Dalian Bars

Dalian

B5: 大連; GB: 大连; PY: Dàlián; WG: Lüda- Municipality, Northeast China, located in Liaoning Province, on the Liaodong Peninsula. It includes Lüshun (Port Arthur), the major seaport town, at the southwestern tip of the peninsula; Dalian, a port on Korea Bay; the offshore Changshan Islands; and adjacent agricultural regions. Lüshun is an important ice-free naval base guarding the entrance to the gulf of Bo Hai (Gulf of Chihli). Dalian, the main commercial port for industrialized northeastern China (and also ice-free), is the leading petroleum-exporting point for the productive Daqing oil field. It can accommodate supertankers and has large shipyards; manufactures include refined petroleum, chemicals, fertilizer, machinery, iron and steel, and transportation equipment.

Lüshun was an important port as early as the 6th century CE. It was occupied (1858) by the British and was fortified as a naval base by the Chinese in the 1880s. It was attacked and briefly held by the Japanese in 1895; subsequently it was granted, with adjacent parts of the peninsula, to Russia as part of the Liaodong lease. While under Russian control (1898- 1905), Lüshun was renamed Port Arthur. It was valued by the Russians for its year-round access to the Pacific Ocean and was extensively refortified for naval use. Dalian was transformed during the same period from a minor fishing port into a modern commercial port and was given the Russian name Dalny.

The Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War (1904- 1905), transferred the Liaodong territory to the Japanese, who renamed it Kwangtung. Lüshun, renamed Ryojun, became an important Japanese naval base and was (1905- 1937) the administrative center of the territory. Dalian, given the Japanese name Dairen, was enlarged and modernized. It replaced Lüshun as the capital of Kwangtung in 1937 and developed rapidly in the 1930s and early 1940s as the main port for Japanese-controlled Manchuria (present-day Northeast China).

Following the defeat of Japan in World War II, both ports were placed under joint Soviet-Chinese control in 1945. They were returned to full Chinese sovereignty in 1955. Lüshun again became a Chinese naval base, and Dalian became a center of heavy industry in the late 1950s and 1960s; during the 1970s Dalian was developed as China's leading petroleum port. Population (1991) 2,980,513.