Liaoning (Chinese: 辽宁, pinyin Liáoníng) is a province in northeastern China. The administrative center and largest city is Shenyang. According to the 2020 census, Liaoning had a population of 42.591 million.
Liaoning borders the provinces of Jilin and Hebei as well as Inner Mongolia. Another neighbor is North Korea.
Shenyang (沈阳市) – Capital of the province
Anshan (鞍山市)
Benxi
(本溪市)
Chaoyang (朝阳市)
Dalian (大连市)
Dandong (丹东市)
Fushun (抚顺市)
Fuxin (阜新市)
Huludao (葫芦岛市)
Jinzhou (锦州市)
Liaoyang (辽阳市)
Panjin (盘锦市)
Tieling (铁岭市)
Yingkou (营口市)
The north-eastern dialect Dōngběihuà differs differs little from Beijing Mandarin, on which the standard language is based.
Since 2018, Dalian and Shenyang airports have been among those through which citizens of all Schengen states (among others) can stay in transit for up to 144 hours without a visa. If you land here, you can visit the entire province of Liaoning during this time, provided you have a valid onward flight ticket. For details, see China's entry requirements.
Liaoning is the southernmost of the three Manchurian provinces in
northeast China. The province is bordered by North Korea to the
southeast, Jilin Province to the northeast, Hebei to the west and Inner
Mongolia to the northwest. In the south, Liaoning has about 2,900
kilometers of coastline to the Gulf of Bohai in the southwest and the
Yellow Sea in the southwest.
Liaoning can be divided into three
major landscapes: in the east, a hilly area (Changbai Mountains, Qian
Shan) stretches from northeast to southwest with an average height of
500 meters (in some sections up to 1,000 meters). Foothills of this
hilly area extend into the Liaodong Peninsula, which protrudes like a
tip in a southwesterly direction. In the west, mountain and hill ranges
also run in a southwesterly direction, reaching a height of 300 to 500
meters. The two hill ranges in the east and west are separated from each
other by the valley of the Liao River. The coastal plain to the Gulf of
Bohai is relatively narrow.
The Yalu is the border river between
North Korea and China. It flows into the Bay of Korea between Dandong
(Liaoning) and Sinuiju (North Korea).
The climate of the province
is temperate continental and influenced by the monsoon. It is
characterized by long, cold and dry winters, short springs and hot,
rainy summers. The average temperature in January is between −5 and −17
°C and in July between 22 and 25 °C. The average annual temperature is 4
to 10 °C. Precipitation is unevenly distributed - in the east on the
border with North Korea up to 1000 mm annually and in the west about 400
mm. About 60 percent of the annual precipitation can be expected in the
months of June to August. About 150 to 180 days a year are frost-free.
Historically, Liaoning, like the whole of Manchuria, is not one of
the core provinces of China proper, but was originally populated by
Mongolian and Tungus tribes. However, there was already a small,
scattered Han Chinese farming settlement early on, which had immigrated
from the much more densely populated southern Chinese core provinces.
Under Shunzhi, the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty, which had
ruled China since 1644, the county (縣 / 县, Xiàn) Fengtian was
established in 1653 with the "Recruitment Order for Liaodong" (遼東招民開墾令)
as the forerunner of the later province of Liaoning. Han Chinese were
encouraged to settle in southern Manchuria, which had been depopulated
by the chaos of war at the end of the Ming Dynasty. However, this
settlement policy was ended in 1668 under Emperor Kangxi in favor of a
"prohibition policy" (封禁政策, Fēngjìn zhèngcè), which severely restricted
or even completely prohibited the settlement of Han in Manchuria. The
background to this prohibition policy is controversial in the specialist
literature. It is assumed that land conflicts between the Chinese
settlers and the long-established Manchus were the cause, so that the
Qing government took the side of the latter in order to continue to
maintain the stability of the dynasty's ancestral land in its old
organizational form of the Eight Banners. The prohibition policy was
briefly interrupted during the reign of Yongzheng (1723–1735), but
otherwise continued until the 19th century. However, it was not
implemented entirely consistently, and the Han population gradually
increased over time through immigration. Although China's population
expanded greatly during the Qing period, Manchuria remained relatively
sparsely populated.
In the 19th century, it became apparent that
the Manchurian provinces were becoming the focus of the interests of two
neighboring powers - Russia and Japan. In the unequal treaties of Aigun
in 1858 and Peking in 1860, China lost large parts of northern and
eastern Manchuria to the Russian Empire and access to the Sea of
Japan. The Qing government then began to reorganize Manchuria. In
1876, a civil administration modeled on Chinese provinces was set up in
Fengtian, and in 1907, two years after the end of the Russian occupation
of Manchuria (1900-1905), the three Manchurian provinces of Fengtian,
Jilin and Heilongjiang were established. The Lüshunkou area (known in
the West as Port Arthur) was initially Russian from 1898 to 1904, then
Japanese leased territory from 1905 to 1945. The most important fighting
in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 took place in the Liaoning area.
With the establishment of a regular civilian administration in
Manchuria, a wave of Chinese immigration began. Between 1890 and 1937,
the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, around 25 million Chinese
immigrated from the Chinese mainland to Manchuria. After the unification
of the Republic of China under the Kuomintang (KMT) in 1928, the KMT
government changed the name of the province to Liaoning (遼寧) on February
5, 1929. Instruction No. 91 on the name change, which formally came into
effect on March 1, 1929, invoked the "eternal peace in the Liao River
Basin" (遼河流域永遠安寧) and derived the new provincial name from this (安寧,
ānníng - "peaceful"). In a long proclamation in April 1929, the local
warlord Zhang Xueliang supported the name change. However, the new name
was not in use for very long. After the Mukden Incident of September 18,
1931, provoked by Japan, Manchuria, including Liaoning, was occupied by
Japanese troops and the Japanese satellite state of Manchukuo was
founded in March 1932. Liaoning was renamed 'Fengtian' again. As part of
several administrative reforms in Manchukuo, Fengtian was further
divided into smaller provinces in the following years. After the
Japanese defeat in the Pacific War, the whole of Manchuria returned to
the Republic of China in 1945. A Soviet naval base existed in Port
Arthur from 1945 to 1955, which was returned to China in 1955.
After the victory of the communists in the Chinese Civil War and the
founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the administrative
borders of Manchukuo were initially adopted provisionally. In the area
of today's Liaoning there were the provinces of Liaodong (遼東省,
liáodōng shĕng - "Eastern Liao Province") and Liaoxi (遼西省, liáoxī shĕng
- "West Liao Province"). These were united to form Liaoning Province in
1954. In 1955, Liaoning was enlarged by the addition of Chaoyang,
Jianping, Lingyuan, Jianchang, Beipiao and Harqin Left Wing counties
from the dissolved neighboring province of Rehe. Liaoning's provincial
borders have remained unchanged since then.
As of the 2020 census, 84.92% of the population (36,169,617 people)
were Han Chinese. 15.08% (6,421,790 people) belonged to ethnic
minorities. Compared with the 2010 census, the Han population decreased
by 933,557 people and their proportion increased by 0.11 percentage
points. The population of various ethnic minorities decreased by 221,359
people and their proportion decreased by 0.11 percentage points.
In 2013, the average life expectancy was 76.4 years, which is higher
than the Chinese average. According to the 2010 census, the fertility
rate in the province is only 0.7 children per woman, making it one of
the lowest in China and the world.
Shenyang is home to the headquarters and logistics center of the Northern Military District, as well as the 65th Missile Forces Base, the Shenyang Artillery School, and the Shenyang Institute of Automation (development of military robots); Liaoyang is home to the headquarters of the 79th Army Group and the 79th Army Aviation Brigade; Anshan is home to the headquarters of the 1st Fighter Aviation Division; Lüshunkou and Huludao are home to the naval bases of the Northern Fleet; Dalian is home to the Dalian Naval Academy, the Dalian Ground Forces School, and the headquarters of the 651st and 654th Missile Brigades.
With economic growth of over 13 percent, Liaoning ranked first among
globally comparable regions from 2008 to around 2012. The comparison
involves the growth rates of the eight economically strongest regions in
the eight economically strongest countries, the so-called "G8x8".
Liaoning is a traditional heavy industry region. Thanks to
significant coal and iron ore deposits, large steelworks were built in
the first half of the 20th century, and metal processing, mechanical
engineering, shipbuilding and vehicle construction later settled in the
surrounding areas.
The centers of the Chinese hard coal mining
and steel industry are in the northeast of the provincial capital
Shenyang near the city of Fushun, in the southwest with the city of
Anshan, and in the east in Benxi. China's largest shipyard is located in
Dalian. The automobile industry is concentrated in Shenyang with BMW
Brilliance Automotive and Dandong with the bus manufacturer Huanghai.
Liaoning also plays an important role in agricultural production.
Since 2013, the restructuring of Chinese industry has led to many
company closures and mass layoffs, especially in state-owned companies.
In 2015, the region is in a deep recession.
As of June 2021, Liaoning had built 26,500 5G base stations. Major urban areas, as well as key industrial parks and enterprises in the province, have been covered by the 5G network.
In the first seven months of 2021, Liaoning Province's foreign trade
value increased by 13.6% year-on-year to 439.01 billion yuan (about
67.74 billion U.S. dollars). The value of exported goods increased by
21.2% year-on-year to 182.27 billion yuan, while the value of imported
goods was 256.74 billion yuan, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year. Imports
of crude oil and iron ore accounted for 41.1% of the province's total
import value, followed by electromechanical products and organic
chemical products.
In 2023, Liaoning Province's foreign trade in
goods reached 765.96 billion yuan (US$107.6 billion); its imports were
412.4 billion yuan (including energy products worth 122 billion yuan,
accounting for 29.6% of the province's total imports, and
electromechanical products worth 114.7 billion yuan), and its exports
were 353.6 billion yuan. Liaoning's largest trading partner was the
European Union.
The leading scientific research institutions in Liaoning Province are Dalian University of Technology, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Northeast University (Shenyang), Dalian Medical University, China Medical University (Shenyang), Institute of Metals Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Shenyang), Shenyang National Laboratory of Materials Science, Liaoning University (Shenyang), Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jinzhou Medical University (Jinzhou), Dalian Polytechnic University and Dalian University.
The leading scientific research and treatment institutions in Liaoning Province are the First and Second Affiliated Hospitals of Dalian Medical University, Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, and the First and Second Affiliated Hospitals of China Medical University (Shenyang).
The most important point for tourism is Dalian. In and around the city there are sandy beaches and some resorts.
In the province of Liaoning there are important fossil sites, such as the Jiufotang Formation, the Yixian Formation and the Jiufotang Formation. The fossils are birds and other feathered theropods, pterosaurs, mammals, amphibians and invertebrates. The sites are, for example, in small quarries or rocks surrounded by farmland. The discovery of Sinosauropteryx, a small, feathered dinosaur, is particularly well-known. It is one of the coelurosaurs, the forerunners of birds. Other finds include Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx. Another famous find is Microraptor. The dinosaur Liaoningosaurus, which was also excavated here, was named after this place.