Rehe Province

Rehe Province, known at the time as Jehol Province from an earlier romanization, was a former Chinese special administrative region and province centered on the city of Rehe, now known as Chengde.

Jehol Province 熱河省
Province of the Republic of China (1928–1933, 1933–1949) Province of Manchukuo (1933–1945) Province of the People's Republic of China (1949–1955)
1928–1955
Map of Jehol within the ROC
Map of Jehol within the PRC
Capital	Chengteh
Area
• 1947	179,982 km2 (69,491 sq mi)
Population
• 1947	6,106,974
History
• Jehol Special Administrative Region established	1914
• Established	1928
• Disestablished	1955
Preceded by Succeeded by Zhili Hebei Liaoning Inner Mongolia
Today part of	China ∟ Hebei ∟ Liaoning ∟ Inner Mongolia

Rehe Province
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	熱河省
Simplified Chinese	热河省
Postal	Jehol Province
Literal meaning	Hot River Province
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Rèhé Shěng Wade–Giles Jê-ho Sheng
Rehe Special Area
Traditional Chinese	熱河特別區
Simplified Chinese	热河特别区
Postal	Jehol Special Area
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Rèhé Tèbiéqū Wade–Giles Jê-ho T'e-pieh-ch'ü
Mongolian name
Mongolian script	ᠬᠠᠯᠠᠭᠤᠨ ᠭᠣᠣᠯ

Administration

Rehe was north of the Great Wall and east of Mongolia in southwestern Manchuria. Its capital and largest city was Chengde. The second largest city was Chaoyang, followed by Chifeng. The province covered 114,000 square kilometers.

History

Rehe was once at the core of the Khitan-led Liao Dynasty. Rehe was conquered by the Manchu banners before they took possession of Beijing in 1644. Between 1703 and 1820, the Qing emperors spent almost each summer in their summer Mountain Resort in Chengde. They governed the empire from Chengde, and received their foreign diplomats and representatives of vassal and tributary countries. The Kangxi emperor restricted the admission to the forests and prairies of Rehe to the court's hunting expeditions and to the maintenance of the imperial cavalry. Agricultural settlements were at first forbidden to Han Chinese. In the early 19th century, by which time Rehe had become part of the province of Zhili, migrants from Hebei and Liaoning settled in Rehe and displaced the Mongol communities.

The Republic of China created the Jehol Special Area in 1914 and Jehol Province in 1923. To form a buffer zone between China proper and Japanese-controlled Manchukuo, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Jehol in Operation Nekka on 21 January 1933. It was subsequently annexed by the Empire of Manchukuo, as Jehol Province. The seizure of Jehol deteriorated relations between Japan and China, and was one of the incidents that led to the Second Sino-Japanese War.

At the end of World War II, when the Republic of China resumed control of Manchuria, the Kuomintang government continued to administer the area as a separate province, reverting its name to Jehol Province, with its capital in Hailar. After the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, establishment of the People's Republic of China, and enactment of pinyin in 1958, the area has retrospectively become known as Rehe Province. However, the province had already been divided between Hebei Province, Liaoning Province, Tianjin, and Inner Mongolia in 1955.

Bibliography

• Hedin, Sven (1933). Jehol: City of Emperors. Reprint (2000): Pilgrim's Book House, Varanasi. ISBN 81-7769-009-4.
• Forêt, Philippe (2000). "Mapping Chengde. The Qing Landscape Enterprise". 2000: University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 0-8248-2293-5.