Hainan Island

Hainan is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China, consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. Hainan Island, the largest and most populous island in China, makes up the vast majority of the province. "Hainan", the name of the island and the province, literally means "south of the sea", reflecting its position south of the Qiongzhou Strait, which separates it from Guangdong's Leizhou Peninsula and the rest of the Chinese mainland. In the Chinese language, Hainan is officially known as Hainan Dao. The province has land of 33,920 square kilometers, of which Hainan the island is 32,900 square kilometers and the rest is over 200 islands scattered across three archipelagos: Zhongsha, Xisha and Nansha. It was part of Guangdong from 1950–88, after which it resumed as a top-tier entity and almost immediately made the largest Special Economic Zone by Deng Xiaoping as part of the then-ongoing Chinese economic reform program.

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