Sichuan
(2002 est. pop. 87.4 million). Located on the upper reaches of the Chang (Yangtze) River, Sichuan (Szechwan), with a land area of 485,000 square kilometers, is one of China's most populous provinces. It has long played a key role in China's economy and relations with Tibet and other western regions. Currently, Sichuan is an important focus in the plan of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to develop the interior of the country.
Archeological discoveries at Sanxingdui in eastern Sichuan suggest that the area was inhabited as early as the eleventh century BCE by a technologically advanced people whose culture was distinct from that of the north China heartland. By 311 BCE, the kingdoms of Ba (in eastern Sichuan) and Shu (in western Sichuan) had fully developed. In that year, the armies of the Qin state from north China incorporated the territory of Ba and Shu into the Qin empire, although the two kingdoms' names are still used to refer to regions of Sichuan.
Qin engineers built the Dujiangyan waterworks on the Min River west of the provincial capital, Chengdu, which made the Chengdu Plain a productive agricultural center. However, Sichuan's geography—surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges and the Chang River gorges—kept it relatively isolated from the rest of China. The Qin built a highway from its capital near the Huang (Yellow) River southwest into Sichuan, carving ledges on the steep mountain slopes. Over the last thousand years, Sichuan has been a center of the tea and horse trade with Tibet. It also supplies rice, sugar, silk, and medicinal products to eastern China. Salt wells drilled up to 1,460 meters deep produced brine that was boiled down using local deposits of natural gas.
The name Sichuan ("four rivers") was given to the area during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). At the end of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the Sichuan population was devastated by a rebellion. The Qing dynasty (1644–1912) promoted resettlement of the province by immigrants from eastern China. After the fall of the Qing in 1912, Sichuan remained isolated from national politics until 1937, when it became the base of anti-Japanese resistance. In 1939 the Nationalist government created a new province, Xikang, out of parts
of western Sichuan and eastern Tibet. In 1955 the PRC government dismantled Xikang and reassigned its territory to Sichuan, with the result that today the population of western Sichuan includes many Tibetans and other national minority groups.
Sichuan is home to the Xichang satellite launching center and many scientific research institutes. Large government investments in transportation and energy networks are intended to promote the economic development of the province. The new dam in the Chang River's Three Gorges area, for example, is meant to provide electricity for much of western China, as well as create a great reservoir extending west to the city of Chongqing. Sichuan and Chongqing (which, until a 1997 administrative reorganization, was a part of Sichuan) are the focal regions of a government campaign to "Develop the West." This campaign, launched in 2000, is intended both to tap the resources of western China and to reduce the economic and cultural disparities between the interior and coastal China.
Further Reading
Bramall, Chris. (1993) In Praise of Maoist Economic Planning: Living Standards and Economic Development in Sichuan since 1931. New York: Oxford University Press.
Endicott, Stephen Lyon. (1988) Red Earth: Revolution in a Sichuan Village. London: I. B. Tauris.
Kapp, Robert A. (1973) Szechwan and the Chinese Republic: Provincial Militarism and Central Power, 1911–1938. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Lo, Winston Wan. (1982) Szechwan in Sung China: A Case Study in the Political Integration of the Chinese Empire. Taipei, Taiwan: University of Chinese Culture Press.
Ruf, Gregory. (1998) Cadres and Kin: Making a Socialist Village in West China, 1921–1991. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sage, Steven F. (1992) Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Smith, Paul. (1991) Taxing Heaven's Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074–1224. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.
Von Glahn, Richard. (1987) The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.
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