Shandong
(2000 est. pop. 90.79 million). Shandong is a large, densely populated Chinese northern coast province on the Shandong Peninsula, which separates the Bohai Gulf from the Yellow Sea. Bordered on the northwest by Hebei Province, on the southwest by Henan Province, and on the south by Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces, Shandong Province is about the size of Mexico both in terms of land area and population. It covers about 153,300 square kilometers, and its population density of 579.5 persons per square kilometer makes it second only to its neighboring province of Henan in Chinese provincial population. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, emigrants from the crowded province became a major source of the present population of China's northeast (Manchuria).
Historically, the Grand Canal traversed the province, bearing grain and other trade to Beijing from the lower Changjiang (Yangtze River) valley, but today this commercial route is of no importance. Shandong's dominant geographic feature is the Huang (Yellow) River that now crosses the North China Plain to empty into the Bohai Gulf near the large Shengli (Victory) oil field. Before 1950, the Huang River floods caused great suffering, but these have posed no threat in the past half century, because flood control projects and water diversions have shrunk the river's flow.
Shandong was home to several Neolithic cultures that made up parts of ancient Chinese culture. In the Zhou period (1045–256 BCE), modern Shandong encompassed several important states, including the powerful state of Qi and the smaller state of Lu, closely associated with the Zhou ruling house and its traditions. The ancient philosophers Confucius (551–479 BCE) and Mencius (371–289 BCE) both lived in what is now southern Shandong. Mount Tai in the central mountains has been a major north China religious site from prehistoric times down to the present. The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) began in Shandong as attacks on Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries, but in 1900 it shifted its center northward to the Beijing-Tianjin area. German imperialism created the port of Qingdao and Shandong's first railroad after 1898; Japan took over German interests in 1915 during World War I and remained the dominant foreign presence there until 1945.
Agriculturally, Shandong produces wheat, cotton, and sorghum. Its richest land and largest cities run from Jinan, the provincial capital, eastward through Weifang to Qingdao. Shandong's peninsula has good ports at Qingdao, Yantai, and Weihai. These have grown rapidly since 1978, when Communist leader Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) started China's reform era. In the decade before the 1997 Asian economic crisis, South Korean interests invested heavily in Shandong.
Further Reading
Buck, David D. (1978) Urban Change in China: Politics and Development in Tsinan, Shantung, 1890–1949. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Cohen, Paul. (1997) History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press.
Goodman, Paul. (1989) China's Regional Development. London: Routledge.
Pomeranz, Kenneth. (1993) Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in North China, 1853–1937. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Naquin, Susan, and Chun-fa Yu, eds. (1992) Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
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