Guangdong is a Chinese
province on the
South China Sea coast of the
People's Republic of China. Formerly known as
Canton or
Kwangtung in
English, Guangdong surpassed
Henan and
Sichuan to become the
most populous province in China in January 2005, registering 79.1 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year; the total population was 104,303,132 in the
2010 census, accounting for 7.79 percent of
Mainland China's population. The provincial capital
Guangzhou and economic hub
Shenzhen are among the most populous and important cities in China. The population increase since the census has been modest, the province at 2013 end had 106,440,000 people.