Tianjin
(1997 est. pop. 5.15 million). Located near the mouth of the Hai River 137 kilometers southeast of Beijing, Tianjin (Tientsin) is one of three centrally administered cities in the People's Republic of China. In 1997, the metropolitan population of Tianjin was 9 million, while the city proper had 5.15 million residents. Aside from its importance as a major port in northeast China, Tianjin is also a major industrial center, producing textiles, light and heavy machinery, automobiles, and cement.
During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties, Tianjin was the northern terminus of the Grand Canal and an important transfer site for the shipment of grain northward to the imperial capital at Beijing. Under the terms of the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin that concluded the Second Opium War, the city was opened to foreign trade. Over the remainder of the nineteenth century, it grew to become the second busiest port in China after Shanghai. Nine foreign nations were granted concessions in Tianjin: France, Britain, Germany, the United States, Russia, Japan, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Belgium. During the turmoil of the Boxer Uprising (1899–1900), Tianjin sustained heavy damage at the hands of the international army that was sent to rescue the besieged foreign community in Beijing. By the early twentieth century, the Japanese community in Tianjin had emerged as one of the largest foreign communities in the port. Observers in the 1920s and 1930s noted that many of the Japanese businesses and traders in Tianjin were involved in the booming opium and narcotics trade. When the Japanese army invaded China in 1937, the city was seized and remained under occupation until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. During this conflict, Tianjin played an important role in the regional transportation and communications networks, as it was not only a port, but also a key railway town with access to the Grand Canal and Huang (Yellow) River.
During the Chinese Civil War (1947–1949), the Communists targeted Tianjin as an important urban center in the revolution. After the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, Tianjin's industrial base was enhanced under the new government's state-planned economy, and hundreds of new factories and manufacturing plants were established. With the move to a market economy in the 1980s, Tianjin became one of the first Special Economic Zones to be opened to foreign investment and trade along the Chinese coast. The development of the Bohai oil fields in the Yellow Sea during the 1990s resulted in a corresponding development of the petrochemical plants and refineries.
Further Reading
Hook, Brian, ed. (1998) Beijing and Tianjin: Towards a Millennial Megalopolis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kwan, Man Bun. (2001) The Salt Merchants of Tianjin: State-Making and Civil Society in Late Imperial China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
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