Taizhou () is a city in Jiangsu province in eastern China. Situated on the north bank of the Yangtze River, it borders Nantong to the east, Yancheng to the north and Yangzhou to the west.
The 2020 Chinese census counted its population at 4,512,762 of whom 1,504,014 live in the built-up (or metro) area made of three urban districts (Hailing, Jiangyan and Gaogang).
Historically known as Hailing (often interpreted as"hill by the sea"), Taizhou was established as a county no later than the 2nd century BCE. Its administrative center was located on an ancient sandspit along the north bank of the Yangtze River, at an elevation of about 6âÂÂ7 meters, while Xinghua to the north lay in the Lixiahe lowlands. Over the following centuries, sedimentation at the Yangtze estuary caused the coastline to shift southeastward. As a result, the southern regions of Taizhou and Taixing gradually emerged as land, and Jingjiang, originally a sandbar, had accreted to the north bank of the Yangtze by the turn of the 17th century.
The shifting coastline created extensive coastal salt fields in and around Taizhou, and the city at times served as a regional hub of salt administration, with the Hailing Salt Directorate established there in the Tang dynasty. In the imperial salt system, the Taizhou Branch Office of the Lianghuai Salt Distribution Commission was subordinate to the commission's headquarters in Yangzhou. Several presentâÂÂday countyâÂÂlevel jurisdictions to the east and north, such as Dongtai, Hai'an, and Rugao, trace their origins to historical saltâÂÂfield settlements that eventually developed into county seats.
From the Eastern Han onward, Taizhou was mostly subordinate to Guangling (later Yangzhou). Under the Southern Tang, a prefectureâÂÂlevel Taizhou was first established; it was briefly elevated to the status of a lu (circuit) under the Yuan dynasty before returning to Yangzhou's jurisdiction.
In the mid-Ming dynasty, Wang Gen originally worked as a salt laborer under the Taizhou Branch Office. Later, as a leading disciple of Wang Yangming, he was invited to preside over Anding Academy in Taizhou in 1526. His lectures there attracted a group of local followers who became his first core disciples, and their activities subsequently gave rise to the "Taizhou School," a radical branch of the School of Mind noted for its populist character and sometimes described as its "left wing."
After the Taiping forces captured Yangzhou, the Lianghuai Salt Distribution Commission was temporarily relocated to Taizhou. In the 1860s, a General Bureau of Merchant Recruitment was established in Taizhou to recruit merchants for salt licenses, who would then pay taxes and transport salt. However, as the salt pans in the Huainan region were gradually abolished and replaced by reclaimed farmland, Taizhou's economic structure underwent significant adjustment.
By the early 20th century, local merchant groups had expanded their influence, and chambers of commerce were established successively in Taizhou, Hai'an, and Jiangyan, making Taizhou one of the few countyâÂÂlevel jurisdictions in China to host three formal chambers of commerce within a single county. These chambers even organized their own armed security corps. In the 1911 Revolution, one such small armed force helped overthrow Qing rule in the locality.
During the Second SinoâÂÂJapanese War, Li Changjiang, overall commander of guerrilla forces in the JiangsuâÂÂAnhui border region, made Taizhou his headquarters. After submitting to the collaborationist Wang Jingwei regime, his forces were reorganized as the First Group Army. To the north, they clashed with troops loyal to the Nationalist government in Jiangsu under Han Deqin, while to the south they engaged the Central Jiangsu detachments of the New Fourth Army, which were active in neighboring Taixing.
On 21 January 1949, the People's Liberation Army entered Taizhou. On 23 April of the same year, the East China Military Region Navy was formally established at Baima Temple in Taizhou. Official narratives often regard this event as one of the founding moments of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and Taizhou has accordingly been styled "the birthplace of the People's Navy."
After the founding of the People's Republic, the Administrative Office of Northern Jiangsu (Subei) was for a time located in Taizhou before being moved to Yangzhou. Subsequently, a countyâÂÂlevel Taizhou City was established for the urban area, while the surrounding rural area continued as Taixian (Tai County); the two units were merged in 1959 and separated again in 1962, both remaining under the jurisdiction of Yangzhou Prefecture. On the eve of Yangzhou's elevation to a prefectureâÂÂlevel city in 1983, the economic scale of the two countyâÂÂlevel units was roughly comparable.
Thereafter, Taizhou functioned as a countyâÂÂlevel city under the newly established prefectureâÂÂlevel Yangzhou. During this period, the local economy grew rapidly, and the city became a growing center of manufacturing, with Chunlan Group, then a dominant local enterprise, contributing close to half of Taizhou's industrial output by 1994.
Some scholars have argued that during this period there was a discrepancy between the administrative status of Taizhou and its level of economic development relative to Yangzhou. In 1996, the former countyâÂÂlevel Taizhou City was merged with Taixian, Taixing, Xinghua, and Jingjiang to form the presentâÂÂday prefectureâÂÂlevel Taizhou.
The prefecture-level city of Taizhou administers six county-level divisions, including two districts and four county-level cities.
These are further divided into 105 township-level divisions, including 91 towns, eight townships and six subdistricts.
At the end of 2019, the total household registration population was 5,005,500, and the birth population was 35,300 (birth rate 7.02%), a decrease of 1.37 thousand points from the previous year. 43,400 people died in 2019 (mortality rate 8.64%), an increase of 0.2 thousand points from the previous year. At the end of each year, the city's permanent population was 4,636,100, an increase of 400 over the previous year. At the end of 2019, the urbanization population of permanent residents reached 66.8%, an increase of 0.8 percentage points over the previous year.
Taizhou lies at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Jinghang Canal (Grand Canal of China), in the south-central Jiangsu Province, which is on the north bank of lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the south end of Jianghuai Plain. Its latitude ranges from about 32ð 02 â 33ð11 N and longitude 119ð 38 â 120ð 32 E, with a total area of .
Neighbouring areas: Yangzhou to the west, Nantong to the east, and Yancheng to the north.
As with the rest of central and southern Jiangsu, Taizhou has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), influenced by the East Asian Monsoon, with cold, damp, but comparatively dry, winters, and hot, humid summers with copious rain. The normal monthly mean temperature ranges from in January to in July, while the annual mean is . Nearly half of the mean annual rainfall of is distributed June to August.
Taizhou is a center for flour mills, textile works, fishing net manufacturing, and other industries based on local agriculture.
In the past 20 years, the economic growth has remained stable with an average annual growth rate exceeding 10%. It is one of the central cities inside the Yangtse River Delta with its developed industry, convenient transportation and prosperous commerce. In 2024, the GDP reached RMB 702.09 billion yuan, the GDP per capita RMB 156,351 yuan, equals to 21,954 dollars, the fiscal revenue RMB 37.5 billion yuan, the total amount of bank deposits RMB 688 billion yuan. Five county-level cities or districts are ranked among the "China's Top 100 Counties with Greatest Comprehensive Power". It boasts numbers of large-sized enterprises or groups, such as Chunlan Group Corp.
Taizhou was among the first few cities in Jiangsu to be recognized as having a famous cultural history. In 1990, Heheng village in Jiangyan County was awarded Global 500 Roll of Honor by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) because of its success in protecting the environment while increasing the grain yield and its wide use of marsh biogas ponds.
Taizhou's China Medical City (CMC) is a specialized development zone located south of downtown Hailing district; it has attracted major international and domestic corporations who have established facilities here since its establishment in 2010. To date, more than 800 pharmaceutical enterprises have located businesses and incubation centers in CMC. Pharma companies include AstraZeneca, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Boehringer-Ingelheim, CSPC Pharmaceutical Group and Neptunus Pharmaceutical, as well as Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Company.
Taizhou is twinned with:
The G2 BeijingâÂÂShanghai Expressway and Jiangsu Provincial Highway 29 (S29 Yancheng-Jingjiang Expressway; ) pass through the city from north to south, and Jiangsu Provincial Highway 28 (S28 Qidong-Yangzhou Expressway; ) from west to east.
Taizhou Municipality has two Yangtze River crossings, the Taizhou Yangtze River Bridge from Gaogang District to Yangzhong and the Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge from Jingjiang to Jiangyin.
The routes to get to Taizhou includes:
Qintong Boat Festival is held in Qingming (around April 4âÂÂ6) every year. During the festival boats from nearby villages and towns converge on Xique Lake for a few days of rejoicing. Theatrical performances, dragon and lion dances, and other folk dances are staged right on board the boats.
The lake located in Qingtong town, north of Jiangyan city. The water comes from the Nanhu (), Xique (), and Beihu () rivers. It is part of Qintong Swamp.
Biggest reserve outside of Dafeng.