PAO-T'OU

Pinyin Baotou, city in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of China. A prefecture-level municipality, Pao-t'ou is situated on the north bank of the Huang Ho (Yellow River) on its great northern bend. The river and its upper tributaries are navigable westward as far as Hsi-ning in Tsinghai Province and Lan-chou in Kansu Province, but southward the main stream is impeded by rapids. Pao-t'ou is of comparatively recent origin. Although the region was colonized and garrisoned during the T'ang dynasty (618907), it was afterward occupied by Mongol tribes, and as late as the 1730s Pao-t'ou was merely a hamlet. As the Ch'ing dynasty (16441911) strengthened its grip on the Mongol border regions, Pao-t'ou gradually developed into a market town. It was walled in 1871 and eventually given the status of an administrative county in 1925. Its modern growth began with the construction of a railway link with Peking, completed in 1922. It then grew rapidly into a major commercial centre for trade with Mongolia and with Northwest China, controlling a marketing area including most of what is now Ningsia Hui Autonomous Region, Kansu, Tsinghai, and parts of the Mongolian People's Republic. Exports were mostly hides, wool, and felt; chief imports were cloth, grain, drugs, and tea. The wool and hides collected by local merchant firms and by traders from Peking and Tientsin were transported to Tientsin for export. The area along the northern loop of the Huang Ho had been colonized by Chinese settlers from the 1880s onward, and Pao-t'ou became the major commercial centre for this Chinese community. The city grew rapidly, and during the Japanese occupation (193745) Pao-t'ou was a centre of the autonomous government of Meng-chiang. The Japanese began the development of light industry there and also discovered rich coal and mineral deposits nearby. After 1949 Pao-t'ou was completely transformed. Its rail link with Peking, destroyed during the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, was restored in 1953 and double-tracked in the late 1950s. In 1955 construction was begun of a line following the Huang Ho to Lan-chou, where it now connects with other rail links to Szechwan Province, to central China, and to Wu-lu-mu-ch'i in the Sinkiang Uigur Autonomous Region. Under the First Five-Year Plan (195357), Pao-t'ou was the site of a major integrated iron and steel complex, based on the rich iron-ore deposits at Pai-yn-o-po to the north, with which it has been linked by rail; on coking coal from Shih-kuai-kou in the Ta-ch'ing Shan; and on local limestone. The complex was part of the move to relocate heavy industry centres away from the coastal zone. The completion of the industrial installation was announced in 1961, but full operation was not achieved until the late 1960s, allegedly because of the withdrawal of Soviet advisers and non-delivery of Soviet equipment. An aluminum industry based on the use of large thermal generating plants and a local sugar-refining industry have also been developed. Pao-t'ou has become one of China's chief industrial centres and constitutes a major industrial base not merely for Inner Mongolia and the Northwest but also for China as a whole. Although its growth has been phenomenal, some of it is due to the expansion of the municipal area to include the coal mines to the east and the iron and steel complex to the west. Pop. (1983 est.) 1,042,000.