Jiangxi is a eastern landlocked province, and it is part of China since the Spring and Autumn Period, 2500 years ago. During the first phase of the Chinese civil war, Jiangxi was extremely important for the communists, as it became the location of the first major uprising.
Its capital is Nanchang.
Jiangxi, home of Gan culture
Surrounded by mountains on three sides, Jiangxi hosts around 45 million people. With a sub-tropical climate, Jiangxi’s raining season falls between the end of spring and throughout the summer. Almost the entire population is Han. Part of the Han, though, are actually Hakka or Gan: they are both considered sub-groups of the Han ethnic. Still, both of them have their own language and culture, and together account for around 10% of the entire Chinese population.
Jiangxi’s cities include: Jiujiang, Ji’an, Yichun and Nanchang, which host around 5 million people each, while Ganzhou, the biggest city/district by population, has more than 8 million people.
An economy based on primary sector
The agriculture production of Jiangxi includes rice, cotton and kumquat. Jiangxi also hosts many mineral reserves, such as copper, tungsten, gold, silver, uranium and thorium.
Due to the location in between some of the richest provinces of China (Zhejiang and Guangdong), many from Jiangxi choose to immigrate to the neighboring provinces to seek a better life and pay, thus aiding those provinces’ own growth. As a consequence, Jiangxi’s economy is not developed. It is, instead, strongly based on its natural resources. The tertiary sector has seen some development thanks to tourism, concentrated in Jiangxi’s tourist spots and resort areas.
Home to Communism and Daoism
Jiangxi is the center of Gan culture and an area rich of linguistic variety.
Besides the importance of Nanchang for being the first home area of the Communist Party of China, Jiangxi has also other important tourist locations.
For example, it is historically relates to a Chinese branch of Mahayana Buddhism, called Chan.
Longshuhan is also a very famous tourist spot. It is the birthplace of Daoism, and for this reason a fairly religious area.
Another important location is Mount Lu, which serves as a resort area and is a UNESCO world heritage site.
Jiangxi is a rather poor province in East China: neighbors such as Guangdong and Zhejiang are far richer and developed. This is certainly not an ideal situation. But it also means that life costs are cheaper and there is potential for growth spikes. This is something that fairly developed areas cannot experience anymore that easily.
Furthermore, house pricing in Jiangxi is one of the cheapest all over China – a country where house pricing is normally fairly expensive. The mineral reserves have also a good potential for future development of the province.