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Shanxi is a province in North China. Its capital and largest city is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi and Datong. Its one-character abbreviation is (), after the state of Jin that existed there during the Spring and Autumn period (). In later periods, Shanxi also became the political core of the Northern Wei, a Xianbei-founded dynasty whose early capital was located in present-day northern Datong. During the Qing dynasty, Shanxi merchants dominated China's commerce and finance. Their commercial networks extended to Russia, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi was governed for nearly four decades by Yan Xishan and functioned with a high degree of de facto autonomy within the Taiwan, serving as a major Kuomintang political and industrial stronghold in the north and being described as "the model province", before being incorporated into the state system of the People's Republic of China, where its role shifted toward that of a major energy-producing province.
The name Shanxi means 'west of the mountains', a reference to its location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west and Inner Mongolia to the north. Shanxi's terrain is characterised by a plateau bounded partly by mountain ranges. Shanxi's culture is largely dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese majority, who make up over 99% of its population. Jin Chinese is the only major Sinitic variety in northern China that is not classified within the Mandarin group.
Shanxi possesses roughly one third of China's total coal reserves, a factor that has long shaped the province's industrial structure and energy role within the national economy. Despite this resource endowment, Shanxi's GDP per capita has remained below the national average, reflecting structural challenges associated with resource dependence, environmental constraints, and uneven economic diversification. The province hosts the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.
The province is also known for having by far the largest number of historic buildings among all Chinese provinces, by possessing over 70% of China's surviving buildings built during or predating the Song dynasty. Shanxi has three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Yungang Grottoes in Datong, which date back more than 1,500 years.
During the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period (304–439), several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, and Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei (386–534), a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, and which went on to rule nearly all of northern China.
The Tang dynasty (618–907) originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng (t=河東), or "east of the (Yellow) river". Empress Wu Zetian, one of China's only female rulers, was born in Shanxi in 624. During the first part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–960), Shanxi supplied rulers of three of the Five Dynasties. Among the Ten Kingdoms, it was the only one located in northern China. Shanxi was initially home to the jiedushi (commander) of Hedong, Li Cunxu, who overthrew the first of the Five Dynasties, Later Liang (907–923) to establish the second, Later Tang (923–936). Another jiedushi of Hedong, Shi Jingtang, overthrew Later Tang to establish the third of the Five Dynasties, Later Jin, and yet another jiedushi of Hedong, Liu Zhiyuan, established the fourth of the Five Dynasties (Later Han) after the Khitan people destroyed Later Jin, the third. Finally, when the fifth of the Five Dynasties (Later Zhou) emerged, the jiedushi of Hedong at the time, Liu Chong, rebelled and established an independent state called Northern Han, one of the Ten Kingdoms, in what is now northern and central Shanxi.
Shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitan people in return for military assistance. This territory, called the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi. The ceded territory became a major problem for the Song dynasty's defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years because it lay south of the Great Wall.
The later Zhou, the last dynasty of the Five Dynasties period was founded by Guo Wei, a Han Chinese, who served as the Assistant Military Commissioner at the court of the Later Han which was ruled by Shatuo Turks. He founded his dynasty by launching a military coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor however, his newly established dynasty was short-lived and was conquered by the Song dynasty in 960.
In the early years of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between the Song dynasty and the Liao dynasty. Later the Southern Song dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, to the Jurchens Jin dynasty (1115–1234) in 1127 after the Jingkang Incident of the Jin-Song wars. in Ruicheng County, depicting Chaoyuan Tu (朝元图), a formal audience of Daoist deities assembled in processio to Yuanshi Tianzun.|left]]The Mongol Yuan dynasty administered China into provinces but did not establish Shanxi as a province, since Shanxi was regarded as part of the core region of the empire. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) which were of the same land area and borders as the previous Hedong Commandery of the Tang dynasty.
During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Shanxi extended north beyond the Great Wall to include parts of Inner Mongolia, including what is now the city of Hohhot, and overlapped with the jurisdiction of the Eight Banners and the Guihua Tümed banner in that area. , Shanxi, drawn during the Kangxi Emperor reign of the Qing dynasty.|left]]For centuries, Shanxi served as a center for trade and banking. The "Shanxi merchants" were once synonymous with wealth.Shanxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, ed., Shanxi piaohao shiliao (山西票号史料) (Taiyuan: Shanxi jingji chubanshe, 1992), pp. 36–39. The well-preserved city and UNESCO World Heritage Site Pingyao shows many signs of its economic importance during the Qing dynasty. This commercial strength remained evident into the late Qing period: following the Boxer Uprising, Empress Dowager Cixi resided in Shanxi during her westward flight, during which substantial financial contributions were presented by local officials and merchants.
In 1928, Suiyuan was formally established as a separate province, marking an institutional shift in the governance of North China's frontier regions. Despite this administrative separation, Shanxi and Suiyuan remained closely connected in military, political, and economic terms throughout much of the Republican era.
From 1911 to 1949, during the period of the Republic of China's period of rule over Mainland China, Shanxi was mostly dominated by the warlord Yan Xishan until the Chinese Communist Party took full control in 1949;Gillin The Journal of Asian Studies Communists had already set up secret bases in 1936, but did not completely overturn Yan and the Nationalist government until 1949.Gillin Warlord 220-221 Early in Yan's rule he decided that, unless he was able to modernize and revive the economy of his small, poor, remote province, he would be unable to protect Shanxi from rival warlords. Yan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. He has been viewed by Western biographers as a transitional figure who advocated using Western technology to protect Chinese traditions, while at the same time reforming older political, social and economic conditions in a way that paved the way for the radical changes that would occur after his rule.Gillin, Donald G. "Portrait of a Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 1911–1930." The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 19, No. 3, May, 1960. Retrieved February 23, 2011. p.289 the early 20th century, Shanxi products such as Fenjiu were exhibited internationally; Fenjiu received a medal award at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, indicating that Shanxi maintained active commercial production and trade networks into the late Qing and early Republican periods.
In 1918 there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in northern Shanxi that lasted for two months and killed 2,664 people. Yan's interactions with the Western medical personnel he met with to discuss how to suppress the epidemic inspired him to modernize and improve Shanxi's medical infrastructure which he began by funding the Research Society for the Advancement of Chinese Medicine, based in Taiyuan, in 1921. Highly unusual in China at the time, the school had a four-year curriculum and included courses in both Chinese and Western Medicine. The main skills that Yan hoped physicians trained at the school would learn were: a standardized system of diagnosis; sanitary science, including bacteriology; surgical skills, including obstetrics; and, the use of diagnostic instruments. Yan hoped that his support of the school would eventually lead to increased revenues in the domestic and international trade of Chinese drugs, improved public health, and improved Public Education. Yan's promotion of a modern curriculum and infrastructure of Chinese medicine achieved limited success, but much of the teaching and publication that this school of medicine produced was limited to the area around Taiyuan: by 1949 three of the seven government-run hospitals were in the city. In 1934 the province produced a ten-year-plan that envisaged employing a hygiene worker in every village, but the Japanese invasion in 1937 and the subsequent civil war made it impossible to carry these plans out. Yan's generous support for the Research Association for the Improvement of Chinese Medicine generated a body of teaching and publication in modern Chinese medicine that became one of the foundations of the national institution of modern traditional Chinese medicine that was adopted in the 1950s.Harrison, Henrietta. "The Experience of Illness in Early Twentieth-Century Shanxi.". East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine. No.42. pp.39–72. 2015. pp. 61–63., a Zoroastrian temple in Jiexiu.]]Yan invested in Shanxi's industrial infrastructure, and by 1949 the area around Taiyuan was a major national producer of coal, iron, chemicals, and munitions.Goodman, David S. G. "Structuring Local Identity: Nation, Province and County in Shanxi During the 1990s". The China Quarterly. Vol.172, December 2002. pp.837–862. Retrieved April 17, 2019. p.840 Yan was able to protect the province from his rivals for the period of his rule partially due to his building of an arsenal in Taiyuan that, for the entire period of his administration, remained the only center in China capable of producing field artillery. Yan's army was successful in eradicating banditry in Shanxi, allowing him to maintain a relatively high level of public order and security.Gillin, Donald G. "Portrait of a Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province, 1911–1930." The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 19, No. 3, May, 1960. Retrieved February 23, 2011. p.295
Yan went to great lengths to eradicate social traditions which he considered antiquated. He insisted that all men in Shanxi abandon their Qing-era queues, giving police instructions to clip off the queues of anyone still wearing them. In one instance, Yan lured people into theatres in order to have his police systematically cut the hair of the audience. He attempted to combat widespread female illiteracy by creating in each district at least one vocational school in which peasant girls could be given a primary-school education and taught domestic skills. After National Revolutionary Army military victories in the 1925 generated great interest in Shanxi for the Kuomintang's ideology, including women's rights, Yan allowed girls to enroll in middle school and college, where they promptly formed a women's association.Gillin, Donald G. Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. p.24" attempted to eradicate the custom of foot binding, threatening to sentence men who married women with bound feet, and mothers who bound their daughters' feet, to hard labor in state-run factories. He discouraged the use of the traditional lunar calendar and encouraged the development of local boy scout organizations. Like the Communists who later succeeded Yan, he punished habitual lawbreakers to "redemption through labour" in state-run factories. Between 1933 and 1937, architectural historians Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, working with the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture, conducted extensive field surveys of ancient timber buildings across Shanxi, documenting numerous Tang-, Song-, Liao-, and Jin-dynasty structures and establishing the province's central place in the study of traditional Chinese architecture.
After the failed attempt by the Chinese Red Army to establish bases in southern Shanxi in early 1936 Yan became convinced that the Communists were lesser threats to his rule than either the Nationalists or the Japanese. He then negotiated a secret anti-Japanese "United Front" with the Communists in October 1936 and invited them to establish operations in Shanxi. Yan, under the slogan "resistance against the enemy and defense of the soil", attempted to recruit young, patriotic intellectuals to his government in order to organize a local resistance to the threat of Japanese invasion. By the end of 1936 Taiyuan had become a gathering point for anti-Japanese intellectuals from all over China.Feng Chongyi and Goodman, David S. G., eds. North China at War: The Social Ecology of Revolution, 1937–1945. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. 2000. . Retrieved June 3, 2012. p. 157-158.
During the Battle of Xinkou, the Chinese defenders resisted the efforts of Japan's elite Itakagi Division for over a month, despite Japanese advantages in artillery and air support. By the end of October 1937, Japan's losses were four times greater than those suffered at Pingxingguan, and the Itakagi Division was close to defeat. Contemporary Communist accounts called the battle "the most fierce in North China", while Japanese accounts called the battle a "stalemate". In an effort to save their forces at Xinkou, Japanese forces began an effort to occupy Shanxi from a second direction, in the east. After a week of fighting, Japanese forces captured the strategic Niangzi Pass, opening the way to capturing Taiyuan. Communist guerrilla tactics were ineffective in slowing down the Japanese advance. The defenders at Xinkou, realizing that they were in danger of being outflanked, withdrew southward, past Taiyuan, leaving a small force of 6,000 men to hold off the entire Japanese army. A representative of the Japanese Army, speaking of the final defense of Taiyuan, said that "nowhere in China have the Chinese fought so obstinately".Gillin, Donald G. Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. p. 272–273
Japanese suffered 30,000 dead and an equal number wounded in their effort to take northern Shanxi. A Japanese study found that the battles of Pingxingguan, Xinkou, and Taiyuan were responsible for over half of all the casualties suffered by the Japanese army in North China. Yan himself was forced to withdraw after having 90% of his army destroyed, including a large force of reinforcements sent into Shanxi by the central government. Throughout 1937, numerous high-ranking Communist leaders, including Mao Zedong, lavished praise on Yan for waging an uncompromising campaign of resistance against the Japanese. Possibly because of the severity of his losses in northern Shanxi, Yan abandoned a plan of defense based on positional warfare, and began to reform his army as a force capable of waging guerrilla warfare. After 1938 most of Yan's followers came to refer to his regime as a "guerrilla administration".Gillin, Donald G. Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. pp.273–275, 279
After the surrender of Japan and the end of the Second World War, Yan Xishan was notable for his ability to recruit thousands of Japanese soldiers stationed in northwest Shanxi in 1945, including their commanding officers, into his army. By recruiting the Japanese into his service in the manner that he did, he retained both the extensive industrial complex around Taiyuan and virtually all of the managerial and technical personnel employed by the Japanese to run it. Yan was so successful in convincing surrendered Japanese to work for him that, as word spread to other areas of north China, Japanese soldiers from those areas began to converge on Taiyuan to serve his government and army. At its greatest strength the Japanese "special forces" under Yan totaled 15,000 troops, plus an officer corps that was distributed throughout Yan's army. These numbers were reduced to 10,000 after serious American efforts to repatriate the Japanese were partially successful. Yan's Japanese army was instrumental in helping him to retain control of most of northern Shanxi during much of the subsequent Chinese Civil War, but by 1949 casualties had reduced the number of Japanese soldiers under Yan's command to 3,000. The leader of the Japanese under Yan's command, Hosaku Imamura, committed suicide on the day that Taiyuan fell to Communist forces.Gillin, Donald G. and Etter, Charles. "Staying On: Japanese Soldiers and Civilians in China, 1945–1949." The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 42, No. 3, May, 1983. Retrieved February 23, 2011. pp.506–508 Yan Xishan himself (along with most of the provincial treasury) was airlifted out of Taiyuan in March 1949. Shortly afterwards Republic of China Air Force planes stopped dropping food and supplies for the defenders due to fears of being shot down by the advancing Communists.Gillin, Donald G. Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shansi Province 1911–1949. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1967. p.288. The People's Liberation Army, depending largely on their reinforcements of artillery, launched a major assault on April 20, 1949, and succeeded in taking all positions surrounding Taiyuan by April 22. A subsequent appeal to the defenders to surrender was refused. On the morning of April 22, 1949, the PLA bombarded Taiyuan with 1,300 pieces of artillery and breached the city's walls, initiating bloody street-to-street fighting for control of the city. At 10:00 am, April 22, the Taiyuan Campaign ended with the Communists in complete control of Shanxi. Total Nationalist casualties amounted to all 145,000 defenders, many of whom were taken as POWs. The Communists lost 45,000 men and an unknown number of civilian laborers they had drafted, all of whom were either killed or injured.jonathan Spence The Search for Modern China, W.W. Norton and Company. 1999. p.488 The fall of Taiyuan was one of the few examples in the Chinese Civil War in which Nationalist forces echoed the defeated Southern Ming who had, in the 17th century, brought entire cities to ruins resisting the invading Manchus. Many Nationalist officers were reported to have committed suicide when the city fell. The dead included Yan's nephew-in-law, who was serving as governor, and his cousin, Yan Huiqing (閻慧卿), who ran his household. Liang Huazhi, the head of Yan's "Patriotic Sacrifice League", had fought for years against the Communists in Shanxi until he was finally trapped in the massively fortified city of Taiyuan. For six months Liang put up a fierce resistance, leading both Yan's remaining Republic of China Army forces and his thousands of Japanese mercenaries. When Communist troops finally broke into the city and began to occupy large sections of it, Liang barricaded himself inside a large, fortified prison complex filled with Communist prisoners. In a final act of desperation, Liang set fire to the prison and committed suicide as the entire compound burned to the ground.
On the eve of Yan Huiqing's suicide by poisoning, she drafted the "Last Farewell Telegram." After being refined by Wu Shaozhi, Secretary-General of the Shanxi Provincial Government, it was transmitted to her cousin, Yan Xishan, and Kuomintang central government. The full text reads:
Taiyuan remained under Kuomintang (KMT) control until one day after the fall of Nanjing, the capital at the time, by which point it stood as the isolated final KMT stronghold in North China. The fall of Taiyuan brought Kuomintang rule in the North to a definitive end. The battle for Taiyuan lasted more than six months and is regarded by Chinese Communist Party's official historical record as one of the longest, largest, most intense, and most costly urban siege battles of the Chinese Civil War, in terms of duration, number of combatants, intensity of fighting, and casualties.
Beyond land reform and the Dazhai campaign, the early decades of the People's Republic of China saw Shanxi transformed into one of the country's primary bases for coal production and heavy industry, a role reinforced during successive phases of socialist industrialization and national defense planning. During the Cultural Revolution, political upheaval and institutional disruption significantly affected the province's administrative, educational, and industrial systems. The period also witnessed widespread destruction of cultural heritage, as temples, ancestral halls, historic buildings, archives, and religious artifacts across the province were damaged or destroyed during campaigns against the "Four Olds", resulting in the irreversible loss of numerous historical relics. Against this backdrop, Pingyao Ancient City was the only historic urban center that survived largely intact, while many other traditional cities and townscapes in the region suffered extensive destruction.
Following the introduction of economic reforms in the late 1970s, Shanxi experienced slower diversification compared with coastal regions, as its economy remained heavily dependent on coal and state-owned enterprises. In the 1990s and 2000s, the rapid expansion of coal extraction brought both economic growth and serious challenges, including industrial accidents, environmental degradation, and governance issues. In the mid-2010s, Shanxi became the focus of a large-scale anti-corruption campaign that reshaped the province's political leadership. Since then, provincial authorities have pursued economic restructuring and diversification, though structural constraints associated with resource dependence continue to pose challenges.
Following the fall of the Qing dynasty, the complex became the Shanxi military governor's headquarters, acquiring the name Dujunfu after 1916 when Yan Xishan assumed the title of provincial military governor. The existing architectural ensemble was largely shaped during the Republican period and subsequent occupation years. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the compound continued to serve as the seat of the Shanxi provincial government, a role it retained until 2019. Building No. 5 was the principal office building of the Shanxi provincial government during the PRC era.
The complex covers approximately 35,000 square meters and preserves a traditional axial layout typical of Chinese administrative architecture, including ceremonial gates, main halls, courtyards, and garden spaces. Recognized as a provincial-level protected cultural heritage site in 1986, the Dujunfu underwent major conservation and restoration campaigns beginning in the mid-2010s. In 2019, the Shanxi provincial government relocated its offices, formally ending the site's administrative use and marking its transition into a public heritage museum.
The association lacked a publicly known written charter or membership procedures. Its name, Xishan (西山), was a reversal of Shanxi (山西), and literally means 'The West Mount Society', underscoring the group's regional identity and internal cohesion. According to media reports, the meeting venue of the clique was located in the western suburbs of Beijing, and contact among its members was maintained through gatherings held at intervals of no less than once every three months. During these gatherings, luxury vehicles were reportedly arranged for transportation, while mobile phones, personal secretaries, and lovers were required to be kept away. If an official was able to obtain access to the Xishan dinner parties, this could present opportunities for promotion.
Following Xi Jinping's assumption of the post of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, central anti-corruption investigations dismantled the network. Multiple individuals identified as core participants were investigated and imprisoned, and the case was cited by disciplinary authorities as an example of illicit elite networking within the party–state system.
The province went through significant political instability since 2004, due largely to the number of scandals that have hit the province on labour safety, the environment, and the interconnected nature between the provincial political establishment and big coal companies. Yu Youjun was sent by the central government in 2005 to become Governor but resigned in the wake of the Shanxi slave labour scandal in 2007. He was succeeded by Meng Xuenong, who had been previously sacked as Mayor of Beijing in the aftermath of the SARS outbreak. Meng himself was removed from office in 2008 after only a few months on the job due to the political fallout from the 2008 Shanxi mudslide. In 2008, provincial Political Consultative Conference Chair, one of the highest-ranked provincial officials, Jin Yinhuan, died in a car accident.
Since Xi Jinping's ascendancy to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the 18th Party Congress, numerous highly ranked officials in Shanxi have been placed under investigation for corruption-related offenses, including four incumbent members Bai Yun, Chen Chuanping, Du Shanxue, and Nie Chunyu of the provincial Communist Party Standing Committee. They were all removed from office around August 2014. The following were also removed from office:
Thousands of Shanxi officials were disciplined during the anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping. This necessitated a scramble to find suitable personnel for many vacated offices.
Over centuries, Shanxi merchants developed a multi-tiered financial system serving different social strata. Pawnshops ( dangpu 當鋪) served impoverished farmers, artisans, and downwardly-mobile gentry; seal shops ( yinzihao 印子號) provided microloans to the urban poor; money shops ( qianzhuang 錢莊) served small wholesalers, retailers, and officials; and draft banks ( piaohao) handled large-scale transactions for major wholesalers and government agencies, typically exceeding 500 taels per transaction. These institutions were interconnected through capital flows: pawnshops relied on loans from money shops, which in turn obtained operating capital from draft banks.
During the late Qing dynasty, a new development occurred: the creation of piaohao (票號), which were essentially banks that provided services like money transfers, deposits, and loans. After the establishment of the first piaohao, Rishengchang, in Pingyao in 1823, Shanxi bankers dominated China's financial market. At their peak, Shanxi piaohao operated over 400 branches across China and processed the majority of the government's fiscal transfers.
Shanxi merchants continued to wield significant influence over China's economy into the Republican era. The Kung family of Taigu, led by H. H. Kung, accumulated vast wealth and wielded direct control over the national economy through his positions as Minister of Finance and Governor of the Central Bank of China until 1949.
Mining-related industries are a major part of Shanxi's economy. Shanxi possesses 260 billion metric tons of known coal deposits, about a third of China's total. As a result, Shanxi is a leading producer of coal in China and has more coal companies than any other province, with an annual production exceeding 300 million metric tonnes. The Datong (大同), Ningwu (宁武), Xishan (西山), Hedong (河东), Qinshui (沁水), and Huoxi (霍西) coalfields are some of the most important in Shanxi. Shanxi also contains about 500 million tonnes of bauxite deposits, about a third of total Chinese bauxite reserves. 3.9.1 Resources-China Mining Industry in Shanxi is centered around heavy industries such as coal and chemical production, power generation, and metal refining.
As part of an effort to promote diversification in non-resource industries, since 2004, some local governments in Shanxi province have required that coal mining companies set aside funds for investing in non-coal business like agriculture and produce processing. In 2006, the provincial government established a policy of "subsidizing peasants by coal" which made this diversification a provincewide requirement and encouraged local governments to develop policies like subsidies and favorable tax treatment to further encourage mining companies to invest in non-coal business.
There are countless military-related industries in Shanxi due to its geographic location and history as the former base of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army. Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre, one of China's three satellite launch centers, is located in the middle of Shanxi with China's largest stockpile of nuclear missiles.
Many private corporations, in joint ventures with the state-owned mining corporations, have invested billions of dollars in the mining industry of Shanxi. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing made one of his largest investments ever in China in exploiting coal gas in Shanxi. Foreign investors include mining companies from Canada, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy.
The mining-related companies include Daqin Railway Co. Ltd., which runs one of the busiest and most technologically advanced railways in China, connecting Datong and Qinhuangdao exclusively for coal shipping. The revenue of Daqin Railway Co. Ltd. is among the highest among Shanxi companies due to its export of coal to Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.
Shanxi's nominal GDP in 2011 was 1110.0 billion yuan (US$176.2 billion), ranked 21st in China. Its per-capita GDP was 21,544 yuan (US$3,154).
Shanxi is affected by cases of bad working conditions in coal mining and other heavy industries. Thousands of workers have died every year in those industries. Cases of child labour abuse were discovered in 2011. The central government has responded by increasing oversight, including the suspension of four coal mines in August 2021, as well as ongoing investigations in Shanxi and neighboring Shaanxi.
Taiyuan Economic and Technology Development Zone is a state-level development zone approved by the State Council in 2001, with a planned area of . It is only from Taiyuan Airport and from the railway station. National Highways 208 and 307 pass through the zone. So far, it has formed a "four industrial base, a professional industry park" development pattern.
Taiyuan Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
Established in 1991, Taiyuan Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone is the only state-level high-tech development zone in Shanxi, with total area of . It is close to Taiyuan Wusu Airport and Highway G208. The nearest port is Tianjin.
High-speed rail services include the Shijiazhuang–Taiyuan and Datong–Xi'an passenger dedicated lines. Brief Introduction of Shuozhou
| + | Taiyuan Wusu International Airport | TYN | 太原武宿国际机场 |
| Datong Yungang International Airport | DAT | 大同云冈国际机场 | |
| Yuncheng Yanchi International Airport | YCU | 运城盐湖国际机场 | |
| Changzhi Wangcun Airport | CIH | 长治王村机场 | |
| Xinzhou Wutaishan Airport | WUT | 忻州五台山机场 | |
| Lüliang Dawu Airport | LLV | 吕梁大武机场 | |
| Linfen Yaodu Airport | LFQ | 临汾尧都机场 | |
| Shuozhou Zirun Airport | SZH | 朔州滋润机场 |
| + Ethnic groups in Shanxi, 2000 census (2026). 9787105054251, Publishing House of Minority Nationalities. ISBN 9787105054251 |
| 99.68% |
| 0.19% |
| 0.042% |
| 0.029% |
In 2004, the birth rate was 12.36 births/1,000 population, while the death rate was 6.11 deaths/1,000 population. The sex ratio was 105.5 males/100 females.
Military police demolished a large Christian church known as Jindengtai ("Golden Lampstand") in Linfen, Shanxi, in early January 2018.
As of 2010, there were 59,709 Muslims in Shanxi.
| +Administrative divisions of Shanxi | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| sä̃1 śi1 sǝŋ2 |
| thai3 yɛ1 si3 |
| ta3 thuŋ1 si3 |
| iã1 ćhyɛ1 si3 |
| cã2 ci3 si3 |
| tieŋ4 chǝŋ1 si3 |
| ? cou1 si3 |
| tieŋ4 cuŋ1 si3 |
| yŋ3 chǝŋ1 si3 |
| ? cou1 si3 |
| ? ? si3 |
| ly2 ? si3 |
The 11 prefecture-level cities of Shanxi are subdivided into 118 county-level divisions (23 districts, 11 county-level cities, and 84 counties). Those are in turn divided into 1388 township-level divisions (561 towns, 634 townships, and 193 subdistricts). At the end of 2017, the total population of Shanxi is 37.02 million.
| + Population by urban areas of prefecture & county cities |
| 5,304,061 |
| 3,105,591 |
| 3,180,884 |
| 3,379,498 |
| 3,976,481 |
| 4,774,508 |
| 1,318,505 |
| 2,194,545 |
| 1,593,444 |
| 2,689,668 |
| 3,398,431 |
From the medieval period onward, polychrome clay sculpture became a central artistic form in Shanxi. Figures were built over wooden armatures through successive clay layers, with thick mineral pigments applied to distinguish flesh from drapery—skin often gilded or left pale, robes painted in dense reds, greens, and blues. A technique widespread across the region involved setting black glazed ceramic or glass into the eye sockets, producing a wet gleam that animates faces in dim temple interiors.
The expressive range of Shanxi sculpture extends well beyond hieratic calm. Guardian figures twist at the waist with clenched fists and furrowed brows; demons underfoot contort in exaggerated grimaces; bodhisattvas tilt their heads in gestures of attentive compassion. Attendant figures across many temple complexes display subtle asymmetries in posture and gaze, suggesting distinct personalities rather than formulaic repetition. Spatial staging further heightens dramatic effect. Suspended figures emerge from upper walls on cloud-borne platforms, their downward gazes engaging the central icons below. Arhat groupings are arranged so that gestures and sightlines interlock, generating narrative tension across the room. These compositional strategies appear throughout the region's temples, from major monastic complexes to village shrines.
In the field of early timber architecture, Shanxi preserves 495 surviving wooden structures dating to periods before the Yuan dynasty, representing approximately 85 percent of China's known extant examples. All three Tang dynasty timber buildings traditionally recognized in architectural scholarship, the main hall of Nanchan Temple, the East Main Hall of Foguang Temple, and the main hall of Guangrenwang Temple, are located in Shanxi.
The province further preserves four of the five surviving timber structures from the Five Dynasties period nationwide, as well as 150 of the 183 extant wooden buildings from the Song, Liao, and Jin periods, and 338 of the 389 known examples from the Yuan dynasty.
Across periods and media, Shanxi-linked writing and film repeatedly return to endurance under constraint, abrupt historical rupture, and the limits of individual agency. Instead of treating "resolution" as the natural endpoint, these works often linger on what remains after upheaval: routine, scars, half-preserved loyalties, and the slow moral and emotional afterlife of political change. The result is a tonal emphasis on duration: history not as a sequence of clean turns, but as a weight that settles unevenly across places and people on the land.
In premodern literature, this tendency is often exemplified by Yuan Haowen (1190–1257), whose poetry and ci lyrics repeatedly meditate on the reversals of fortune that attend dynastic change and personal loss. In vernacular modern fiction, a related sensibility surfaces in Zhao Shuli, whose village-centered narratives render historical change not as abstraction but as the slow, frictional reworking of everyday norms: marriage, authority, reputation, and the stubborn inertia of habit. In modern cultural production, comparable preoccupations recur in the cinema of Jia Zhangke, which is widely noted for its attention to temporal dislocation and social transformation in northern Chinese settings, and in the science fiction of Liu Cixin, where questions of choice and responsibility are posed against scales that exceed the human, within very different genres, as illustrating a strand of cultural expression associated with Shanxi that foregrounds fate, duration, and the uneven weight of history.
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