Guangdong
Guangdong (; formerly romanised as Kwangtung or Canton Province) is a province in South China, on the South China Sea coast. Guangdong surpassed Henan and Shandong to become the most populous province in China in January 2005, registering 79.1 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year; the total population was 104,303,132 in the 2010 census, accounting for 7.79 percent of Mainland China's population. This also makes it the most populous first-level administrative subdivision of any country outside of South Asia, as its population is surpassed only by those of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the Indian states of Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. The provincial capital Guangzhou and economic hub Shenzhen are among the most populous and important cities in China. The population increase since the census has been modest, the province registering 108,500,000 people in 2015.
Reform of the administrative divisions of China
Hainan and Chongqing, already mentioned above as apparent experiments in province shrinking, can also be seen as experiments in the abolishment of prefectures. Hainan has two prefecture-level cities, but those control only districts (i.e. their own urbanized area); all the counties of Hainan are under the direct charge of the province, with no prefecture-level intermediary. Chongqing, which is province-sized (despite its status as a municipality), has no intermediate prefecture-level subdivisions of any sort.