KUEI-YANG

also spelled Kweiyang, Pinyin Guiyang city in central Kweichow sheng (province), China. Kuei-yang is the provincial capital. The city is situated on the Nan-ming River, a headstream of the Wu River, which eventually joins the Yangtze River at Fou-ling in Szechwan province. Kuei-yang is a natural route centre, with comparatively easy access northward to Szechwan and northeast to Hunan province. Originally the area was populated by non-Chinese. The Sui dynasty (AD 581618) had a commandery there, and the T'ang dynasty (618907) a prefecture. They were, however, no more than military outposts, and it was not until the Yan (Mongol) invasion of southwest China in 1279 that the area was made the seat of an army and a pacification office. Chinese settlement in the area also began at that time, and, under the Ming (13681644) and Ch'ing (16441911) dynasties, the town became the seat of a superior prefecture named Kuei-yang. Locally Kuei-yang was an important administrative and commercial centre with two distinct merchant communities, consisting of the Szechwanese, who lived in the new northern part of the city, and those from Hunan, Canton, and Kwangsi province, who lived in the old southern part. Nevertheless, until the Sino-Japanese War (193745), Kuei-yang was no more than the capital of one of China's least-developed provinces. As elsewhere in the southwest, considerable economic progress was made under the special circumstances of wartime. Highway communications with K'un-ming in Yunnan province and with Chungking in Szechwan (China's wartime provisional capital) and into Hunan were established. Work was begun on a railway from Liu-chou in Kwangsi, and after 1949 this development was accelerated. Kuei-yang has subsequently become a major provincial city and industrial base. In 1959 the rail link to Kwangsi was completed, and other lines also lead north to Chungking, west to K'un-ming, and east to Ch'ang-sha. Coal is mined in the locality of Kuei-yang and An-shun, and there are large thermal generating plants at Kuei-yang and Tu-yn, supplying electricity for the city's industry. A large iron and steel plant came into production in Kuei-yang in 1960, supplying the local machinery-manufacturing industry. Large deposits of bauxite have been discovered to the north, and by the 1970s Kuei-yang had become a major producer of aluminum. Kuei-yang also manufactures industrial and mining equipment, as well as railway vehicles and equipment. It has a large chemical industry, producing fertilizers, and a rubber industry, manufacturing automobile tires. Kuei-yang also has textile plants and makes glass, paper, and other consumer goods. The city is the cultural centre of Kweichow province and has a university, a teacher-training college, and a medical school. Pop. (1989 est.) 963,700.