Location

Nantong City is located at the north bank of the estuary of Yangtze River in the east of Jiangsu province. The city faces Shanghai and Suzhou in its south across the river, and borders Taizhou and Yancheng to its north and west. The city is located between north latitude 31 ° 41′ and 32 ° 43′, and east longitude 120 ° 12′ and 121 ° 55′.

Weather

Located in the warm and wet monsoon subtropics, Nantong enjoys sufficient sunlight, profuse rainfall, and warm climate with distinct seasons. It enjoys 2100 － 2200 hours of sunshine every year, an average temperature of approximate 15 degrees, 226 days of frost-free period, and a total annual precipitation of 1000-1600mm without any observed destructive earthquake.

Resource

Nantong enjoys the advantages of Golden Coastline and Golden Waterway with its coastline extending to 436 km, along which 30 km are suitable for building wharves of 10 thousand tonnages and 40 km for deep-water berths of more than 50 thousand tonnages. Thanks to its possessed vast area of shallows, the city ranks in the top circle among coastland in terms of the reserved land resources.

Nantong boasts rich seaside tidal potential, and the estimated annual power generation capacity will reach 2.64 billion kilowatt-hours.

Its identified mineral resources cover a wide varieties such as iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, coal, marble, and etc. Thanks to its favorable location neighboring both river and sea, the city boasts its rich fishery resources covering 127 kinds of freshwater fish and another 130 kinds of near sea fishes. Lvsi fishing ground is well known national wide, and supplies commercial fishes such as hair-tail, Chinese herring, pomfret, large/small yellow croaker, swimming crab, and etc. Moreover, the fishing ground enjoys rich reserves of shellfish resources of over 80,000 tonnages, which covers clam and four-cornered clam with the title of “Best Taste in the World”, Xi Shi She, razor shell, granulous ark, fresh-water snail, and etc. Among them, the total export of clam has occupied over 60 ％ in China.

History

Nantong is an ancient city with over 1000 years of history. In Tang Dynasty (around AD 700), the city was named as “Jinghai”, and was renamed as “Tong Zhou” in the later Zhou Dynasty (AD 958). According to the records on “Wan Li Tong Zhou History”, “to the northeast of Tong Zhou, it is connected to foreign countries close to Liao Sea; to its southwest, it is connected to Wu, Yue, Chu and Shu through the river; it is further connected to Qi, Lu, Yan and Ji through inland roadways. Thus, it earns its name of Tong Zhou”. In Qing Dynasty (AD 1724), for the purpose of differentiating the city from another Tong Zhou located in Hebei province, it was renamed into Nantong Zhou. In 1912, the original administrative division based on “Zhou” was abandoned, and the city was renamed then into Nantong County and a county-level government was established. On February 2nd 1949, the city was liberated and the city of Nantong was first established. After multiple times of administrative division changes, the existing Nantong governs under itself two counties, four cities and three districts.

Administrative Division

Nantong now administers 4 county-level cities (Rugao, Tongzhou, Haimen, and Qidong), 2 counties (Haian and Rudong), and 3 districts (Chongchuan, Gangzha as well as the state Nantong Economic and Technological Development Zone). The city covers a total land area of 8,001 square kilometer and bordering sea area of about 10,000 square kilometer with its population totaling to 7.86 million.