Hainan Province, abbreviated as “Qiong”, is the southernmost provincial-level administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, with Haikou as its capital. By the end of 2025, Hainan governs 4 prefecture-level cities, including 5 directly-administered county-level cities, 4 directly-administered counties and 6 directly-administered autonomous counties. Among them, Haikou is a national historical and cultural city, and the other three prefecture-level cities are Sanya, Sansha and Danzhou. Ten local dialects are widely used in Hainan, mainly including Hainanese, Li language and Lingao language.
As recorded in Zuo Zhuan: “In the fourth year of Duke Xi, the army of the State of Ji attacked the State of Cai. After Cai was defeated, the troops marched on the State of Chu. The Chu envoy delivered a message: ‘Your domain lies by the Northern Sea, while ours borders the Southern Sea; even our cattle and horses have no contact with each other.’” This marks the earliest documented use of “Southern Sea” as a regional name in ancient Chinese classics. Volume Six of the Records of the Grand Historian · Annals of Emperor Qin Shi Huang states: “In the thirty-third year of his reign, the emperor dispatched exiles, convicts and servants to conquer the land of Luliang, establishing three commanderies: Guilin, Xiangjun and Nanhai, and stationing garrison troops there.” This is the second appearance of the term “Southern Sea”, officially designated as a commandery name.
In geological history, Hainan Island was once connected to the Chinese mainland. During the Quaternary period when humans first emerged, crustal faulting separated the island from the mainland, forming the Qiongzhou Strait with a width ranging from 15 to 30 kilometers. Isolated in the Southern Sea, the island was thus named Hainan Island. Historically, Hainan had three ancient names: Zhuya, Dan’er and Qiongtai. According to historical documents, “Zhuya” originated from the fact that “the commandery lay along the sea cliffs and produced pearls”. The name “Dan’er” derived from the ancient local tribal custom of facial tattooing — carving patterns on faces with colored pigments and wearing long decorative earrings on drooping earlobes. Hainan is also known as Qiongzhou, named after Qiongshan Mountain within the territory, where “rocks and soil are white, smooth and lustrous like jade”. The name Qiongzhou first emerged in the early Tang Dynasty. During the Xining reign of Emperor Shenzong in the Song Dynasty, the Qiong Administration Pacification Supervisor Office was set up here, and the region was then called Qiongtai.
Hainan features a tropical maritime monsoon climate, with year-round warmth, abundant sunlight and heat, and indistinct seasonal changes. The terrain of Hainan Island is high in the center and low around the edges, presenting ring-shaped stepped landforms composed of mountains, hills, terraces and plains.
Located at the southernmost tip of China, Hainan borders Guangdong Province across the Qiongzhou Strait to the north, faces Vietnam across the Beibu Gulf to the west, and is adjacent to the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia in the South China Sea to the east and south. Its administrative jurisdiction covers Hainan Island, as well as the reefs, islands and waters of the Xisha Islands, Zhongsha Islands and Nansha Islands, making it China’s largest provincial administrative region by area. Hainan Island ranks second only to Taiwan Island as China’s largest offshore island, with 68 large and small harbors along its coastline.
Human activities have existed on Hainan Island as early as 6,000 years ago. Yazhou was established during the Qin and Han dynasties. In the third year of the Daye reign of the Sui Dynasty (607 AD), Yazhou was renamed Jun Commandery. In the late Zhizheng reign of Emperor Huizong of the Yuan Dynasty, Hainan was placed under the jurisdiction of the Branch Secretariat of Guangxi. In August 1952, the Hainan Administrative Region was founded, and Hainan Province was officially established on April 13, 1988.
As China’s largest special economic zone and the only provincial-level international tourism island, Hainan serves as a crucial strategic link connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Approved by the State Council, it functions as a free trade port with Chinese characteristics, a pilot zone for comprehensive deepening of reform and opening up, an international tourism and consumption center, and a national strategic support and guarantee base, holding a pivotal position on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.
Hainan boasts four pillar industries: tourism, modern service industries, high-tech industries, and efficient tropical characteristic agriculture. During the Spring Festival Golden Week of 2024, Hainan achieved a dramatic year-on-year surge in tourist arrivals, leading the country by a large margin. The three major airports operated by Hainan Airport Group under Hainan Holdings — Haikou Meilan International Airport, Sanya Phoenix International Airport and Qionghai Bo’ao Airport — handled 8,677 flights and 1.6445 million passenger trips in total. In 2025, growth was achieved across Hainan’s retail trade, transportation, warehousing, postal services, accommodation, catering, finance and real estate sectors. Efficient tropical featured agriculture focuses on both introducing superior resources from abroad and exporting local products globally. As a major production base for tropical fruits in China, Hainan supplies domestic markets with specialty agricultural products such as Sanya mangoes and Sanya wax apples, while exporting these goods to countries including Canada and Singapore. By 2020, Hainan had established 11 key industrial parks, including Haikou Jiangdong New Area, Yangpu Economic Development Zone, Bo’ao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone, Haikou National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone and Haikou Comprehensive Bonded Zone under the Hainan Free Trade Port framework. On December 18, 2025, the full-island customs closure of the Hainan Free Trade Port was officially launched.
Hainan is a vital gateway for China’s opening up toward the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, an important convergence point for the domestic and international dual circulation, and an iconic hub leading China’s new-era opening-up drive. A comprehensive transportation network has taken initial shape, with ring-island high-speed railways and expressways as the backbone, ordinary railways and national & provincial highways as arterial lines, rural roads for distribution, and general aviation as supplementary support. An air hub centered on Haikou Meilan Airport, Sanya Phoenix Airport and Qionghai Bo’ao Airport has basically been completed, alongside a mature shipping hub system known as “Four Directions and Five Major Ports”. The railway pattern of “one ring, one main line, one ferry and two branch lines” and the “Feng-shaped plus ring-island” expressway network have basically come into being. Among Hainan’s 68 natural harbors, 24 have been opened for navigation. The four largest ports are Haikou Port, Basuo Port, Yangpu Port and Sanya Port, with other major ones including Qinglan Port, Puqian Port, Xincun Port, Tanmen Port, Baimajing Port and Bo’ao Port.
As of October 2023, Hainan had 6 AAAAA-level scenic spots: Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone, Tianyahaijiao (Small and Large Dongtian) Tourist Area, Wuzhizhou Island Tourist Area, Fenjiezhou Island Tourist Area, Yanoda Rainforest Cultural Tourism Zone and Binggu Li-Miao Cultural Tourism Zone, together with 34 AAAA-level, 28 AAA-level and 18 AA-level scenic areas. By 2024, Hainan had 32 national intangible cultural heritage items and 4,274 immovable cultural relics in total, including 35 Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level. Up to August 2024, there were 66 traditional Chinese villages in Hainan. By the end of 2025, the province was home to 205 various art performance groups, 70 cultural and art centers and 60 museums.
By the end of 2024, Hainan had 101 nature reserves at all levels, consisting of 1 national park (Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park), 39 nature reserves (5 national-level, 19 provincial-level and 15 city/county-level), and 61 natural parks. The natural parks cover scenic areas (1 national, 18 provincial), forest parks (5 national, 12 provincial, 3 city/county-level), geoparks (3 national, 4 provincial), wetland parks (7 national, 5 provincial) and marine parks (2 national, 1 provincial).
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