East China

East China (Chinese: 华东; pinyin: huá dōng) is a geographical region in the People’s Republic of China, mainly consisting of seven province-level administrative divisions, namely the provinces (from north to south) Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, and the direct-administered municipality Shanghai.

The region was defined in 1945 as the jurisdiction area of the Central Committee's East China Bureau (华东局), which was a merger politburo agency of the Shandong Bureau and the Central China Bureau previously established during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the region included all the aforementioned provinces except Jiangxi, which was previously considered part of South Central China before being reassigned in 1961. The East China Bureau was abolished in 1966 due to the Cultural Revolution, but in 1970 the fourth five-year plan redefined the region as the East China Coordinated Region (华东协作区), which supported the logistics of the Jinan and Nanjing Military Regions. This geographical definition was retained after the economic reform of the 1980s.

Since the Chinese Government claims sovereignty over Taiwan and the few outlying islands of Fujian (Kinmen and Matsu), which have been ruled by the exiled Government of the Republic of China (who fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949) as its own territory, the nominal "Taiwan Province, People's Republic of China" is also classified in this region.