KWEICHOW (Kwa-chO), an upland province in south-west China. It consists of a lofty plateau country lying between and thrusting apart the upper courses of the Yangtze and of the Si-kiang, and continuous with the still loftier plateau of Yunnan farther to the south-west. It is thus part of a large highland region distinct from the river-plains which characterise so much of China. Kweichow, however, much more than Yunnan is dis sected by winding river courses tributary to the arterial Yang tze and Si-kiang. These are most deeply cut around the margins of the province and the greatest extent of undissected plateau remains in the centre. But the surface even of this is broken by sunken plains, let down below the general level of the plateau sur face, and these offer the most fertile land in the whole of the province. While the tortuous river courses form the main lines of approach, the bulk of the population is settled on the upland plateau of which Kweiyang, the capital, is the focus. The more important ways of approach into the province, in addition to the easy routes from Yunnan, are by the Wu-kiang from the Red Basin of Sze-ch`uen by the Liu-kiang from Kwangsi and by the Yuan valley from Hunan, this being the most frequented of all the trading routes.
The contrast between the central upland and the peripheral valleys is heightened by the composition of the population. The aboriginal peoples, though once spread over the whole of south China, remain in bulk, unabsorbed by the Chinese, only in the south-west. They are divided into a great variety of peoples of which the largest in Kweichow is the Miao. These still form the majority of the village population of the plateau away from the trading centres. Of all the aboriginal peoples the Miao are physically the least distinguishable from the Chinese, but they retain their language and the women, at any rate, their dis tinctive dress. Into this upland the Chinese have penetrated by way of the valley approaches to which the rural Chinese popula tion, as distinct from the traders of the towns, is still largely con fined. The longer settled among the Chinese are descendants of soldier colonists planted in the province as early as the eighth century, but the majority of the immigrants has entered only during the last two centuries, since the constitution of Kweichow as a province of China. It was formed primarily out of the Miao
territory with the addition of the basin of the Wu-kiang, formerly included with Szechwan. Apart from valley lines and scattered commercial centres, the Wu-kiang basin is the only district of Kweichow where Mandarin is the chief spoken language. The total population is est. (1926) at 11,291,261 and the density at 168 per square mile.
The plateau of Kweichow has a cooler healthier climate than either the foggy Red Basin to the north or the tropical valleys of the Si-kiang basin to the south. Its southward-facing valley ravines, in which the natural woodland is still to some extent preserved, harbour many tropical species such as the camphor tree, the varnish tree and the tung or wood-oil tree. But the bulk of the Kweichow woods and especially those in the south-east of the province, drained by the Liu into Kwangsi and the Yuan into Hunan, consist principally of conifers scattered with oak and chestnut. These woods are being actively exploited and their reserves are becoming depleted. The timber floated down the Yilan, which is greater than that down any other Chinese river outside Manchuria, is, however, cut from plantations when about fif teen years old. Agriculture is almost solely of a subsistence type and export trade in vegetable and animal products is almost entirely confined to timber, wood oil, hides. Rice is the staple crop of the valley Chinese, but up on the plateaL cereals adapted to cooler and less moist conditions such as maize, wheat and beans are also extensively grown. Of the minerals, mercury, mined on the plateau to the north of Kweiyang, contributes a considerable proportion of the world's supply, but coal, which underlies most of the plateau surface, is worked only for local con sumption. Away from the larger streams the movement of goods is entirely by pack-animals or by porterage. In recent years, however, a motor road has been built from Kweiyang into Szechwan and another into Yunnan is under construction. The isolation of the province and its limited contribution to com merce preclude any immediate railway development.