CHIHLI, the most north-easterly of the historic eighteen provinces of China. The name means "under direct rule," for it contains Peking which, except for a short period at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, has been continuously the capital of China from the establishment of Mongol rule in 1280.
In 1914, however, the actual neighbourhood of Peking to a radius of about 5o miles was formed into a special administra tive district and in addition, that part of Chihli, mostly mountain country, which lay beyond the Great Wall, was transferred to Inner Mongolia. These changes have reduced the area of the province of Chihli from 115,830 to 6o,000 square miles. The population of the present province is estimated at approximately 3o millions. The greater part of Chihli as now constituted con sists of low-lying plain shelving almost imperceptibly toward the shallow Gulf of Pe-Chihli. The surface of the plain consists of alluvium, river sands and loess, but these form only a compara tively thin cover to a sub-surface made up of infertile marine gravels. Most of the plain is, however, cultivatable and densely peopled. The winters are too cold to permit of agricultural ac tivity and the staple foodstuffs are wheat and millet rather than rice. Only a sector of the mountain and valley country (the Si shan or Western Hills) lying between the North China Plain and the Mongolian Plateau now remains within the province of Chihli.
The province has great strategic importance, holding the crucial passes into Mongolia and containing the vital gate of Shan haikwan which gives access to the Manchurian plains. This has inevitably given the maritime section of Chihli great prominence in China's international relations, but except on the Kaiping coalfield near Chinwangtao it has been as yet little affected by the industrial developments which are transforming the life of the Yangtze Delta.