China's southernmost province literally means south of the sea
Hainan Province pairs its namesake island with hundreds of South China Sea islets—33,920 square kilometres of land, 32,900 on the main island. Split from Guangdong in 1988, it is China's southernmost province, with Haikou in the north and tourist Sanya in the south.
Hainan, Hai Nam in the local speech, is named for lying south of the Qiongzhou Strait; across the water Guangdong's Leizhou Peninsula is called Haibei, north of the sea. Older names include Zhuya, Qiongya and Qiongzhou, and 17th- and 18th-century explorers wrote Aynam. The island measures 288 by 180 kilometres, ranks 42nd in size worldwide and is slightly smaller than Taiwan; Wuzhi Mountain rises to 1,840 metres, and an ancient volcanic field covers the northern half.
Kra–Dai-speaking Baiyue people settled at least two to six thousand years ago, and the Hlai, about 15 percent of today's population, are native to the island. The Western Han put a garrison there in 110 BC after General Lu Bode arrived, and the island became a place of exile; the Song poet Su Shi wrote at length about his banishment in the 11th century, after which many Han migrants came from Fujian and Guangdong.
Japan attacked in 1939, and Communist and Hlai guerrillas held out against an occupation that never controlled the whole island. The People's Republic took it in 1950 and administered it as part of Guangdong until 1988, when it became a separate province and a Special Economic Zone. In 2020 Beijing unveiled a plan to turn the whole province into a free-trade port by 2035, and island-wide independent customs operations were set for 18 December 2025.
Rivers run outward from the central highlands, the longest being the 314-kilometre Nandu, and natural lakes are rare, though reservoirs such as Songtao abound. Wetlands cover 320,000 hectares. Through the city of Sansha the province also administers distant islands, including the Paracels, which Vietnam and Taiwan also claim.
Source: Hainan
