Place:Anhui, People's Republic of China

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Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, bordering Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a short section in the north.

With a population of 63.65 million, Anhui is the 8th most populous province in China. It is the 22nd largest Chinese province based on area, and the 12th most densely-populated region of all 34 Chinese provincial regions. Anhui's population is mostly composed of Han Chinese. Languages spoken within the province include Jianghuai Mandarin, Wu, Hui, Gan and small portion of Zhongyuan Mandarin Chinese.

The name "Anhui" derives from the names of two cities: Anqing and Huizhou (now Huangshan City). The abbreviation for Anhui is "" after the historical State of Wan, Mount Wan, and the Wan river.

The administration of Anhui is composed of the provincial administrative system, led by the Governor, Provincial Congress, the People's Political Consultative Conference, and the Provincial Higher People's Court. Anhui is known as a province with political tradition in China's government system. Aside from managing provincial government departments, the provincial government manages 16 cities, 62 counties, 43 county-level districts and 1,522 townships.

The total GDP of Anhui Province ranked 11th among China's 31 provincial regions .

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Anhui Province was established in the sixth year of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty (1667); before that, there was no coherent concept of "Anhui". The province also has another name, "Wan", because, during the Spring and Autumn Period (722–481 B.C.), a small country named "Wan" was here and a mountain called "Wanshan" (aka Mount Tianzhu) is in the province.

Before Anhui was established, this land had a long history. 20,000 years ago, human beings inhabited this area, proven by some findings in Fanchang County. Archaeologists have identified the cultural domains of Yangshao and Longshan, dated to the Neolithic Age (between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago). In relation to these cultures, archeologists have discovered through excavation a 4500-year-old city called the Nanchengzi Ruins in Guzhen County, after they discovered a Neolithic city wall and a moat that was part of a much larger and integrated city in the region during their 2013 disinterment.

There are many historic sites found in the province from the period of the Xia dynasty (2070 B.C.) to the Warring Kingdoms (475–221 B.C.). After the Qin dynasty unified China, this area belonged to different prefectures such as the Jiujiang, Zhang, Tang and Sishui Prefectures. Anhui became parts of Yang, Yu, and Xu prefectures during Han dynasties. In the period of the Three Kingdoms (222–280 A.D.), Anhui was separately dominated by the Wu State and Wei State. During the Jin dynasty, Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui dynasty, Anhui was part of Yang, Xu and Yu prefectures, respectively. Later on, the Hui area flourished quickly and the economy and culture of Hui Prefecture created great influence during the Song Dynasty. During the Yuan dynasty, ruled by the Mongolian emperor, Anhui area was a part of Henan province. During the Ming dynasty, the area was directly managed by the administration of the Capital of Nanjing. Shortly after the Qing dynasty was established, this area and Jiangsu province were merged as one province until the sixth year (1666 or 1667) of the Kangxi Emperor's reign in the Qing dynasty.

Later during the Qing dynasty, Anhui played an important role in the Self-Strengthening Movement led by Li Hongzhang, an important Prime Minister during the later Qing Dynasty. At this time, many western weapons, factories and modern government concepts were introduced into China. Over the next 50 years, Anhui became one of the most aggressive areas with liberal thought. Within this environment, many ideologists appeared in Anhui. Several of them impacted the future of China including, Hu Shih, a Chinese philosopher, essayist and diplomat, and Chen Duxiu, founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the first General Secretary of the CCP.

In 1938, the north and central areas of the province were heavily damaged because Chiang Kai-shek, the then-President of the Republic of China, broke the dam of Yellow River, hoping this strategy could slow down the invasion by the Imperial Japanese Army. Within only ten days of the dam breaking, the water and sands drowned all of north and middle area of this province, 500,000 to 900,000 Chinese lives were lost, along with an unknown number of Japanese soldiers. The flood prevented the Japanese Army from taking Zhengzhou.

Following the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, the capital city of Anhui province moved to what was then a small town, Hefei. At the same time, the provincial government made significant investments to develop this new capital city, which has become a China Top 25 city (of 660 cities over all of China) in the 2010s. After 1949, the government also launched many Water Projects to repair damage from World War II. In addition, many other areas of China supported Anhui's development. In the later 1990s, the province has become one of the fastest growing provinces in China. In the 2010s, the province became a part of China Yangtze River Delta Economic Area which is the most developed area of China. And the capital city, Hefei, is set as the sub-central city of this Economic Area, only after Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.

In terms of culture, Northern Anhui was firmly a part of the North China Plain together with modern-day Henan province, northern Jiangsu and southern Shandong provinces. Central Anhui was densely populated and constituted mostly of fertile land from the Huai River watershed. In contrast, the culture of Southern Anhui, bordered mostly along the Yangtze, was closer to Jiangxi and southern Jiangsu provinces. The hills of southeastern Anhui formed a unique and distinct cultural sphere of its own.

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