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South Central China/lower Yangtze is today dominated by Wuhan and Shanghai, major industrial and commercial cities.
Dominated today by Wuhan and Shanghai, major industrial and commercial cities, this area had important urban centers as well as an affluent and productive agricultural sector even before nineteenth-century rise of treaty ports.
It includes suburban Shanghai Municipality, the provinces of Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi and parts of Anhui and Zhejiang provinces. With its lakes and numerous navigable waterways, it is one of the richest and most densly populated areas of inner China. The climate is mild, with 240 frost-free days, and rainfall is ample. Double cropping is common, with alternation of winter wheat and summer rice. Cotton, silk, pigs and poultry, vegitable farming, ocean and freshwater fisheries, and rural industries have for generations supplemented peasant income. In recent years the expansion of towns and cities, exploitation of rich natural resources, and a thriving free-market system have made this the leading area in industrial and agricultural output.
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