Yunnan

Yunnan: Yulongxue Mountain

Yunnan province, China

Yunnan, Wade-Giles romanization Yün-nan, conventional Yunnan, sheng (province) of China, a mountain and plateau region on the country’s southwestern frontier. It is bounded by the Tibet Autonomous Region to the northwest, the provinces of Sichuan to the north and Guizhou to the east, and the Zhuang Autonomous Region of Guangxi to the southeast. To the south and southeast it adjoins Laos and Vietnam, and to the southwest and west it shares a long border with Myanmar (Burma). The provincial capital is Kunming, in the northeast-central part of Yunnan.

The name Yunnan has been in use since the region was made a province under the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1206–1368). Literally meaning “South of the Yun,” it denotes the location as south of the Yun Range (Yun Ling, “Cloudy Mountains”). Although richly endowed with natural resources, Yunnan remained an underdeveloped region until relatively recent times; for centuries the ethnic, religious, and political separatism of the province posed obstacles to the efforts of a central government to control it. Although much of the province is still fairly underdeveloped and isolated, its economic, political, and cultural integration into the whole of China is essentially complete. Area 168,400 square miles (436,200 square km). Pop. (2020) 47,209,277.