Hainan Island
Although the province comprises some two hundred islands scattered among three archipelagos off the southern coast, all but three percent of its land mass is on Hainan Island (Hainan Dao), from which the province takes its name. The PRC government claims Hainan's territories to extend to the southern Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands and other disputed marine territory.
Hainan is also the largest Special Economic Zone laid out by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s.
Hainan Island is located in the South China Sea, separated from Guangdong's Leizhou Peninsula to the north by a shallow and narrow strait. It has an area of 33,920 square kilometers in this southernmost province of China which is also the smallest.
For centuries Hainan was part of Guangdong province, but in 1988 this resource-rich tropical island became a separate province. The Island is home to a new strategic naval harbor that has been dug through the mountainside.
History
Hainan Island was called the Pearl Cliffs (珠崖 Zhūyá), Fine Jade Cliffs (瓊崖 Qióngyá), and the Fine Jade Land (瓊州 Qióngzhōu).
The latter two gave rise to the province's abbreviation, Qióng (琼 in Simplified Chinese), referring to the greenery cover on the island.
Hainan first enters written Chinese history in 110 BC, when the Han Dynasty established a military garrison there. Settlement by mainlanders was slow however and from early on the island was considered to be fit only for exiles.
It was in this period that the Li people arrived from Guangxi Province and displaced the island's aboriginal Austronesian-speaking peoples.
In Eastern Wu of the Three Kingdoms Period, Hainan was the Zhuya Commandery (珠崖郡).
Under the Song Dynasty, Hainan came under the control of Guangxi Province, and for the first time large numbers of Han Chinese arrived, settling mostly in the north. Under the Yuan Dynasty (AD 1206-1368) it became an independent province, but was placed under Guangdong Province during the Ming Dynasty in 1370.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, large numbers of Han from Fujian and Guangdong began migrating to Hainan, pushing the Li into the highlands in the southern half of the island. In the eighteenth century, the Li rebelled against the government, which responded by bringing in mercenaries from the Miao people regions of Guizhou Province.
Many of the Miao settled on the island and their descendants live in the western highlands to this day.
In 1906, the Chinese Republican leader Sun Yat-sen proposed that Hainan become a separate province.
Hainan was historically part of Guangdong Province and Guangxi Province, being as such, it was the Ch'iung-yai or Qiongya Circuit (瓊崖道) in 1912 (the establishment of the Republic of China). In 1921, it was planned to become a Special Administrative Region (瓊崖特別行政區); in 1944, it became Hainan Special Administrative Region with 16 counties containing the South China Sea Islands.
During the 1920s and 30s, Hainan was a hotbed of Communist activity, especially after a bloody crackdown in Shanghai, the Republic of China in 1927 drove many Communists into hiding.
The Communists and the Li natives fought a vigorous guerrilla campaign against the Japanese occupation of Hainan (1939-45), but in retaliation over one third of the male population were killed by the Japanese. Feng Baiju led the Hainan Independent Column of fighters throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
Hainan was one of the last areas of China controlled by the Republic of China. From March to May 1950, the Landing Operation on Hainan Island captured the island for the Chinese communists.
Feng Baiju and his column of guerrilla fighters played an essential role in scouting for the landing operation and coordinated their own offensive from their jungle bases on the island. This allowed the Hainan takeover to be successful where the Jinmen and Dengbu assaults had failed in the previous fall.
The takeover was made possible by the presence of a local guerrilla force that was lacking on Jinmen, Dengbu, and Taiwan. On October 1, 1984, it became the Hainan Administrative Region (海南行政区), with a People's Government, and finally as province separate from Guangdong four years later.
The Communists resumed development of the island along the lines established by the Japanese, but the results were limited by the island's isolation, its humid and typhoon-prone climate, and its continuing reputation as a place of danger and exile by mainland Chinese.
With China's shift in economic policy at the end of the 1970s, Hai-nan became a focus of attention.
In 1988, the island was again made a separate province, and was designated a Special Economic Zone in an effort to increase investment.
During the mid-1980s, when Hainan was still part of the Guangdong Province, a fourteen-month episode of marketing zeal by Hainan Special District Administrator Lei Yu put Hainan's pursuit of provincial status under a cloud. In addition, it involved further consignments of 2.9 million TV sets, 252,000 videocassette recorders & 122,000 motorcycles.
Hainan's elevation to province-level status (1988), however, was accompanied by its designation as China's largest "special economic zone", the intent being to hasten the development of the island's plentiful resources.
Prior to this, the province had a reputation for being a "Wild West" area, largely untouched by industrialisation; even today there are relatively few factories in the province. Tourism plays an important part of Hainan's economy, thanks largely to its tropical beaches and lush forests.
The central government has encouraged foreign investment in Hainan and has allowed the island to rely to a large extent on market forces.
Hainan's industrial development largely has been limited to the processing of its mineral and agricultural products, particularly rubber and iron ore.
Since the 1950s, machinery, farm equipment, and textiles have been manufactured in the Haikou area for local consumption. The naval harbor is estimated to be 60ft high, built into hillsides around a military base.
The harbor houses nuclear ballistic missile submarines and is large enough to accommodate aircraft carriers. The US Department of Defence has estimated that China will have five Type 094 nuclear submarines operational by 2010 with each capable of carrying 12 JL-2 intercontinental ballistic missile.
Two 950 metre piers and three smaller ones would be enough to accommodate two carrier strike groups or amphibious assault ships.
Natural resources
Hainan has commercially exploitable reserves of more than 30 minerals. Iron, first mined by the Japanese during their occupation of the island in World War II, is the most important.
Also important are titanium, manganese, tungsten, bauxite, molybdenum, cobalt, copper, gold, and silver. Virgin forests in the interior mountains contain more than 20 commercially valuable species, including teak and sandalwood.
Agriculture
Water buffalos in the rice fields
Paddy rice is cultivated extensively in the northeastern lowlands and in the southern mountain valleys.
Leading crops other than rice include coconuts, palm oil, sisal, tropical fruits (including pineapples, of which Hainan is China's leading producer), black pepper, coffee, tea, cashews, and sugarcane. In the early 20th century Chinese emigrants returning from Malaysia introduced rubber trees to the island; after 1950, state farms were developed, and Hainan now produces a significant amount of China's rubber.
Fishing
Marine products contribute a significant share to the provincial economy.
Grouper, Spanish mackerel, and tuna constitute the bulk of the catch from the rich offshore fishing grounds.
Transportation
Sanya
Sanya Street
Before 1950 there were practically no transportation links with the interior of the island. The travel time between Haikou and Sanya is expected to be approximately 80 minutes.
The railway is projected to cost over 18 billion yuan and is scheduled for completion in 2010.
Culture and education
Hainan has always been on the fringe of the Chinese cultural sphere. Also found on the island are the Utsuls, descendants of Cham refugees, who are classified as Hui by the Chinese government.
Although they are indigenous to the island and do not speak a Chinese language, the Limgao (Ong-Be) people near the capital (8% of the population) are counted as Han Chinese.
There are 90,000 Buddhist Hainanese, and 6,500 Muslims.
The Li people have their own language, as do the Miao and Zhuang. In Sanya City itself one sometimes finds speakers of Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese.
The general public can also use Mandarin Chinese to communicate with mainlanders.
When Chams interact with the Hainanese dialect speakers from within Hainan Province, they use the Hainanese dialect, though youngsters generally use Mandarin Chinese. Some of the Cham speakers also speak the Danzhou dialect, a Cantonese dialect .
Notables
The poet Su Dongpo (1036-1101) popularized Hainan's isolation and exoticness when he was exiled there under the Song dynasty.
Kung (once China's richest man); Soong Ching-ling, wife of Sun Yat-Sen; and Soong Mei-ling, wife of former ROC President Chiang Kai-shek.
Food
Hainan cuisine is said to be "lighter, with mild seasonings." A lot of local taste is mixed with the Han Chinese taste. (It is perhaps significant that the establishment of the Five Officials Temple in the late 19th century coincides with a time when China's territorial integrity was under threat, and that several of the officials honoured here were exiled for espousing aggressive policies on the recapture of the north of China from the Jurchens during the Southern Song dynasty.)
Xiuying Fort Barbette was built in 1891 to defend the southeastern corner of China during the Sino-French War.
Hai Rui was a compassionate and popular official of Hainanese origins who lived during the Ming Dynasty.