Dongguan^{[lower-alpha 1]} is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. An important industrial city in the Pearl River Delta, Dongguan borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the north, Huizhou to the northeast, Shenzhen to the south, and the Pearl River to the west. It is part of the Pearl River Delta built-up (or metro) area with more than 65.57 million inhabitants as of the 2020 census spread over nine municipalities across an area of 19,870 square kilometers (7,670 sq mi).^[1]

Quick Facts 东莞市Tungkun; Tungkuan, Country ...

Dongguan 东莞市 Tungkun; Tungkuan
Prefecture-level city
Dongguan CBD Dongguan Avenue Humen Mountain Yinxian Mountain Resort Keyuan
Location of Dongguan in Guangdong
Dongguan Location in China
Coordinates (Dongguan government): 23°01′16″N 113°45′07″E
Country	China
Province	Guangdong
County	331 AD
City (County-level)	September 1985
City (Prefecture-level)	1 January 1988
Municipal seat	Nancheng Subdistrict
Government
• Type	Prefecture-level city
• Body	Dongguan Municipal People's Congress
• CCP Secretary	Liang Weidong
• Congress Chairman	Liang Weidong
• Mayor	Xiao Yafei
• CPPCC Chairman	Luo Zhaoqun
Area
• Prefecture-level city	2,465 km2 (952 sq mi)
• Urban	2,465 km2 (952 sq mi)
• Metro	19,870.4 km2 (7,672.0 sq mi)
Elevation	8 m (26 ft)
Population  (2020 census)[1]
• Prefecture-level city	10,466,625
• Density	4,200/km2 (11,000/sq mi)
• Urban	10,466,625
• Urban density	4,200/km2 (11,000/sq mi)
• Metro	65,655,622
• Metro density	3,300/km2 (8,600/sq mi)
GDP[2]
• Prefecture-level city	CN¥ 1.086 trillion US$ 168.3 billion
• Per capita	CN¥ 103,284 US$ 16,010
Time zone	UTC+8 (China Standard Time)
Postal code	523000
Area code	769
ISO 3166 code	CN-GD-19
Licence plate prefixes	粤S
City flower	Yulan magnolia Magnolia denudata
Website	www.dg.gov.cn

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Dongguan's city administration is considered especially progressive in seeking foreign direct investment.^[4][who?] Dongguan ranks behind only Shenzhen, Shanghai and Suzhou in exports among Chinese cities, with $65.54 billion in shipments. It is also home to one of the world's largest shopping malls, the New South China Mall,^[5] which is seeing increased activity.^[6] Although the city is geographically and thus culturally Cantonese in the Weitou form and as well as culturally Hakka in the prefectures of Fenggang and Qingxi, the majority of the modern-day population speaks Mandarin due to the large influx of economic migrants from other parts of China.^[7] The city is home to several universities, including Guangdong University of Science and Technology, Guangdong Medical University and Dongguan University of Technology.

In the Pearl River Delta region Dongguan was the first urban area where joint production was implemented between village collectives, local Chinese Communist Party cadre, and foreign investors. In the 1990s this type of enterprise accounted for around 20 percent of all foreign direct investments and approximately 50 percent of exports by the People's Republic of China (PRC).^[8]

Today Dongguan is a major manufacturing hub, although it suffered significant loss of economic activity from the impact of the 2007–2008 financial crisis.^[9][10] The largest industrial sector is manufacturing of electronics and communications equipment; international companies with facilities in Dongguan include DuPont, Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Maersk.^[11]

The Dongguan Science and Technology Museum opened in December 2005 and is the high tech commerce park in the Songshan Lake district, which opened in 2003. The museum is a partnership with the Global IT Academy of the Brea Olinda Unified School District in Southern California, demonstrating the city's emphasis on attracting technology business. The city announced in 2005 a planned investment of US$500 million over five years for technology infrastructure improvements. The city administration is considered especially progressive in seeking foreign direct investment.^{[citation needed]} Among the investors were Brazilian shoe manufacturers. Brazil excelled in manufacturing cheap footwear in the 1970s and 80s. The Brazilian community in Dongguan numbered 4,000 people in 2013.^[12][13]

While the city is the fourth largest export region in China, behind Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Suzhou, Dongguan has yet to gain the kind of name recognition realized by Shenzhen outside of China. This may be because the city has focused on infrastructure investment rather than the direct targeting of major corporations with financial incentives for economic development. Nevertheless, Dongguan has been identified by high level representatives of the National Development and Reform Commission of the central government as one of the most significant growth regions for technology in the coming years. As part of this plan, the Dongguan local government announced a plan to create and support a 100-billion-yuan photovoltaic manufacturing industry by 2015.^[14]

To cope with the impact of the financial crisis, Dongguan city is looking to industrial restructuring, focusing on four pillar platforms, these are governmental services, supporting measures, technology upgrade, and market expansion. The city government claims that this process has already enhanced its capability for independent innovation and the quantity of patent applications in 2008.^[15][16]

On 9 February 2014 China Central Television aired a special on the sex industry in Dongguan. The same day Guangdong Provincial Police raided and closed all saunas, bars, foot massages, karaokes, and other businesses associated with the sex industry. The economic impact of this crackdown is believed to be 50 billion yuan, or just over $8 billion US dollars. The residual effects of the crackdown affected the livelihood of taxi drivers and restaurants who, while not directly involved in the sex industry, benefited from the increased clientele.^[17][18]

The city ranked 13th in Forbes China's listing of the most innovative mainland cities, as well as 18th in Foreign Policy's listing of the most dynamic cities in the world.^[19]

The earliest traces of human habitation in the area stretch back 5,000 years. In 1839, at the outset of the First Opium War, large quantities of seized opium were destroyed in Humen, a town that now belongs to Dongguan. Several of the major battles of the war were fought in this area.^{[citation needed]}

During the Second World War, the city served as the base for guerrilla resistance against the occupation that came with the Second Sino-Japanese War.^[20]

Being a district of the Huiyang prefecture before, as its economy overshadowed the prefectural capital of Huizhou itself, Dongguan earned city status in 1985, and was upgraded to prefecture city status three years later.^[21] During this period the city changed its focus from an agricultural town into a manufacturing hub, with an average annual growth of up to 18 percent.^[22]

Geographically, the city is mostly hilly to the east and flat in the west, with 115.98 kilometers (72.07 mi) of shoreline. The urban center of Dongguan is 50 kilometers (31 mi) from that of Guangzhou to its north, 90 kilometers (56 mi) from Shenzhen to its south, 47 nautical miles (87 km) from Hong Kong and 48 nautical miles (89 km) from Macau by waterway. It is positioned in the middle of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen economic corridor, a hub for both land and sea transport.

Of Dongguan's total area, 27 percent is water, 25 percent forest land, and 13 percent arable land, while 35 percent of its land area has been fully developed.^{[citation needed]}

Dongguan has a dry-winter humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cwa), with abundant sunshine and rainfall over the year. It lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer. The average temperature is 22.9 °C (73.2 °F) throughout the year with average rainfall of 1,893 millimeters (74.5 in).^[23] With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 23 percent in March to 57 percent in October, the city receives 1892 hours of bright sunshine annually.

Dongguan had an estimated 6,949,800 inhabitants at the end of 2008, among whom 1,748,700 were local residents and 5,201,100 permanent migrants from other parts of the country.^[26] At the 2010 Census the population had expanded to 8,220,237.^[27] The number reached 10.5 million by 2020.^[1]

Dongguan is the hometown for many overseas Chinese, the family origin of over 700,000 people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau and over 200,000 Chinese nationals living abroad.

Dongguan is a prefecture-level city of the Guangdong province. An uncommon administrative feature is that it has no county-level division, but the municipal government does group the 32 township-level divisions into six district areas. The city government directly administers four Subdistricts and 28 towns:

Dongguan is dubbed as a "National Basketball City" and is the only prefecture-level city with three professional basketball clubs in China. Established in 1993, the Guangdong Southern Tigers are the first professional basketball club in China, and won eleven Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) championships.

The city hosted Weightlifting events during the 2010 Asian Games at the Dongguan Arena.^[34]

The 16,000 seat Dongguan Basketball Center was one of the venues for the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup.^[35] The venue has also hosted the 2015 Sudirman Cup badminton tournament.^[36]

Dongguan Yulan Theater is one of China's newest multipurpose performing arts venues. With its multi-layered exterior suggestive of an unfolding lotus petal, it has become a landmark in Dongguan city. The new cultural hub houses two theaters presenting a full schedule of performances, including Romeo and Juliet and the Chinese classic Butterfly Lovers. So far Dongguan has produced seven original musicals by its own and made a roadshow of 60 performances in over 30 cities of China.^{[37][citation needed]}

The city and province have been the recent focus of press and journalist attention with coverage of the many young Chinese workers, principally females (so-called factory girls), from agricultural areas who work in the area's factories and manufacturing/assembly facilities, where many are housed in large dormitories, usually several to a room.^[38]

An article in the High Tech Misery in China series reports research conducted, over 2008 to 2009, on working conditions at one of the city's major keyboard makers (Dongguan Meitai Plastics & Electronics Factory); in it, Meitai factory won some unwanted attention due to the poor conditions for its young, mostly female workers. The article^[39] includes details of those conditions, photos, translations of employer's rules and evidence that well-known computer brands use this keyboard supplier's products.

Also, Dongguan has built a notoriety within China for its various types of brothels, massage parlors, nightclubs, sauna centers and karaoke bars. The city had more than 120 top-end luxury hotels and hundreds of other mid-range places that offer illegal sexual services or lease floors to sex operators, and many parts of the broader service sector benefit from the trade brought by visitors.^[40] Although much of the business is illegal, police operations to limit these activities were for a long time largely ineffective, in part because corrupt members of the local administration and other officials have business interests in the sector.^[41][42] On 9 February 2014, CCTV aired a report about prostitution in Dongguan. In reaction, on the same day, Dongguan police launched a crackdown on brothels, massage parlors, nightclubs, sauna centres and karaoke bars, leading to some commentary that the city's days as China's sex capital were numbered.^[43][44]

The city is home to 650 educational institutions: one general college, a TV University as well as technical and vocational schools, 550 primary schools and 480 kindergartens. Also, Dongguan is home to a wide range of international schools due to the large expat community.

The number of professional teachers, including those at kindergartens, totals 20,268. A comparatively integrated educational system has been set up including preschool, basic, vocational, higher and lifelong adult education. Senior high school education has developed since 1995.

The Dongguan University of Technology is located in Dongguan.

Tungwah Wenzel International School ^[45](TWIS) houses an Olympic-sized swimming pool and one of the first Padel courts in South China. TWIS became the first International Baccalaureate (IB) continuum school in Dongguan in December 2021. It now offers PYP (Primary Year Program), Middle Year Program (MYP) and Diploma Program (authorized on October 25, 2021) education. The school is located at: No. 17 Keyuan Road, Songshan Lake High-Tech Industrial Zone, Dongguan, Guangdong, China.

Dongguan hosts the following annual festivals:^[46]

• Dongguan Lingnan Arts Festival (January)
• Dongkeng Workers Festival (Second day of the second lunar month)
• Machong Guanyin Festival (Nineteenth day of the second lunar month)
• Qingxi Flower Festival (April)
• Tea Tea Garden Festival (April)
• Qiaotou Lotus Art Festival (June)
• Qishi Qiufeng Culture Festival (August)
• Machong "Scent of Four Seasons" Cultural Art Festival (September)
• Zhangmutou Hong Kong Tourism Festival (September)
• Fenggang Hakka Art Festival (During the Lunar Mid-autumn Festival)
• Xiegang Mountain Climbing Festival (Third week of September)
• (Tangxia) Band Festival (October)
• Shatian Water Culture Festival (October to November)
• Hengli Niuxu Folk Festival (November)
• Liaobu Tourism and Cultural Festival (December)

• List of twin towns and sister cities in China
• Lanwa FC — former football club
• New South China Mall — World's second largest mall
• A Touch of Sin — a film that is partly set in Dongguan