Tongwei County is located in the middle of
Gansu province, the People's Republic of China, with east longitude between 104°57' and north latitude between 34°55' and 35°29'. It is under the administration of the
prefecture-level city
A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure.
During the Republican era, many of China ...
of
Dingxi. Its postal code is 743300. The total population at the end of 2009 was 458 thousand, including agricultural population of 405.8 thousand which accounts for 88.6% of the total population, and the total number of households were 110.1 thousand, including 87.5 thousand rural households that account for 79.47% of the total households. Tongwei County is thus an area that is predominant on agriculture. Due to the loess landscape with steep gullies, the roads and rural settlement layout is very unevenly distributed.
History
According to archaeological findings, people inhabited in Tongwei county four to five thousand years ago. Pottery of
Yuanyu culture and
Qijia culture
The Qijia culture (2200 BC – 1600 BC) was an early Bronze Age culture distributed around the upper Yellow River region of Gansu (centered in Lanzhou) and eastern Qinghai, China. It is regarded as one of the earliest bronze cultures in China.
T ...
has been found in Tongwei. The area has been an administrative county since the 3rd year of
Yuanding (元鼎三年, 113 BC).
Tongwei county was formally created in fifth year of Congning era, Northern Song dynasty (1106 AD). It suffered extensive damage and saw 73,000 deaths during the
1718 Tongwei–Gansu earthquake.
During
Great Chinese Famine, at least 80,000 people died from famine.
Administrative divisions
Tongwei is divided in 14 towns and 4 townships.
;Towns
;Townships
Climate
Economy
Up to 1000MW of wind energy capacity is installed in the county. Natural resources include geothermal (hot springs), granite, marble, andesite, ferrite and kaolin.
The county has a grain output of 1.2 million tonnes as well as growing significant amounts of corn, potato, other grains and fruit trees. Recently, Tongwei has become the largest grower of
honeysuckle
Honeysuckles are arching shrubs or twining vines in the genus ''Lonicera'' () of the family Caprifoliaceae, native to northern latitudes in North America and Eurasia. Approximately 180 species of honeysuckle have been identified in both conti ...
for traditional medicine.
The county's GDP was 1,441 billion, and 3146.86 yuan per capita, rural per capita net income was 2259.27 yuan, the two are all lower than the average of the entire province, and the economic development is relatively backward.
It is one of the 18 drought counties, 23 provincial 'deep poverty counties', and 41 national help-the-poor counties. As of 2017, 17.% of the population still lived in poverty.
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See also
* List of administrative divisions of Gansu
Gansu, a province of the People's Republic of China, is made up of the following administrative divisions
Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constitue ...
References
Official website (Chinese)
County-level divisions of Gansu
Dingxi
{{Gansu-geo-stub