Guangdong is a coastal province in South China, on the north shore of the South China Sea with Guangzhou as the capital. With a population of 127.06million (as of 2023) across a total area of about , Guangdong is the Chinese province with the largest GDP, the largest population and the 15th-largest by area, as well as the third-most populous country subdivision and the 5th largest country subdivision by GDP in the world.
Guangdong's economy is the largest of any provincial-level division in China, with a GDP of (US$2.0 trillion in GDP nominal) in 2024, contributing approximately 10.5 percent of mainland China's economic output. It is home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of Chinese and foreign corporations. Guangdong has benefited from its proximity to the financial hub of Hong Kong, which it borders to the south. Guangdong also hosts the largest import and export fair in China, the Canton Fair, in Guangzhou. The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, a Chinese megalopolis, is a core for high tech, manufacturing and international trade. In this zone are two of the four top Chinese cities and the top two Chinese prefecture-level cities by GDP: Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the first special economic zone in the country. These two are among China's most populous and important cities, and have become two of the world's most populous megacities and leading financial centres in the Asia–Pacific region.
Guangdong surpassed Henan and Shandong to become China's most populous province in January 2005, registering 79.1 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year; the total population was 126,012,510 in the 2020 Chinese census, accounting for 8.93 percent of mainland China's population. This makes it the most populous first-level administrative subdivision of any country outside South Asia. The vast majority of the historical province is administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC). Pratas Island in the South China Sea is part of Cijin District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan (ROC); the island was part of Guangdong before the Chinese Civil War.
After the unification of Lingnan region during the Qin dynasty, immigrants from the Central Plains moved in and formed a local culture with a unique style. With the outward movement of the Guangdong people, the Cantonese, Hakka and Teochew languages, music, cuisine, opera and tea ceremonies have spread throughout the nation, Southeast Asia, and other countries. Guangdong was also the birthplace of the father of modern China and the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen. He declared a military government there in the Warlord Era. The two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau fall within the scope of Guangdong's cultural influence, and its culture still has profound influences on the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia, with the vast majority of the Chinese diaspora in the two countries claiming ancestry from Guangdong.
Guangdong is also one of the leading provinces in research and education in China. It hosts 160 institutions of higher education, ranking first in the South Central China region and second among all Chinese provinces/municipalities, after Jiangsu. As of 2025, two major cities in the province ranked in the world's top 20 cities (Guangzhou 6th and Shenzhen 18th) by scientific research output.
Name
"Guǎng" () means "wide" or "vast" and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "Guang" ultimately came from Guangxin (), an outpost established in Han dynasty near modern Wuzhou, whose name is a reference to an order by Emperor Wu of Han to "widely bestow favors and sow trust". Together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called Two Guangs.() During the Song dynasty, the Two Guangs were formally separated as Guǎngnán Dōnglù () and Guǎngnán Xīlù (), which became abbreviated as Guǎngdōng Lù () and Guǎngxī Lù ().
"Dōng" () means "east".
"Canton", though etymologically derived from ' (the Portuguese transliteration of "Guangdong"), usually by itself refers to the provincial capital Guangzhou. Historically, Canton was also used for the province itself, but often either specified as a province (e.g. Canton Province), or written as Kwangtung in the Wade–Giles system and now most commonly as Guangdong in Pinyin. The local people of the city of Guangzhou (Canton) and their language are called Cantonese in English. Because of the prestige of Canton and its accent, Cantonese can also be used, in a wider sense, for the phylogenetically related residents and Chinese dialects outside the provincial capital.
History
Prehistory
The Neolithic era began in the Pearl River Delta () 7,000 years before present (BP), with the early period from around 7000 to 5000 BP (c. 5050–3050 BC), and the late period from about 5000 to 3500 BP (c. 3050–1550 BC). In coastal Guangdong, the Neolithic was likely introduced from the middle Yangtze River area (Jiao 2013). In inland Guangdong, the Neolithic appeared in Guangdong 4,600 years before present (BP). The Neolithic in northern inland Guangdong is represented by the Shixia culture (), which occurred from 4600 to 4200 BP (c. 2650–2250 BC).
Imperial
Originally inhabited by a mixture of tribal groups known to the Chinese as the Baiyue ("Hundred Yue"), the region first became part of China during the Qin dynasty. Under the Qin Dynasty, Chinese administration began and along with it, reliable historical records about the region. After establishing the first unified Chinese empire, the Qin expanded southwards and set up Nanhai Commandery at Panyu, near what is now part of Guangzhou. The region was later controlled by an independent kingdom known as Nanyue between the fall of Qin and the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. The Han dynasty administered Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam as Jiaozhi Province; southernmost Jiaozhi Province was used as a gateway for traders from the west—as far away as the Roman Empire. Under the Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, Guangdong was made its own province, the Guang Province, in 226 CE.
The port's importance declined after it was raided by Arabs and Persians in 758 and the foreign residents were at times troubled by the corrupt local officials, sometimes responding violently. During one incident in 684, for example, a merchant vessel's captain murdered a corrupt governor who had used his position to steal from the merchant.
thumb|Cantonese food
As time passed, the demographics of what is now Guangdong gradually shifted to (Han) Chinese dominance as the populations intermingled due to commerce along the great canals. From the fall of the Han dynasty onwards, it shifted more abruptly through massive migration from the north during periods of political turmoil and nomadic incursions. For example, internal strife in northern China following the rebellion of An Lushan resulted in a 75% increase in the population of Guangzhou prefecture between the 740s–750s and 800s–810s. As more migrants arrived, the local population was gradually assimilated to Han Chinese culture or displaced.
As Mongols from the north engaged in their conquest of China in the 13th century, the Southern Song court fled southwards from its capital in Hangzhou. The defeat of the Southern Song court by Mongol naval forces in The Battle of Yamen 1279 in Guangdong marked the end of the Southern Song dynasty (960–1279).
During the Mongol Yuan dynasty, large parts of current Guangdong belonged to Jiangxi. Its present name, "Guangdong" was given in early Ming dynasty.
Since the 16th century, Guangdong has had extensive trade links with the rest of the world. European merchants coming northwards via the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, particularly the Portuguese and British, traded extensively through Guangzhou. Macau, on the southern coast of Guangdong, was the first European settlement in 1557.
In the 19th century, the opium traded through Guangzhou triggered the First Opium War, opening an era of Western imperialists' incursion and intervention in China. In addition to Macau, which was then a Portuguese colony, Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and Kouang-Tchéou-Wan (modern day area of Zhanjiang) to the French.
Due to the large number of people that emigrated out of the Guangdong, and in particular the ease of immigration from Hong Kong to other parts of the British Empire (later British Commonwealth), many overseas Chinese communities have their origins in Guangdong and/or Cantonese culture. In particular, the Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew dialects have proportionately more speakers among overseas Chinese people than Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Additionally, many Taishanese-speaking Chinese emigrated to Western countries, with the results that many Western versions of Chinese words were derived from the Cantonese dialects rather than through the mainstream Mandarin language, such as "dim sum". Some Mandarin Chinese words originally of foreign origin also came from the original foreign language by way of Cantonese. For example, the Mandarin word ' (), meaning "Lemon", came from Cantonese, in which the characters are pronounced as '. In the United States, there is a large number of Chinese who are descendants of immigrants from the county-level city of Taishan (Toisan in Cantonese), who speak a distinctive dialect related to Cantonese called Taishanese (or Toishanese).
During the 1850s, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, whose leader Hong Xiuquan was born in Guangdong and received a pamphlet from a Protestant Christian missionary in Guangdong, was allied with a local Guangdong Red Turban Rebellion (1854–1856). Because of direct contact with the West, Guangdong was the centre of anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist activity. The generally acknowledged founder of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was also from Guangdong.
20th century
thumb|The Kwangtung Provincial Government in the 1930s
During the early 1920s of the Republic of China, Guangdong was the staging area for the Kuomintang (KMT) to prepare for the Northern Expedition, an effort to bring the various warlords of China back under a unified central government. The Whampoa Military Academy was built near Guangzhou to train military commanders.
At the end of the Chinese Civil War Guangdong became one of the Nationalist government's final footholds in Mainland China, with Guangzhou temporarily serving as the Kuomintang's provisional capitol. The People's Liberation Army seized control of the province after the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan.
The new Chinese Communist Party administration issued harsh taxes, requisitioning between 22 and 60 percent of grain annually. However, the local party boss Fang Fang tried to moderate Chinese land reform policy in order to protect successful businesses in the Pearl River Delta, landholdings by overseas Chinese seeking to eventually return to the country, and commercial relations with British Hong Kong. In response Mao Zedong purged Fang and thousands of cadres from the province in 1952, sending Tao Zhu to implement a much harsher program under the slogan "Every Village Bleeds, Every Household Fights."
During Reform and Opening Up, Guangdong was supported by the central government to be "one step ahead" of the rest of the country. Most major cities in Guangdong underwent liberalizing economic reforms in the mid-1980s. The crater is the largest known impact crater stemming from an impact during the Holocene era.
thumb|Jiangmen beaches, Guangdong
Taishan Xiachuan Island, Guangdong|right|thumb
Guangdong borders Fujian to the northeast, Jiangxi and Hunan to the north, Guangxi autonomous region to the west, and Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions to the south. Hainan is offshore across from the Leizhou Peninsula. Pratas Island, which were traditionally governed as part of Guangdong, are part of Cijin District, Kaoshiung, Taiwan (ROC). The PRC continues to claim Pratas Island as part of Guangdong under the district of Chengqu, Shanwei.
Cities around the Pearl River Delta include Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Shunde, Taishan, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai. Other cities in the province include Chaozhou, Chenghai, Nanhai, Shantou, Shaoguan, Zhanjiang, Zhaoqing, Yangjiang, and Yunfu.
Guangdong has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa inland, Cwa along the coast). Winters are short, mild, and relatively dry, while summers are long, hot, and very wet. Average daily highs in Guangzhou in January and July are , although the humidity makes it feel hotter in summer. Frost is rare on the coast but may happen a few days each winter.
Economy
In 2022, Guangdong's GDP was 13.57trillion RMB ($1.9trillion in GDP nominal, $3.78trillion in PPP), with a per capita GDP of ( in nominal or US$25,016 in PPP). Its GDP exceeded that of Australia ($1.70trillion) and South Korea ($1.67trillion), the world's 12th and 13th largest economy, respectively. If it was a country, Guangdong would be the 12th-largest economy as of 2022 and the 11th most populous. <br>
|- align=center
| align=center rowspan=3| year
| align=center colspan=4| GDP
| align=center colspan=4| GDP per capita (GDPpc)<br /> based on mid-year population
| align=center colspan=3| Reference index
|- align=center
| align=center colspan=3| GDP (million)
| align=center rowspan=2| real<br />growth<br />(%)
| align=center colspan=3| GDPpc
| align=center rowspan=2| real<br />growth<br />(%)
| align=center colspan=2| exchange rate<br /><br /> to CNY
| align=center rowspan=2| <br>()
|- align=center
||CNY
||USD
||PPP<br />(Intl.$)
||CNY
||USD
||PPP<br />(Intl.$)
||USD
||Intl.$<br />(PPP)
|- align=right
||2025|| 14,584,676 || 2,041,842 || 4,290,620 ||3.9|| 113,769 || 15,928 || 33,469 ||3.2||7.1429||3.3992|| 128,590
|- align=right
||2024|| 14,148,890 || 1,986,729 || 4,006,936 ||3.5|| 111,033 || 15,591 || 31,444 ||3.0||7.1217||3.5311|| 127,800
|- align=right
||2023|| 13,790,542 || 1,957,021 || 3,783,310 ||4.9|| 108,745 || 15,432 || 29,833 ||4.8||7.0467||3.6451|| 127,060
|- align=right
||2022|| 13,254,711 || 1,970,638 || 3,491,849 ||2.1|| 104,611 || 15,553 || 27,559 ||2.0||6.7261||3.7959|| 126,568
|- align=right
||2021|| 12,757,742 || 1,977,485 || 3,199,514 ||8.3|| 100,820 || 15,627 || 25,285 ||7.4||6.4515||3.9874|| 126,840
|- align=right
||2020|| 11,370,886 || 1,648,528 || 2,832,313 ||2.4|| 90,558 || 13,129 || 22,557 ||1.3||6.8976||4.0147|| 126,240
|- align=right
||2010|| 4,682,130 || 691,651 || 1,264,552 ||12.8|| 45,521 || 6,724 || 12,294 ||9.8||6.7695||3.7026|| 104,409
|- align=right
||2000|| 1,095,837 || 132,373 || 362,117 ||11.8|| 12,993 || 1,570 || 4,294 ||7.4||8.2784||3.0262|| 86,500
|- align=right
||1990|| 155,903 || 32,594 || 81,650 ||11.6|| 2,484 || 519 || 1,301 ||9.1||4.7832||1.9094|| 63,472
|- align=right
||1980|| 24,965 || 16,661 || 14,924 ||16.6|| 481 || 321 || 288 ||14.8||1.4984||1.6728|| 52,300
|}
After the communist revolution and until the start of the Deng Xiaoping reforms in 1978, Guangdong was an economic backwater, although a large underground, service-based economy has always existed. Economic development policies encouraged industrial development in the interior provinces which were weakly joined to Guangdong via transportation links. The government policy of economic autarky made Guangdong's access to the ocean irrelevant.
Deng Xiaoping's open door policy radically changed the economy of the province as it was able to take advantage of its access to the ocean, proximity to Hong Kong, and historical links to overseas Chinese. Guangdong was one of the first provinces to receive permission from the central government to receive foreign investment. In addition, until the 1990s when the Chinese taxation system was reformed, the province benefited from the relatively low rate of taxation placed on it by the central government due to its post-Liberation status of being economically backward.
thumb|507x507px|Buildings and tourist attractions in Shenzhen
Guangdong's economic boom began with the early 1990s and has since spread to neighboring provinces, and also pulled their populations inward. The economic growth of Guangdong owes much to the low-value-added manufacturing which characterized (and in many ways still defines) the province's economy following Deng Xiaoping's reforms. Guangdong is not only China's largest exporter of goods, it is the country's largest importer as well.
The province is now one of the richest in the nation, with the most billionaires in mainland China, the highest GDP among all the provinces, although wage growth has only recently begun to rise due to a large influx of migrant workers from neighboring provinces. By 2015, the local government of Guangdong hopes that the service industry will account for more than 50 percent of the provinces GDP and high-tech manufacturing another 20 percent.
- Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park
- Yantian Port Free Trade Zone
- Foshan National New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
- Guangzhou Development District
- Guangzhou Export Processing Zone
- Guangzhou Free Trade Zone
- Guangzhou Nansha Economic and Technical Development Zone
- Guangzhou Nanhu Lake Tourist Holiday Resort (Chinese Version)
- Guangzhou New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
- Huizhou Dayawan Economic and Technological Development Zone
- Huizhou Export Processing Zone
- Huizhou Zhongkai Hi-Tech Development Zone
- Nansha Free Trade Zone
- Shantou Free Trade Zone
- Shatoujiao Free Trade Zone
- Zhanjiang Economic and Technological Development Zone (Chinese Version)
- Zhuhai National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
- Zhuhai Free Trade Zone
- Zhongshan Torch High-tech Industrial Development Zone