Natural Environment

Location: Guangdong, being located in the south of China, is bordered by Fujian to the east, Jiangxi and Hunan to the north, Guangxi to the west, facing Hainan in southwest and is adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao. It is an economic center in South China and in Southeast Asia.

Acreage: Guangdong’s land area amounts to 179,800 square km, accounting for approximately 1.87% of the whole country. The mainland coastline measures 3,368.1 km, and about 759 islands dot its territorial seas. The total maritime area amounts to more than 400,000 square km.

Climate: Guangdong lies in the sub-tropical zone, one of the regions with the most abundant resource of light, heat and water in China. The annual average temperature is 22.3%. It has plenty of rain, with annual average precipitation of 1500mm-2500mm.

Resource: Guangdong abounds in mineral products and marine resources. Its mineral resource is rich in variety and widely distributed. Among 156 kinds of utilizable minerals, 131 kinds have been already found. There is also a profusion of marine resource, with great varieties, and mainly focused on tropical warm marine creatures.

Administrative Division of Guangdong Province: Guangdong Province includes 21 cities of prefecture-level or above, 23 county-level cities (under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level cities), 54 districts within prefecture, 41 counties, 3 autonomous counties, 431 neighborhood placed under municipality, 1137 towns, 4 townships, and 7 ethnic community townships.

Cultural Environment

Guangdong, with the short name of “Yue”, enjoys a long history. Its capital city, Guangzhou, has already a history of 2221 years. Guangdong takes an important place in Chinese modern history.

As one of the earliest trade port in Chinese modern history, and the starting point of well-known “sea silk road”, Guangdong has a long history of trade. Early in Tang Dynasty, Guangzhou had become a famous port for export trade. In Qing Dynasty, Foshan became a handicraft center and one of the “Four Famous Towns” in China. Guangdong is also a cradle of Chinese modern industry and national industry.

Guangdong’s culture (also called Lingnan culture) can be traced back to remote past. As one of the treasures in Chinese traditional culture, the Lingnan culture, deep and profound, is well known to the world. It is constituted by 3 parts: the Guangfu/Canton Culture, the Hakka Culture and the Chaoshan Culture. It knows how to absorb the cream of other cultures in the world, and is characterized by tolerance, practice, openness and creativity. In 1980s, Guangdong again caught the world’s attention, and the Pearl River Delta became a forward position of China’s opening up, which was a window to display economic and trade cooperation with other countries and regions.

Guangdong is one of densely populated provinces in China. By the end of 2006, it has 93,040,000 constant residents. Guangdong is a multi-ethnic province inhabited by members from 53 out of the 56 ethnic groups in China.the Han group accounting for the largest part of the population in the province. Guangdong is also a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. There are more than 30,000,000 Chinese, overseas Chinese and compatriots of Hong Kong and Macao (whose ancestor home is Guangdong) living in more than 100 countries and regions all over the world.

Habitation Environment

Forestation: Through 20 years’ efforts, Guangdong has made remarkable achievements on urban landscape construction and ecological improvement. Up to now, the forest cover of the province reaches 60%. The improving ecological