[Photos] Guangdong: Where China first looked outward

(Edited and refined by Candice Chan, with the assistance of AI translation. All photos courtesy of Hsu Chung-mao.)

Guangdong province in southern China is a very special place. For much of Chinese history, it was situated relatively far from the seats of central power — from Xi’an to Nanjing and Beijing — a land of fog and rain and ethnic minorities. Yet when Western powers embarked on the Age of Exploration in the 17th century and sent formidable fleets eastwards, Guangdong found itself on China’s front line. Its importance to national defence increased, while its early and extensive contact with the West made it the first Chinese region to acquire Western knowledge, customs and languages, and to gain a full appreciation of Western progress and China’s backwardness.

Guangdong was transformed from a peripheral region into a leader of China’s development and the cradle of revolution and reform in modern China. Even 40 years ago, it served as a showcase for reform and opening up; today, it is one of China’s most important centres of high-technology industry. Any account of China’s modern progress and development must therefore include Guangdong.

Guangdong faces the sea to the south, and is separated from China’s interior by mountains to the north. Geographically, it has a distinctive maritime orientation, with people making their living through fishing and maritime trade. In ancient times, the region was inhabited by the Baiyue peoples, who were scattered across the southeastern coastal areas of what are now Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, as well as Vietnam.

Guangdong’s historical role

In 214 BC, after Qin Shihuang sent troops to occupy the Lingnan region, most of present-day Guangdong was incorporated into Nanhai Commandery. Its administrative seat, Panyu county, was located in what is now Guangzhou, marking the beginning of Guangdong’s incorporation into a central Chinese polity.

In 203 BC, Zhao Tuo annexed the three commanderies of Lingnan and established the Nanyue kingdom, with its capital at Panyu, or present-day Guangzhou. Guangdong thus became the political centre of the Nanyue regime. After Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty conquered Nanyue, Nanhai Commandery was restored and placed under the Jiaozhi Inspectorate, while Vietnam was incorporated into the territory of the Chinese empire.

Over the next two thousand years, Guangdong’s boundaries changed in tandem with the rise and fall of Chinese power, but for most of that period, it remained firmly within China’s territory.

After the 16th century, the maritime powers of Western Europe bypassed the Arab states and sailed to the Far East in search of trading opportunities, ushering in a profound transformation in Guangdong’s destiny.

In 1517, Portuguese envoy Tomé Pires arrived in Guangzhou and requested permission from the Ming government to trade. He also expressed Portugal’s wish to lease land long term and establish a trading post, or foreign commercial house. Although military conflict subsequently broke out between the two sides, this marked the earliest attempt by a Western power to establish a foothold in Guangdong.

Portuguese and British influence

In 1554, China and Portugal reached an agreement allowing the Portuguese to pay taxes legally to the Guangdong authorities and conduct trade. In 1557, the Portuguese were permitted to build houses and reside at Haojing, or Macau, in Xiangshan county, Guangdong. This was the earliest settlement and trading base established by Westerners within Guangdong province.

Under China’s tributary trade system, foreign merchants were initially allowed to rent private houses or warehouses only during the annual trading season in Guangzhou, and it was not until the Qing dynasty that Western countries began to establish permanent trading houses. In 1715, the British East India Company set up a permanent commercial establishment in Guangzhou, widely regarded as the prototype of the modern foreign trading house in China.

A coloured copperplate engraving by the 19th-century British artist Thomas Allom, depicting Whampoa Island in the lower reaches of the Pearl River in Guangdong, an early trading point for British and French merchant vessels coming to China.

In 1720, the Guangdong provincial authorities established the Cohong, a guild of Chinese merchants granted a monopoly over foreign trade. It became the central institution governing Sino-Western commerce. After the Qing government implemented the Canton System or “single port trading system” in 1760, the Thirteen Factories in Guangzhou became the only officially authorised centre for foreign trading houses, providing foreign merchants with premises for both trade and residence.

Maritime trade offered enormous profits, and Western maritime powers were not the only ones seeking them; local forces in Guangdong also established their own private armed groups and engaged in maritime commerce to reap vast economic rewards.

Pirates and lawlessness

Because criminals and bandits frequently fled overseas, the Chinese government regarded coastal economic activity as a hotbed of lawlessness. Its maritime policy was therefore highly conservative, based largely on prohibition and surveillance. Under such conditions, illegal maritime trade became even more rampant. Armed maritime trading groups not only resisted the Chinese central government, but also competed with Western maritime powers for territory. Locals said: “When trade is permitted, they are merchants; when trade is banned, they become pirates — the merchant and pirate are one and the same.”

The Lanfeng Republic

Perhaps the most legendary case was the Lanfang Republic or Lanfang Company, established in Borneo by Luo Fangbo, a Hakka from Guangdong. This was not a local armed force rebelling against China’s central government, but a remarkable example of Hakka migrants establishing a new territory overseas.

In the mid-18th century, the local sultanates of Borneo recruited large numbers of Chinese labourers from Guangdong, particularly from the Hakka areas of Chaozhou and Jiaying prefecture, to develop local gold and tin mines.

Luo Fangbo, a Hakka from Meixian in Guangdong, crossed the sea and arrived there in 1772. A man of both words and action, and known for his generosity and boldness, he quickly built a reputation among Chinese miners and clan associations.

Luo subsequently united local Chinese mutual-aid organisations and founded the Lanfang Company. In 1777, after suppressing local indigenous unrest and resisting external attacks, the organisation was formally reorganised as the Lanfang Ruled Republic (兰芳大统制共和国), with its capital at Mandor. That year was designated the first year of the Lanfang era.

What attracts the greatest attention from modern historians is the unique system of the Lanfang Republic, a combination of the traditional Chinese institutions of the commercial company and clan associations with elements of the modern Western democratic republic. It operated as a non-hereditary republic with elected leadership, collective decision-making and rudimentary separation of powers, relying on civilian militias rather than a standing army.

Seeking protection from Dutch expansion, Lanfang appealed to the Qing court, which rejected its request for incorporation but recognised tributary and trading ties, effectively providing protection. After the Qing weakened, the Dutch defeated Lanfang in 1884 and ruled indirectly. Following the Qing’s collapse in 1912, they formally annexed the territory. Lanfang’s story reflects both Guangdong’s maritime pioneering spirit and imperial China’s suspicion of overseas state-building.

The Opium Wars

By the mid-19th century, the overseas power of the British Empire had reached its peak, and a confrontation with the political authority and interests of the Chinese empire was imminent.

In 1839, Britain smuggled large quantities of opium into China in an attempt to offset its trade deficit, causing an outflow of Chinese silver and inflicting grave physical and psychological harm on the Chinese people, and so the emperor sent Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu to Guangzhou to suppress the opium trade.

Lin forcibly confiscated all the opium and destroyed it at Humen, provoking the British government. In addition, after British sailors killed a Chinese villager, China and Britain became embroiled in a serious dispute over judicial jurisdiction.

The Qing emperor formally appointed Lin Zexu as Imperial Commissioner, granting him the full title of “Imperial Commissioner Entrusted with Investigating Maritime Affairs in Guangdong” (钦差大臣查办广东海口事件关防). He was given the highest authority to represent the emperor and act at his own discretion, and was sent south to Guangdong with full responsibility for suppressing the opium trade.

An engraving from a British illustrated publication depicting the fierce fighting at the Battle of Humen, where Lin Zexu destroyed the opium surrendered by British merchants.

Lin enforced the law rigorously in Guangzhou, compelling foreign merchants to surrender their opium, all of which he then destroyed at Humen. This directly damaged the core economic interests of British merchants.

Lin even wrote to Queen Victoria to explain China’s position on opium prohibition.

Despite this, tensions escalated rapidly. Lin demanded that foreign merchants sign pledges guaranteeing that they would no longer smuggle opium, with their goods to be confiscated and offenders executed in the event of a violation. However, Charles Elliot, the Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, refused to sign and ordered British merchants to withdraw from Guangzhou, and negotiations fell through.

A coloured copperplate engraving by a 19th-century British artist, depicting British warships firing on the city of Guangzhou. After Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu strictly enforced the opium ban in Guangdong and destroyed British merchants’ opium, the British government decided to dispatch warships eastwards to bombard Guangzhou.

The British government used this as a pretext, claiming that China had violated the property rights and freedoms of British subjects. Seeking to force open China’s markets, it decided to dispatch an expeditionary force, and the Opium War broke out.

Given over a century’s worth of difference in weapons and military capabilities between the two sides, the British won easily, as it occupied Guangzhou and then seized towns in the Jiangnan region along China’s southeastern coast. China was ultimately forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, pay enormous indemnities and cede Hong Kong in perpetuity. Lin Zexu was punished and removed from office.

Britain did not prohibit its own citizens from consuming opium until 1868, yet it continued to send an unending supply of the drug to China, earning enormous profits while poisoning the bodies and minds of the Chinese people. In the colonial history of the British Empire, the slave trade and the opium trade remain indelible blemishes.

It is also worth mentioning that, at the end of the 19th century, France occupied part of the Leizhou peninsula around Guangzhouwan (now Zhanjiang). The French established their administrative centre at Xiying, now Xiashan district in Zhanjiang, hoping to develop it into a French colony capable of competing with British-ruled Hong Kong.

France occupied part of the Leizhou peninsula around Guangzhouwan and established a colony. However, because of insufficient investment and development, it failed to prosper like Hong Kong. French rule lasted only 46 years.

However, the French government placed the territory under the administration of French Indochina, and it received little investment or development. French rule lasted only 46 years and ultimately ended without achieving its ambitions.

The Opium Wars left an indelible national scar on China. During the Second Opium War of 1859-60, the Chinese capital, Beijing, was easily captured by British and French forces. The treasures of the Old Summer Palace were looted and the complex was ultimately burnt to the ground, in an act of barbarity committed by Britain and France against modern China.

A wood engraving published by Britain’s The Illustrated London News on 5 June 1858. Shortly after the outbreak of the Second Opium War, the newspaper’s special artist-correspondents began sending detailed illustrated reports from China, introducing European readers to the latest developments in the fighting. The images on this page include police officers of Guangzhou’s “provisional government”; Bengali soldiers, accompanied by both Britons and Chinese, standing guard at a landing site; and Chinese coolies recruited by the British Army gathering below the southern city wall.

Meanwhile, the ancient Chinese empire was thoroughly awakened. How could countries in distant Western Europe send fewer than 10,000 troops and manage to strike directly at the political heart of the Chinese empire, while the empire was incapable of mounting any meaningful resistance?

Guangdong’s role in China’s reform

China had to reform. It had to open its doors voluntarily and learn from the strengths of the West. Coastal areas occupied by Western powers were not merely symbols of humiliation; they also became direct windows through which China could understand and learn from Western achievements.

Guangdong, in southern China, played precisely this role. The overseas Chinese maritime forces once suppressed and guarded against by the imperial court now became assets in the hands of the Chinese government. They could bring China immense economic resources, as well as modern science and technology.

Guangzhou’s ancient city walls in the 1880s, built along the river, with boats moored nearby, presenting an evocative scene from an earlier age.

Western-style steamships on the Pearl River in the 1880s. As Western influence spread eastwards, Guangzhou became a window for exchanges between China and the West.

The British concession in Guangzhou in the 1880s, showing characteristic British buildings and parks.

Buildings beside a tributary of the Pearl River in the 1880s. Houseboats and buildings on shore appear to merge together, providing temporary accommodation for merchants.

In 1862, the US began constructing the transcontinental railway. The Central Pacific Railroad, responsible for the western section, faced the forbidding terrain of the Sierra Nevada. Many white labourers left because the work was exceptionally harsh and dangerous, and only slightly more than 40 miles of track were completed in the first two years.

The company therefore decided to recruit hardworking Chinese labourers. Between 1865 and 1869, about 12,000 to 20,000 Chinese workers travelled to the US to participate in the construction of the first transcontinental railway; most of them came from Guangdong.

A coloured wood engraving published in the American magazine Harper’s Weekly on 3 February 1877, showing Chinese immigrants in the customs hall in San Francisco. As soon as Chinese immigrants pursuing their “dream of gold” set foot on American soil, they were subjected to quarantine and inspection. In the image, American customs officials are searching the luggage of newly arrived immigrants.

A wood engraving published in Britain’s The Illustrated London News on 29 April 1876. Many Chinese labourers travelled to San Francisco to help build the transcontinental railway, believing that gold could be found everywhere.

A wood engraving published in the American magazine Harper’s Weekly. The US had long sought to export its values. On mail steamers carrying migrants to America in the 1870s, shipboard chaplains preached to newly arrived Chinese migrants during Sunday services, encouraging them to join the Church and embrace American values.

After the railway was completed, most of the Chinese workers chose to remain in the US and moved to cities on both the east and west coasts in search of work, which explains why so many of the earliest Chinese restaurants in the US were Cantonese.

After working in the US for many years, some Guangdong migrants returned home in prosperity, built Western-style houses, married women from their native villages and brought them back to America. They not only injected strong economic vitality into China, but also produced a new generation of overseas Chinese who received modern education in the US and returned to become a powerful force in China’s modernisation.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

During this period, another Hakka, Hong Xiuquan, came under the influence of Christianity. He believed that God the Father was his heavenly father and Jesus his heavenly elder brother, and that he himself was the second son of the Holy Family. Claiming to have received a divine command, he led his followers in an uprising to overthrow the Qing dynasty.

An engraving from a Western illustrated publication in 1864, reporting on the Guangdong uprising and the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom’s capital in Nanjing. Hong Xiuquan, the Heavenly King, is shown in the centre.

Hong Xiuquan, Heavenly King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, as depicted by a Western artist in 1864.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom that he established made Nanjing its capital and survived for 14 years, coming close to overthrowing Qing rule. Although Hong’s political thinking was a strange mixture of Chinese and Western ideas, it was undoubtedly influenced by the West.

Hong Xiuquan ultimately failed. Yet Sun Yat-sen, who grew up listening to stories of the Taiping revolution, later founded and led his own revolutionary movement, changing the destiny of China.

Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalist Revolution

The Nationalist Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911. Yet China’s transformation involved far more than a change of regime — it required a comprehensive improvement in the political system, science and technology, education and culture, and the quality of the population. This was the true meaning of modernisation.

Given the size of China’s territory and population, the process was destined to be extremely slow. After the Republic of China was established, political power soon returned to the Beiyang forces inherited from the Qing dynasty. Sun Yat-sen was forced into exile in Japan, and later returned to Guangdong to establish a military government.

Guangdong was his home province and the foundation of his political support — the people there backed the Nationalist Revolution under his leadership partly because of their shared ties.

Even as Sun was considering the future path of the revolution, the Soviet Revolution succeeded. For the weaker nations of the world suffering under Western imperialism and colonialism, that was like a beacon of liberation, offering direction and hope.

With Soviet assistance, the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), agreed to allow members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to join the KMT in their individual capacities, thereby establishing cooperation between the two parties. It also proposed a Leninist-style party organisation and party army, and from then on, a powerful red revolutionary force emerged in Guangdong, which showed formidable military strength, and gradually began to transform China.

The First National Congress of the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang in 1924. With Soviet assistance, cooperation was established between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party.

The establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924.

The establishment of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924. The Soviet representative Mikhail Borodin stands to the left of Sun Yat-sen.

On 9 July 1926, Chiang Kai-shek, commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, held a ceremony in Guangzhou to launch the Northern Expedition. With around 100,000 troops, the expeditionary army defeated warlord forces numbering more than one million.

The National Revolutionary Army entering Beijing in 1928. The flag of the Republic of China and the Kuomintang party flag were displayed.

Chiang Kai-shek, commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, in 1928.

The commandant and director of instruction of the Whampoa Military Academy reviewing the cadets.

In the year following Sun Yat-sen’s death, the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-shek launched the Northern Expedition. While the KMT and CCP split during the campaign, China was generally unified by around 1930, and the country rapidly moved towards the structure and scale of a modern state in every field, including politics, the military, the economy, culture and education.

By the 1930s, Guangdong was already one of China’s most advanced provinces. Investment and development brought by overseas Chinese had highly modernised its coastal cities: factories abounded, ports flourished and the province served as a bridge connecting China with the outside world.

A modern street in Guangzhou in the 1930s. Its clean and orderly streets were praised as a model of modern urban renewal.

The grand and ornate Dayuan Teahouse in central Guangzhou in the 1930s.

A pedal rickshaw on a street in Guangzhou in the 1930s.

A bridge in the French concession area of Guangzhou in the 1930s.

After full-scale war broke out between China and Japan in 1937, Japanese troops occupied Guangzhou in October 1938. The people of Guangdong turned to guerrilla warfare. During the Second World War, Chinese communities in the US, most of them originating from Guangdong, fully backed China’s resistance to Japan, also with the support of the American government.

After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the country once again entered a decade of isolation. Although its military strength was formidable, the development of people’s livelihoods and living standards stagnated for 30 years and even regressed during the Cultural Revolution.

Anti-Chiang slogans in Guangzhou in the 1930s, reflecting factional struggles within the Kuomintang.

Female soldiers from Guangdong fighting courageously during China’s resistance against Japan in 1938.

Japanese troops occupying Guangzhou harbour in October 1938.

Japanese troops occupying the Guangzhou municipal government offices in October 1938.

Anti-Japanese guerrillas in Guangdong in 1938.

Chinese troops rushing to the front line at Zengcheng during the Battle of Northern Guangdong in late 1939.

After Japan’s defeat, Tanaka Hisakazu, commander of Japanese forces in southern China, was arrested and sentenced to death in Guangzhou. Before his execution, he was paraded through the city’s streets.

In 1943, Soong Mei-ling — Madame Chiang Kai-shek — visited the US and called at the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in San Francisco. The organisers were all Chinese Americans of Guangdong origin.

Chinese residents of San Francisco welcoming Madame Soong Mei-ling during her visit in 1943.

In 1943, people of Guangdong origin in San Francisco held a parade with decorated floats to publicise American support for China’s resistance against Japan.

A final group photograph of Nationalist government personnel in Guangzhou in November 1949, by which time the People’s Republic of China had already been established.

Reform and opening up

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping introduced the policy of reform and opening up. He called for the emancipation of thought and the transformation of the rigid system, beginning with the introduction of more liberal economic policies in rural areas.

In 1980, China took the even bolder step of establishing special economic zones and adopting foreign models of economic development. Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong, together with Xiamen in Fujian, were formally designated as special economic zones.

Three of these four cities are in Guangdong, showing the importance of Guangdong’s links with overseas Chinese and its century of accumulated experience in maritime trade and investment. Guangdong immediately became the locomotive of China’s reform and opening up to the world, leading the country into an entirely new phase of development.

Guangdong today

This achievement was not only the result of sound policy guidance from the Chinese central government. Equally important was Guangdong’s deep local cultural foundation: its tradition of absorbing foreign cultures, combining them with the strengths of Chinese tradition, striving continuously for improvement and renewing itself day by day.

Coupled with the Chinese people’s capacity for hard work and endurance, this tradition has made Guangdong one of the most powerful forces driving the progress of China and the wider world.