Jiaozhou Bay (; ; ) is a

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

located in the

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province of China, province and above a Counties of the People's Republic of China, county in China's ...

Qingdao Qingdao, Mandarin: , (Qingdao Mandarin: t͡ɕʰiŋ˧˩ tɒ˥) is a prefecture-level city in the eastern Shandong Province of China. Located on China's Yellow Sea coast, Qingdao was long an important fortress. In 1897, the city was ceded to G ...

(Tsingtau),

Shandong Province Shandong is a coastal province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural and religious center ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. The bay has historically been romanized as Kiaochow, Kiauchau or Kiao-Chau in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and Kiautschou in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Geography and ecology

Jiaozhou Bay is a natural inlet of the

Yellow Sea The Yellow Sea, also known as the North Sea, is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean located between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula, and can be considered the northwestern part of the East China Sea. Names It is one of four ...

, with a depth of and deeper,

dredged Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing dams ...

channels to three major ports around the bay: Qingdao, Huangdao, and Hongdao, all of which are ice-free during winter. The bay is located on the southern coast of the

Shandong Peninsula The Shandong Peninsula or Jiaodong (tsiaotung) Peninsula is a peninsula in Shandong in eastern China, between the Bohai Sea to the north and the Yellow Sea to the south. The latter name refers to the east and Jiaozhou. Geography The waters ...

East China East China () 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 separates

Huangdao District Huangdao District () and West Coast New Area (), is a district and a state-level new area of Qingdao, Shandong, China, located south-west and west of the main urban area of the city on the western shore of Jiaozhou Bay. It was identical to ...

from Qingdao City and borders on

Jiaozhou City Jiaozhou (), formerly Jiaoxian or Jiao County, is a county-level city of Qingdao sub-provincial municipality, Shandong Province, China. It gained its current county-level city designation in 1987. It has an area of and a population of 783,47 ...

. The bay is long and wide with a

surface area The surface area (symbol ''A'') of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the d ...

of , approximately two-thirds the area of 100 years ago. According to official data, the surface area has decreased from in 1928 to by 2003 due to sustained

land reclamation Land reclamation, often known as reclamation, and also known as land fill (not to be confused with a waste landfill), is the process of creating new Terrestrial ecoregion, land from oceans, list of seas, seas, Stream bed, riverbeds or lake ...

activities in recent decades. The marine species have also decreased by two-thirds during the last 50 years due to urban and industrial development and growth of adjacent areas around the bay. Out of 170 species of organisms found in the northwestern part of the basin during the 1970s, only 17 were found in 1989.

False killer whale The false killer whale (''Pseudorca crassidens'') is a species of oceanic dolphin that is the only extant representative of the genus ''Pseudorca''. It is found in oceans worldwide but mainly in tropical regions. It was first species descriptio ...

s still occasionally appear in the waters which were a regular range for the species until the 1980s.青岛海水水质变好引来"深海贵客" 鲸鱼群嬉水胶州湾(组图)
News.sina.com.cn. Retrieved on August 29, 2016 On the other hand, Jiaozhou Bay may serve as a suitable location for studying recoveries of coastal marine ecosystems.

History

Jiaozhou Bay was known formerly as Jiao'ao (). During the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

, it developed a large junk trade when a customs station was established near its shores, in Qingdao. The area became widely known to Europeans after the

German Empire The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...

in March 1898 concluded a lease with the Qing government of China. Through this lease, the area was transferred to German rule on a 99-year lease (or until 1997, as the British did in

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

New Territories The New Territories (N.T., Traditional Chinese characters, Chinese: ) is one of the three areas of Hong Kong, alongside Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. It makes up 86.2% of Hong Kong's territory, and contains around half of the population of H ...

and as the French did in

Kouang-Tchéou-Wan The Leased Territory of Guangzhouwan, officially the and historically known in English as Kwangchowan or Kwangchow Wan, was a coastal territory of Zhanjiang, China leased to France and administered by French Indochina. The capital of the t ...

), and it became known as the

Kiautschou Bay concession The Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory was a German colonial empire, German leased territory in Qing dynasty, Imperial and Republic of China (1912–1949), Early Republican China from 1898 to 1914. Covering an area of , it centered on Kiautschou ...

. The village of

Tsingtau Qingdao, Mandarin: , (Qingdao Mandarin: t͡ɕʰiŋ˧˩ tɒ˥) is a prefecture-level city in the eastern Shandong Province of China. Located on China's Yellow Sea coast, Qingdao was long an important fortress. In 1897, the city was ceded to Ger ...

became the German colony of Tsingtau, and the area became a focus for German commercial development in China, while for the

Imperial German Navy The Imperial German Navy or the ''Kaiserliche Marine'' (Imperial Navy) was the navy of the German Empire, which existed between 1871 and 1919. It grew out of the small Prussian Navy (from 1867 the North German Federal Navy), which was mainly for ...

it was the base for their

East Asia Squadron The German East Asia Squadron () was an Imperial German Navy cruiser squadron which operated mainly in the Pacific Ocean between the mid-1890s until 1914, when it was destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. It was based at Germany's Ji ...

. Because of land speculation in Germany's African colonies, a

land value tax A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land (economics), land without regard to buildings, personal property and other land improvement, improvements upon it. Some economists favor LVT, arguing it does not cause economic efficiency, ec ...

was introduced as the only tax in the colony. It was a great success, bringing wealth quite rapidly to the colony and also financial stability. The colony was the only government authority ever to exclusively rely on the

single tax A single tax is a system of taxation based mainly or exclusively on one tax, typically chosen for its special properties, often being a tax on land value. Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert and Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban were ear ...

on land value, and is used as an academic case study to this day about the viability of such a tax system. The German colony also issued currency. With the outbreak of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, the

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

cancelled the Kiautschou lease with the German Empire. This came into force on 23 August 1914, the day of

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

's declaration of war on Germany, after a Japanese ultimatum for unconditional German evacuation of the colony had expired. Following a two month military siege by British and Japanese forces, the colony was forced to surrender. It was then occupied by the British and Japanese. The Republic of China declared war on Imperial Germany on 14 August 1917, since as a member of the victorious allies, China fully expected the former German colony would be returned to them. Instead, the

Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allies of World War I, Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace ...

acceded to Japanese demands at the

Paris Peace Conference Agreements and declarations resulting from meetings in Paris include: Listed by name Paris Accords may refer to: * Paris Accords, the agreements reached at the end of the London and Paris Conferences in 1954 concerning the post-war status of Germ ...

and assigned all former German Pacific territories and islands north of the equator to Japan, including Jiaozhou Bay. This unexpected decision led to China-wide protests known as the "

May Fourth Movement The May Fourth Movement was a Chinese cultural and anti-imperialist political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on May 4, 1919. Students gathered in front of Tiananmen to protest the Chinese government's weak response ...

", which is now regarded as a significant event of modern Chinese history. As a result, the

Beiyang government The Beiyang government was the internationally recognized government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China between 1912 and 1928, based in Beijing. It was dominated by the generals of the Beiyang Army, giving it its name. B ...

refused to sign the Treaty. This situation was known as the "

Shandong Problem The Shandong Problem or Shandong Question (; ) was a dispute over Article 156 of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which dealt with the concession of the Shandong Peninsula. It was resolved in China's favor in 1922. The German Empire acquired ...

". It eventually was resolved through mediation by the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, which led to the former colony's return to Chinese sovereignty in February 1922.

Connection project

Jiaozhou Bay is situated wholly within the administrative boundaries of

. Counterclockwise, the bordering divisions are

Shinan District Shinan District () is an urban District (PRC)#Ethnic districts, district of Qingdao, Shandong. It has an area of , and had approximately 588,800 inhabitants as of 2019. Shinan is located in coastal hilled terrain, and has a temperate monsoon clim ...

, Shibei District,

Sifang District Sifang () is a former district at the core of Qingdao Qingdao, Mandarin: , (Qingdao Mandarin: t͡ɕʰiŋ˧˩ tɒ˥) is a prefecture-level city in the eastern Shandong Province of China. Located on China's Yellow Sea coast, Qingdao was long ...

Licang District Licang () is an urban district (区) of Qingdao in the Chinese province of Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civi ...

Chengyang District Chengyang () is a county-level district of the prefecture-level city of Qingdao, Shandong, China. It has an area of , and had a 2013 population of about 740,000. The district includes hilly terrain, plains, and farmland. Location Chengyang bo ...

, Jiaonan City, and

. The entrance to the bay is 6.17 km wide. In 1993, Qingdao City decided to build a traffic corridor for the Jiaozhou Bay region, which includes a tunnel under the inlet and a bridge across Jiaozhou Bay. The construction started in 2006. The bridge and the tunnel were both opened in 2011. * At the time of its opening, the

Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is a long roadway bridge in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China, which is part of the Jiaozhou Bay Connection Project. The longest continuous segment of the bridge is , making it one of the longest bridges in the ...

was the world's longest bridge over water at . It shortened the travel time from Qingdao to the outlying region by more than half. * The Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Tunnel connects central Qingdao with

with a length of over . Travel time is approximately 10 minutes by automobile from central Qingdao to

References

External links

German colonies

{{Authority control Bays of China Populated coastal places in China Former German colonies Bodies of water of Shandong History of Shandong