Central Plains province outranks Turkey in economic scale
Henan—"south of the river"—is China's third-most populous province and the largest inland, with over 99 million people in 2020 across the historic Central Plains core of Chinese civilisation. Its 2021 nominal GDP of CN¥5.88 trillion topped Turkey's, ranking roughly eighteenth if it were a country.
Four of China's historical capitals, Luoyang, Anyang, Kaifeng and Zhengzhou, lie in Henan. Its abbreviation Yu comes from ancient Yuzhou; the character first meant comfort and is linked to the elephants that roamed here in archaic times. Because the Yellow River has shifted and borders have been redrawn, about a quarter of this south-of-the-river province now lies north of it.
Yangshao and Longshan cultures flourished in the north during the Neolithic, and the Erlitou culture has been controversially tied to the Xia. The Shang based their capitals here, and oracle bones found at Yinxu in Anyang reveal their writing and rituals; the Zhou toppled them at Muye in the 11th century BC. Luoyang was the Han heart, and the Sui extended the Grand Canal to it. Kaifeng served four of the Five Dynasties and then the Song, growing larger than Luoyang and Chang'an before the Jurchens seized it in 1127.
Floods and wars repeatedly emptied the plain. The Yellow River swung south into the Huai in 1194, and the Ming resettled people by force from Shanxi. A dike breach near Zhengzhou on 30 September 1887 killed over two million by common estimates. In 1938 Chiang Kai-shek's government blew the Huayuankou dike to halt the Japanese, drowning hundreds of thousands, and famine struck in 1942. Yashan in Suiping became China's first people's commune in 1958, and millions died in the famines that followed; in August 1975 Typhoon Nina's rains burst 62 dams, including Banqiao.
Yuan Shikai, a native son, became the Republic of China's first president. The capital moved from Kaifeng to Zhengzhou in 1954 because of its rail links. Most of the province lies on the North China Plain, the country's breadbasket, with the Taihang, Xionger and Funiu mountains to the west, and floods in July 2021 killed 302 people.
Source: Henan
