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Nantong

City in China

  • 15 min read
  • 12 chapters
​南通天宁寺，大雄之殿。
猫猫的日记本 · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Through Gross domestic product

On September 26, 2004, the first World Metropolitan Development Forum was held in Nantong. In 2005, Nantong had a GDP growth of 15.4%, the highest growth rate in Jiangsu province, and in 2016 Nantong's GDP had a total of about 675 billion yuan, ranking 21st in the whole country.

Although the city took a blow from the economic depression of the 1930s, as well as the Japanese occupation of the 1930s and 40s, Nantong has remained an important center for the textile industry. Because of its deepwater harbor and connections to inland navigational canals, it was one of 14 port cities opened to foreign investment in recent Chinese economic reforms.

History

The landmass of Nantong is a geologically recent formation, created over centuries by alluvial accretion at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The territory emerged from a landscape of coastal shoals, and its coastline progressively expanded southeastward as the river's main channel shifted. This process was highly unstable; the area of modern Haimen was submerged for extended periods before re-emerging from the water. The region's present landform did not fully stabilize until the late 19th century.

Imperial era

By the 9th century, Langshan—then an offshore island—had emerged as a strategic military outpost along the lower Yangtze River. In 875, a mutiny was launched there by Wang Ying, a junior officer under the Zhenhai Military Governor. His forces rapidly grew to about 10,000 men, who used ships to raid southeastern coastal regions.

Following the rebellion's suppression, the area became the base of the Yao clan, who commanded a local population engaged in fishing and salt production. The clan maintained a considerable private army and established a fortified settlement. The Yao leader accepted the Southern Tang title: Military Commissioner (制置使) of Jinghai (靜海). In 956, he led thousands of followers across the Yangtze to submit to the Wuyue.

The area was elevated to the status of a military prefecture later, and was reorganized as Tongzhou in 960. Between 1023 and 1032, the prefecture was briefly renamed Chongzhou (崇州) before reverting to its original name. During the Song period, the government established the Lifeng Salt Directorate there, while Langshan developed into a regional center for Buddhist activities centered around the Guangjiao Temple.

In the mid-16th century, the Ming dynasty stationed a deputy regional commander at Langshan to defend against wokou pirates. During the Qing dynasty, this post was elevated to a regional commander (zongbing). As a senior military officer, he led the Langshan Garrison and commanded a naval fleet responsible for the coastal defense of northern Jiangsu.

For most of its imperial history, Tongzhou was administratively under the jurisdiction of Yangzhou and was elevated to an independent department (zhilizhou) in 1725, a status it retained until 1912, when it was renamed Nantong to distinguish it from its namesake near Beijing following the administrative reforms of the Republic of China. Following the re-emergence of its southern coastal territory, Haimen was formally re-established as an independent sub-prefecture (zhiliting) in 1768.

Modern era

Historically a major center for salt production, the Nantong region transformed economically in the nineteenth century as the salt trade declined due to fiscal reforms and coastal environmental changes. Cotton cultivation proved particularly well suited to local conditions, and by the early twentieth century Nantong had become one of the principal producers of high-quality cotton in Jiangsu province.

In 1895, local scholar-official Zhang Jian founded the Dasheng (Dah Sun) Cotton Mill, initiating the region's industrialization. Despite relying on government loans and machinery, Zhang maintained Dasheng as a merchant-managed (shangban) firm, successfully resisting direct bureaucratic control.

By the early 20th century, Nantong was a major industrial center ranking third nationally in cotton mill spindles by 1913. The region's modernization, spearheaded by Zhang Jian and centered on the Dasheng enterprises system, produced a distinctive "mixed" industrial model.

Large-scale machine spinning was concentrated in urban factories, while weaving remained largely in the hands of rural households using traditional looms. This pattern has been described by scholars as a form of economic "involution" (neijuan): modernization in the urban core coexisted with persistent subsistence farming and labor‑intensive handicraft production in the surrounding countryside. Nantong's modern industrial system was therefore heavily dependent on rural handweaving.

In 1901 Zhang obtained official permission to bypass restrictions on private coastal reclamation and founded the Tonghai Land Reclamation Company. By 1905 the company had expanded to 8,382 hectares (20,710 acres) across large parts of Nantong and Haimen counties. At the same time, farmland became increasingly fragmented. Surveys show that the average plot cultivated by tenant farmers in Nantong county declined from about 1.27 hectares (3.1 acres) in 1905 to 1.00 hectare (2.5 acres) in 1914 and 0.79 hectares (2.0 acres) by 1924.

Zhang Jian's elder brother, Zhang Cha (張詧), co‑managed the Dasheng enterprises and led the Tong‑Chong‑Hai General Chamber of Cotton Commerce (GCCC), which linked local merchants with commercial elites in Shanghai and Nanjing, organized an affiliated agricultural association and merchant militia, and, after the 1911 Revolution, coordinated with Shanghai revolutionaries to establish a local military government.

By around 1910, the regional economy revolved around the Dasheng enterprise system of cotton mills, steamship companies, and processing plants. In parallel with this industrial expansion, Zhang Jian developed a comprehensive local educational system, from kindergartens to the multi-disciplinary Nantong College, and founded social service institutions including a hospital, an orphanage, and facilities for the disabled. Public infrastructure expanded to encompass a library, a museum, and several parks, helping to establish Nantong as an early model of planned urban modernization.

In the late 1920s, before the Nationalist "purge" fully reached north of the Yangtze, the rural borderlands of Nantong, Rugao, and Taixing briefly became an early Communist base area, known as Tong-Hai-Ru-Tai. The Fourteenth Red Army, composed largely of local peasants, was established with its headquarters in Rugao. However, by 1931, the base was eliminated due to superior Nationalist military forces and internal defections.

Before the Mukden Incident of 1931, rural households in the Nantong region (including present-day Nantong, Haimen, and Chongming) sold about 200,000 bolts of handwoven cloth (tubu) yearly to Northeast China, but after the Japanese occupation of the area and the influx of cheap machine‑woven textiles, this export trade collapsed, pushing many rural weavers into poverty and triggering a crisis for Nantong's urban cotton mills.

On 17 August 1937, Japanese naval aircraft bombed Nantong. One of the targets was the Nantungchow Christian Hospital, of the United Christian Missionary Society, where 24 Chinese were killed. Despite sworn testimony that Japanese aircraft flew low and machine-gunned the mission compound, the Japanese government, in response to American protests, denied the bombing was "deliberate". After occupying Nantong on 17 March 1938, Japanese troops carried out "mopping-up" operations, burning dwellings and targeting civilians, including children.

Under Japanese occupation, local industries were co‑opted into the war economy. The Dasheng mills initially sought to evade seizure by registering as a German company, but the strategy failed, and the Japanese military seized the mills for war production under the Kanegafuchi Company. Though ostensibly returned to Chinese ownership in 1943, the damaged mills continued to operate through cooperation with Japanese and collaborationist Nanjing authorities.

In the spring of 1946, during General Marshall's mediation, an incident known as the "Nantong Tragedy" (南通慘案) occurred. When residents attempted to contact Executive Headquarters Truce Team 17, local Nationalist authorities suppressed them, allegedly carrying out extrajudicial killings that drew national attention.

In late 1948, despite the Nationalist's appeal to relocate Dasheng's textile mills to Taiwan, the company's textile operations ultimately remained in Nantong. After the Communist takeover of the city in February 1949, these three mills accounted for 78% of Nantong's private industrial output for the year, at a time when private firms as a whole still produced 99.2% of the region's total industrial output.

Contemporary Development

In 1958, Nantong City was placed under the jurisdiction of the Nantong Prefecture, while Chongming County was transferred from the prefecture to Shanghai. Nantong City became a province-administered city in 1962, and with the subsequent abolition of the Nantong Region in 1983, its six counties were incorporated into the municipality.

In 1984, the State Council designated Nantong as one of China's fourteen open coastal cities. Historically, Nantong adopted the Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) model; by 1983, its number of TVEs was second only to Suzhou within Jiangsu. By 1996, the city had developed a substantial textile industry and a significant foreign-invested sector.

Although Nantong joined the Shanghai Economic Belt (later the Yangtze River Delta) in 1982, it lacked a direct land connection to Shanghai until the 2000s, with access relying on a three-hour ferry. The completion of the Nanjing–Qidong Railway, the Sutong Yangtze River Bridge and the Shanghai–Chongming–Nantong Bridge–Tunnel significantly strengthened Nantong's transport links with the southern Yangtze River Delta.

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