Henan

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Henan is a province at the center of China in more ways than one. With over 99 million people as of 2020, it ranks as the world's seventh-most populous administrative division. Four of China's historical capitals sit within its borders: Luoyang, Anyang, Kaifeng, and Zhengzhou. Those are not simply old cities. They are places where dynasties rose and fell, where the Yellow River made and unmade civilizations, and where some of the most catastrophic disasters in recorded history unfolded. To understand Henan is to understand a place shaped by geography as much as by politics. The province straddles the divide between northern and southern China, hosts the legendary Shaolin Temple, and claims a connection to Taoism's founding figure. Yet for all its ancient prestige, Henan today is a province whose people have faced discrimination within China itself. How did a region once central to the entire Chinese world come to carry that burden? And what does its present-day economy, the fifth largest among all Chinese provinces with a nominal GDP of US$926 billion in 2021, say about where it is headed?

• 2. Cradle and Catastrophe

  ›

  Neolithic cultures were already thriving in what is now northern Henan thousands of years before any dynasty claimed the land. Archaeological sites document the Yangshao Culture and the Longshan Culture operating there during the Neolithic Era. The later Erlitou culture has been controversially linked to the Xia dynasty, regarded as the first and largely legendary Chinese dynasty. When the Zhou dynasty arrived from Shaanxi in the 11th century BC and overthrew the Shang, they pulled the political center westward for the first time. In 721 BC the Spring and Autumn period began, a long era of warfare and fragmented authority. The Zhou king kept his seat in Luoyang, but his control over the feudal kingdoms had effectively collapsed. Laozi, the founder of Taoism, was born in northern Chu, the part of that fractured landscape that would become Henan. The province's position at the heart of the central plain made it the prize that rival states fought to control, and that strategic centrality would prove a recurring source of both wealth and suffering.

• 3. The Weight of Kaifeng

  ›

  Kaifeng's story runs like a thread through the middle centuries of Chinese imperial history. After the Tang dynasty fell to internal strife, the Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms from 907 to 960 saw Kaifeng serve as the capital of four successive dynasties in rapid succession. When the Song dynasty reunified China in 982, it too chose Kaifeng as its seat. Under Song rule, Kaifeng grew larger than both Luoyang and Chang'an, surpassing them to become the largest city in China and, by the accounts that survive, the largest city in the world at that time. That peak did not last. The Jurchen conquerors designated Kaifeng their southern capital from 1157, or by some sources 1161, and rebuilt portions of it during their occupation. Centuries later, in 1938 and during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city's fate echoed through a decision made far from its walls: the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek bombed the Huayuankou dam in Zhengzhou specifically to slow the Imperial Japanese Army after it captured Kaifeng. The resulting floods spread across Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

• 4. Disaster Upon Disaster

  ›

  In 1942, Henan was struck by a famine caused by drought, locust swarms, and wartime destruction, a combination that the province was ill-equipped to withstand. Then came the Great Leap Forward. In 1958, Yashan in Suiping County became the first people's commune in China, marking the official launch of that national campaign. In the famines of the early 1960s attributed to the Great Leap Forward, millions of people in Henan died. The suffering was severe enough to produce active resistance: locals turned to banditry, and in 1959 a peasant uprising broke out, lasting twenty days before it was put down. A flooding of the Huai River in the summer of 1950 had already prompted the construction of dams across central and southern Henan. Those dams faced their greatest test in August 1975, when Typhoon Nina brought rainfall that many of them could not withstand. Sixty-two dams collapsed, the largest being the Banqiao Dam in Biyang County. The flooding spread across counties throughout Zhumadian Prefecture and downstream, killing at least 26,000 people. Unofficial estimates that include deaths from subsequent epidemics and famine range as high as 171,000 or even 230,000. That disaster is considered the deadliest dam-related catastrophe in human history. In July 2021, flooding struck again, killing 302 people and causing an estimated US$12.7 billion in economic damage.

• 5. Land Between Rivers

  ›

  The Yellow River enters Henan from the northwest through the Sanmenxia Reservoir, flows past Luoyang, and then encounters the flat expanse of the North China Plain. As the river slows across the plains, the silt it carries from the Loess Plateau settles and raises the riverbed, a process that has fed centuries of flooding and shaped the entire agricultural character of the region. Most of Henan lies within that plain, an area historically called the breadbasket of China. The Taihang Mountains intrude into the northwest, the Xionger and Funiu Mountains form a plateau network to the west, and the Dabie Mountains separate the south from Hubei province. In the far east of this mountainous zone, close to the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, stands Mount Song, home to the Shaolin Temple. The Huai River in southern Henan serves as a recognized boundary between northern and southern Chinese climate and culture. Unlike much of northern China, desertification is not a widespread problem in Henan, though sandstorms occur near the Yellow River where the river's sand content is high. The province's highest point, Laoyachanao, rises to 2,413.8 meters above sea level.

• 6. A Province of Many Millions

  ›

  Under the hukou household registration system, Henan is counted as China's most populous province, with over 103 million people, because migrant workers from Henan are tallied as residents of the province even when they live and work elsewhere. The census figure of approximately 98.2 million permanent residents ranks Henan third among Chinese provinces after Guangdong and Shandong. Henan's birth rate stood at 7.06 in 2023, down from 12.70 in 2015, while the death rate climbed to 8.00 from 7.05 over the same period. The natural growth rate ticked into negative territory at -0.94% in 2023. Life expectancy is 77.6 years, in line with national averages. The urbanization rate sits at 58%, below the national average of 67%, though the urban population grew from 43.45 million in 2014 to 57.01 million by the time of the more recent count, largely through internal migration within the province. The gender imbalance traced to the one-child policy was stark: the ratio reached 118.46 males for every 100 females in 2000. After Henan banned sex-selective abortion and introduced fines, that ratio dropped to 117.8 in 2010, then to 108.4 in 2020, and a 2023 National Bureau of Statistics figure placed it at 100.57, though outside sources dispute that figure.

• 7. Research, Faith, and Economy

  ›

  Henan hosts more than 156 institutions of higher education, a count that ranks first in Central China. As of 2025, three of its cities placed in the top 140 globally for scientific research output as measured by the Nature Index: Zhengzhou at 58th, Kaifeng at 136th, and Xinxiang at 138th. That places Henan among only three Chinese provinces with at least three cities in that top-140 ranking. In matters of religion, a 2012 survey found that around 13% of Henan's population belongs to organized religions, with Buddhists at 6.4%, Protestants at 5.6%, Muslims at 1.3%, and Catholics at 0.5%. Henan holds the largest Christian population of any Chinese province by both total number and share, approximately 7 million Christians representing about 6.1% of the population, though a 2009 survey had put that figure at 9.33%. In 2019 and 2020, Communist officials demolished two churches: the True Jesus Church near Zhumadian and the Sunzhuang Church. The province's economy rests on manufacturing and services, with Henan holding the second largest molybdenum reserves in the world and significant deposits of coal, aluminum, and tungsten in its western reaches. Limestone reserves are estimated at over 24 billion tons. The Jingguang and Longhai Railways intersect at Zhengzhou, making it a transportation node the province has built its economic planning around.