutive years.
The nine cities in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong will join forces with Hong Kong and Macao to build the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, becoming one of the four major bay areas in the world alongside the New York Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area and Tokyo Bay Area.
Geographical location
Guangdong Province is located in the southernmost part of mainland China. It borders Fujian to the east, Jiangxi and Hunan to the north, Guangxi to the west, and the South China Sea to the south. It borders the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions on the east and west sides of the Pearl River Estuary. The Leizhou Peninsula in the southwest faces Hainan Province across the Qiongzhou Strait. The entire territory is located between 20°13′～25°31′ north latitude and 109°39′～117°19′ east longitude. It starts from Chizai Island in Nanpeng Islands in Nan'ao County in the east to Liangpo Village in Jijia Town, Leizhou City in the west, with an east-west span of about 800 kilometers; in the north it starts from Shang'ao Village, Baishi Township, Lechang County, and to Dengloujiao, Jiaowei Township, Xuwen County in the south. , spanning about 600 kilometers. The Tropic of Cancer runs across Guangdong from Nan'ao to Conghua to Fengkai. The province's land area is 179,800 square kilometers, accounting for approximately 1.87% of the country's land area; of which the island area is 1,592.7 square kilometers, accounting for approximately 0.89% of the province's land area. There are 759 islands with an area of ??more than 500 square meters along the coast of the province, ranking third in the country after Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. There are also 1,631 open reefs and dry reefs. The province's mainland coastline is 3,368.1 kilometers long, ranking first in the country. In accordance with the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Sea, which stipulates that territorial waters, continental shelves and exclusive economic zones are under the jurisdiction of coastal countries, the total sea area of ????the province is 419,000 square kilometers
Land resources
The area of ??Guangdong Province is 179,770 square kilometers, including 4.34 million hectares of land suitable for agriculture and 11 million hectares of land suitable for forestry. [42] Guangdong is one of the provinces in China with more people and less land. The actual situation of land use in the province in 2008: There were 1.3005 million hectares (19.5 million acres) of unused land in the province, including 697,900 hectares (10 million acres) of unused land and 602,600 hectares (9 million acres) of other land.
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Water resources
Guangdong is quite rich in water resources, with a total annual precipitation of 319.4 billion cubic meters and a total river runoff of 181.9 billion cubic meters. The amount of passenger water flowing into Guangdong from the Han River and others is 233 billion cubic meters. In addition, there are 6 billion cubic meters of deep groundwater. The per capita water resource available for exploitation reaches 4,735 cubic meters, which is much higher than the Chinese average. [42]
The main river systems are the Xijiang, Dongjiang, Beijiang and Delta river systems of the Pearl River and the Hanjiang river system, followed by the Rongjiang, Lianjiang, Luohe and Huanggang rivers in eastern Guangdong and the Moyang River in western Guangdong , Jianjiang River, Jiuzhou River and Nandu River and other rivers that flow alone into the sea. Guangdong’s water resources are unevenly distributed in space and time. [43] The navigation capacity of the Pearl River is second only to the Yangtze River, ranking second in China, ranking second in China's river system, and ranking fourth in China in length and drainage area [44].
Metal Resources
Guangdong is the hometown of rare metals and non-ferrous metals. 116 kinds of minerals have been found in the province, and 88 kinds have proven reserves. Among them, the reserves of kaolin, peat soil, veinite for metallurgy, trachyte for cement, germanium, and tellurium rank first in China, and the reserves of silver, lead, bismuth, thallium, uranium ore, monazite, xenotime, and glass sand , oil shale, facing marble and diabase ranked second. [42]
Animal and plant resources
Guangdong has a wide variety of animals and plants. There are three species of plants under national first-level protection: Cynophylla alba, silver fir and tiger flower. There are 24 species under second-level protection, including white cedar, metasequoia, wild lychee and sightseeing wood. In addition, banana, lychee, longan and pineapple are the four famous fruits in Lingnan, with high economic value. There are 22 species of animals listed as first-level national protection, including South China tigers, clouded leopards, bear monkeys, and Chinese white dolphins, and 95 species as second-level protected animals, including golden cats, pangolins, macaques, and white pheasants (provincial birds).