Hunan Province, abbreviated as "Xiang", is a provincial-level administrative region of the People's Republic of China, with Changsha as its capital, Jiangxi Province to the east, Chongqing Municipality and Guizhou Province to the west, Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to the south, and Hubei Province to the north. It is located in the transition zone from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau to the hills of Jiangnan and from the Nanling Mountains to the Jianghan Plain, with a horseshoe-shaped terrain surrounded by mountains on three sides and opening toward the north, consisting of plains, basins, hilly terrain, mountains, rivers and lakes, and spanning the Yangtze River and the Pearl River water systems, with a subtropical monsoon climate. As of May 2021, Hunan Province has 13 prefecture-level cities and one autonomous prefecture, with a total area of 211,800 square kilometers.At the end of 2022, Hunan Province had a resident population of 66.04 million, with an urbanization rate of 60.31%.
As far back as the Paleolithic era in Hunan, there have been ancient human activities; in the two Jin Dynasty, there was a "Xiangzhou" named after "Xiang"; in the Tang Dynasty, there was a Hunan Observation Envoy, which was the beginning of the establishment of Hunan; in the Song Dynasty, there was a "Hunan Road"; in the Yuan Dynasty, there was a "Hunan Road"; and in the Yuan Dynasty, there was a "Hunan Road". "Hunan Road" in Song Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty set up "Hubei Province", Ming Dynasty set up Hubei Province Chengxuan Buzhengji (still called province); Qing Dynasty divided Hubei Province to set up Hunan Province. Hunan Province's historical representative culture is "Hunan Culture". Hunan is named "Hunan" because most of the area is south of Dongting Lake, and is shortened to "Xiang" because the Xiang River, the largest river in the province, flows through the whole country. "It is one of the important birthplaces of Chinese civilization, and it is said that Yandi Shennong planted grains, wove hemp as cloth, and made pottery here, and the Yandi Mausoleum located in Zhuzhou has become a spiritual symbol of the unity of the Chinese nation; it is located in the transition zone between the eastern coastal region and the central and western regions, and is a part of the open economic zone of the Yangtze River, and a part of the transition zone between the eastern coastal region and the central and western regions. It is in the transition zone between the eastern coastal region and the central and western regions, and the combination of the Yangtze River Open Economic Zone and the Coastal Open Economic Zone, and has the hub position of bearing the east and starting the west, connecting the south and the north.
In 2023, the gross regional product of Hunan Province will be 500,128,500,000,000 yuan, an increase of 4.6% over the previous year.