Jiangsu is a coastal province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fourth most populous, with a population of 84.75 million, and the most densely populated of the 22 provinces of the People's Republic of China. Jiangsu has the highest GDP per capita and second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, and Zhejiang and Shanghai to the south. Jiangsu has a coastline of over along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze flows through the southern part of the province.
Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Jiangsu has been a national economic and commercial center, partly due to the construction of the Grand Canal. Cities such as Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, and Shanghai (separated from Jiangsu in 1927) are all major Chinese economic hubs. Since the initiation of economic reforms in 1990, Jiangsu has become a focal point for economic development. It is widely regarded as one of China's most developed provinces, when measured by its Human Development Index (HDI). Its 2025 nominal GDP per capita reached CN¥167,970 (US$24,113), becoming the first province in China to reach the $20,000 mark in 2021.
Jiangsu is home to many of the world's leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles. It has also been China's largest recipient of foreign direct investment since 2006. In 2025, its GDP was more than 14.24 trillion (US$2 trillion nominal), which is the sixth-highest of all administrative divisions. If it were a country, it would be the twelfth-largest economy as of 2022 as well as the 19th most populous.
Jiangsu is also one of the leading provinces in research and education in China. , Jiangsu hosts 168 institutions of higher education, ranking first of all Chinese provinces. Jiangsu has many highly ranked educational institutions, with 16 of its universities listed in the Double First-Class Construction, ranking second after Beijing. As of 2025, six major cities in Jiangsu ranked in the world's top 200 (Nanjing 5th, Suzhou 33rd, Zhenjiang 98th, Yangzhou 118th, Wuxi 161st, and Changzhou 173rd) cities by scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index.
Name Jiangsu's name is a compound of the first elements of the names of the two cities of Jiangning (now Nanjing) and Suzhou; meaning "Pacified Place". The first character is derived from Chinese abbreviation of jiāng () for Jiangning taken from its Northern Song name of Jiangning (, , "Pacified area of the Yangtze"), while the abbreviation for this province is "" (), which serves the second character of its name is a contraction of the old name Gusu. It refers to "Satisfied place" in the Old Yue language. Origin of the Names of China's Provinces , People's Daily Online.
Alternatively, the province is also spelled in various forms as Chiangsu, Chiang-su or Kiangsu in postal romanization. Since 1958, the province has adopted its current pinyin name of Jiangsu, a spelling that would be adopted by numerous international organizations and media outlets by the 1980s.
History Imperial dynasties
During the earliest Chinese dynasties, the area that is now Jiangsu was far away from the center of Chinese civilization, which was in the northwest Henan; it was home of the Huai barbarians (), an ancient ethnic group. During the Zhou dynasty more contact was made, and eventually the state of Wu appeared in southern Jiangsu, one of the many hundreds of states that existed across northern and central China at that time. Near the end of the Spring and Autumn period, Wu became a great power under King Helu of Wu, and defeated in 484 BC the state of Qi, a major power in the north in modern-day Shandong province, and contest for the position of overlord over all states of China. The state of Wu was subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, another state that had emerged to the south in modern-day Zhejiang province. Yue was in turn subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, and unified China in 221 BC.
Under the reign of the Han dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), Jiangsu was removed from the centers of civilization in the North China Plain, and was administered under two zhou (provinces): Xu Province in the north, and Yang Province in the south. During the Three Kingdoms period, southern Jiangsu became the base of the Eastern Wu (222 to 280), whose capital, Jianye (later renamed to Jiankang), is modern Nanjing. When nomadic invasions overran northern China in the 4th century, the imperial court of the Jin dynasty moved to Jiankang. Cities in southern and central Jiangsu swelled with the influx of migrants from the north. Jiankang remained as the capital for four successive Southern dynasties and became the largest commercial and cultural center in China.
After the Sui dynasty united the country in 581, the political center of the country shifted back to the north, but the Grand Canal was built through Jiangsu to link the Central Plains with the prosperous Yangtze Delta. The Tang dynasty (618–907) relied on southern Jiangsu for annual deliveries of grain. It was during the Song dynasty (960–1279), which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that Jiangnan (southern Jiangsu, Shanghai, and adjacent areas) emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, major cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence and luxury in China. Today the region remains one of the richest parts of China.
The Jurchen Jin dynasty gained control of North China in 1127 during the Jin-Song wars, and Huai River, which used to cut through north Jiangsu to reach the Yellow Sea, was the border between the north, under the Jin, and the south, under the Southern Song dynasty. The Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming dynasty, which was established in 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, initially put its capital in Nanjing. Regions surrounding Nanjing, corresponding to Jiangsu and Anhui today, were designated as Nanzhili province (literally "southern directly governed"). Following a coup by Zhu Di (later, the Yongle Emperor), however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north, although Nanjing kept its status as the southern capital. In late Ming, Jiangnan continued to be an important center of trade in China; some historians see in the flourishing textiles industry at the time incipient industrialization and capitalism, a trend that was however aborted.
The Qing dynasty converted Nanzhili to "Jiangnan province"; in 1666 Jiangsu and Anhui were split apart as separate provinces. Jiangsu's borders have been for the most part stable since then.
With the start of Western incursion into China in the 1840s, the rich and mercantile Yangtze River Delta was increasingly exposed to Western influence. Shanghai, originally an unremarkable little town of Jiangsu, quickly developed into a metropolis of trade, banking, and cosmopolitanism, and was split out later as an independent municipality. Jiangnan also figures strongly in the Taiping Rebellion (18511864), a massive and deadly rebellion that attempted to set up a Christian theocracy in China; it started far to the south, in Guangdong province, swept through much of South China, and by 1853, had established Nanjing as its capital, renamed as Tianjing ( "Heavenly Capital").
Modern times The Republic of China was established in 1912, and China was soon torn apart by warlords. Jiangsu changed hands several times, but in April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek established a government at Nanjing; he was soon able to bring most of China under his control. The provincial government moved to Zhenjiang in 1928. This was however interrupted by the second Sino-Japanese War, which began full-scale in 1937; on December 13, 1937, Nanjing fell, and the combined atrocities of the occupying Japanese for the next three months would come to be known as the Rape of Nanjing, after which it became the seat of the collaborationist government of East China under Wang Jingwei, and most of Jiangsu remained under Japanese occupation until the end of the war in 1945.
After the war, Nanjing was once again the capital of the Republic of China, though now the Chinese Civil War had broken out between the Kuomintang government and Communist forces, based further north, mostly in Northeast China. The decisive Huaihai Campaign was fought in northern Jiangsu; it resulted in Kuomintang defeat, and the communists were soon able to cross the Yangtze River and take Nanjing. The Kuomintang fled southward and eventually ended up in Taipei, from which the Republic of China government continues to administer Taiwan, Pescadores, and its neighboring islands, though it also continues to claim (technically, at least) Nanjing as its rightful de jure capital. Later on, after the capture of Zhenjiang, the provincial government was then relocated to Shengsi County in Zhejiang.. "永修軍艦"章節.（註：由台灣大學森林資源學（林業學）名譽教授應紹舜私人出版的海軍軍艦史書）
After the communist takeover, Beijing (formerly Peiping) was made capital of the People's Republic, while Jiangsu was dissolved into Subei and Sunan Administrative Regions. On November 15, 1952, Jiangsu Province was reconstituted and Nanjing was demoted to be the provincial capital. The reform and opening up of Deng Xiaoping initially focused on the south coast of China, in Guangdong province, which soon left Jiangsu behind; starting from the 1990s they were applied more evenly to the rest of China. Suzhou and Wuxi, two southern cities of Jiangsu in close proximity to neighboring Shanghai, have since become particularly prosperous, being among the top 10 cities in China in terms of gross domestic product and outstripping the provincial capital of Nanjing. The income disparity between northern and southern Jiangsu however remains large.
Geography
Jiangsu is flat, with plains covering 68 percent of its total area (water covers another 18 percent). Most of the province stands not more than above sea level. Jiangsu also has a well-developed irrigation system, which earned it (especially the southern half) the moniker of (shuǐxiāng "land of water"). The southern city of Suzhou has so many canals that it has been dubbed "Venice of the East" or the "Venice of the Orient". The Grand Canal of China cuts through Jiangsu from north to south, crossing all the east–west river systems. Jiangsu also borders the Yellow Sea. The Yangtze River, the longest river of China, cuts through the province in the south and reaches the East China Sea, which divides the region into two parts: more urban, prosperous south and more poorer, rural north, and these two parts has a tense division. Mount Huaguo, near the city of Lianyungang, is the highest point in Jiangsu, at an altitude of above sea level. Large lakes in Jiangsu include Lake Tai (the largest), Lake Hongze, Lake Gaoyou, Lake Luoma, and Lake Yangcheng.