Early history is a structure dating back to China's
Liao Dynasty, built in 984 AD.|left The land where Tianjin is now located was created in between 900 and 1300 CE by the sediments of rivers entering the sea at the
Bohai Gulf, including the Yellow River, which entered the open sea in the area at one time. The construction of the
Grand Canal under the
Sui dynasty helped the future development of Tianjin, as the canal ran from
Hangzhou to the
Beijing and Tianjin region by 609 CE. Grain from southern China was regularly transported to the north through the canal and was used during the subsequent dynasties. Tianjin began to be increasingly mentioned in records during the
Song dynasty and gained importance during the
Yuan dynasty. Tianjin experienced development under the Yuan and became a location for the storage of goods and grains. Tianjin became a garrison town and shipping station during the
Ming dynasty; it was a center of commerce by the 17th century.
Qing dynasty During the
Qing dynasty (16441911), the Tianjin
Prefecture, or
Zhou (), was established in 1725, and Tianjin County was established within the prefecture in 1731. Later, it became an
urban prefecture or
Fu (), before becoming a relay station () under the command of the
Viceroy of Zhili.
Opening up as a treaty port In 1856, Chinese soldiers boarded
The Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship registered in Hong Kong that flew the British flag and which was suspected of piracy, smuggling, and involvement in the opium trade. The soldiers captured twelve men and imprisoned them. In response, the British and French sent gunboats under the command of
Admiral Sir Michael Seymour to capture the
Taku forts near Tianjin in May 1858. At the end of the first part of the
Second Opium War in June of the same year, the British and French prevailed, and the
Treaty of Tientsin was signed, which opened Tianjin (Tientsin) to foreign trade. The treaties were ratified by the
Xianfeng Emperor in 1860, so Tianjin was formally opened to Great Britain and France and thus to the outside world. Between 1895 and 1900,
Britain and France were joined by
Japan,
Germany and
Russia, and some countries without Chinese
concessions, such as
Austria-Hungary,
Italy and
Belgium, in establishing self-contained
concessions in Tianjin, each with its own prisons, schools, barracks and hospitals. These nations left architectural reminders of their rule, which include churches and thousands of villas. . The presence of foreign influence in Tianjin was not always peaceful; one violent incident was that of the
Tianjin Church Massacre. In June 1870, the orphanage held by the Wanghailou Church (translated as Church Our Lady's Victories) in Tianjin, which built by French
Roman Catholic missionaries, was accused of kidnapping and brainwashing Chinese children. On June 21, the
magistrate of Tianjin County initiated a conflict at the church that developed into violent clashes between the church's Christian supporters and some non-Christian Tianjin residents. The protesters eventually burned down Wanghailou Church and the nearby French consulate, killing eighteen foreigners, including ten French nuns, the French consul, and merchants. France and six other Western nations complained to the Qing government, which was forced to pay compensation for the incident. in Tianjin In 1885, Li Hongzhang founded the Tianjin Military Academy () for Chinese army officers with German advisors as a part of his military reforms. The academy's founding was supported by the
Anhui Army commander Zhou Shengchuan. Among its alumni were
Wang Yingkai and
Duan Qirui; its staff included
Yinchang. , established 1895 In June 1900, the
Boxers were able to seize control of parts of Tianjin. On June 26, European defense forces heading towards Beijing were stopped by Boxers at nearby
Langfang; they were defeated and forced to turn back to Tianjin. The foreign concessions were also under siege for several weeks. In July 1900, the
Eight-Nation Alliance recaptured Tianjin. This alliance soon established the Tianjin Provisional Government, which was composed of representatives from each of the occupying forces (Russia, Britain, Japan, Germany, France, America, Austro-Hungary, and Italy). The city was governed by this council until August 15, 1902, when the city was returned to Qing control. Qing General
Yuan Shikai led efforts to transform Tianjin into a modern city, establishing the first modern Chinese police force. In 1907, Yuan supervised China's first modern democratic elections for a county council.
Western nations were permitted to garrison the area to ensure open access to Beijing. The British maintained a brigade of two battalions in Tianjin, and the Italians, French, Japanese, Germans, Russians, and Austro-Hungarians maintained their forces using strength regiments; the United States did not initially participate. In 1915-1916, a political and diplomatic dispute, the
Laoxikai Affair, arose between France and the Republic of China. It developed out of an attempt by the
French consulate to expand France's
extraterritorial power in Tianjin outside of the
French concession and into the adjacent Laoxikai district where a Catholic Cathedral had recently been built. During
World War I, the German and Austro-Hungarian garrisons were captured as
prisoners of war by
Allied Forces; meanwhile, in 1918, the Bolshevik government withdrew the Russian garrison. In 1920, the remaining participating nations asked the United States to join them, and the US then sent the
15th Infantry Regiment, minus one battalion, to Tianjin from the Philippines. Because of the development of industry, commerce and finance in the city, Tianjin was established as a
municipality of China in 1927. From 1930 to 1935, Tianjin was the provincial capital of
Hebei; afterwards, it was reestablished as an independent municipality. Garrison duty was highly regarded by the troops. General
George C. Marshall, the "architect of victory" in World War II, during which he was the
Chief of Staff of the United States Army, served in Tianjin in the 1920s as the Executive Officer of the 15th Infantry. The US withdrew the infantry unit in 1938, but the nation's presence was maintained by the dispatch of a small US Marine Corps unit from the Embassy Guard at Beijing.
Second Sino-Japanese War On July 30, 1937, during the
Second Sino-Japanese War, Tianjin fell to Japan, but was not entirely occupied, as the Japanese generally respected
foreign concessions until 1941, when
American and British concessions were occupied. In the summer of 1939, the
Tientsin Incident damaged Anglo-Japanese relations. On June 14, 1939, the
Imperial Japanese Army surrounded and blockaded a British concession due to the refusal of British authorities to transfer six Chinese people, who had assassinated a Japanese collaborator and taken refuge in the British concession, to be under Japan's authority. For a time, the events of 1939 appeared likely to cause an Anglo-Japanese war, especially when reports of the Japanese Army mistreating British subjects wishing to leave or enter the concession appeared in British newspapers. The situation ended when British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain was advised by the
Royal Navy and the Foreign Office that the only way to force the Japanese to lift the blockade was to send the main British battle fleet to Far Eastern waters, and that given the situation in Europe, it would be inappropriate to send the British fleet out of European waters, thus leading the British to finally turn over the six Chinese people, who were then executed by the Japanese. During the Japanese occupation, Tianjin was ruled by the
North China Executive Committee, a
puppet state based in Beijing. On August 9, 1940, all of the British troops in Tianjin were ordered to withdraw. On November 14, 1941, the American
Marine unit stationed in Tianjin was ordered to leave, but before it left, the Japanese
attacked the United States. The American Marine detachment surrendered to the Japanese on December 8, 1941. Only the Italian and French concessions (the local French officials were loyal to
Vichy) were allowed by the Japanese to remain. When Italy signed an
armistice with the Allies in September 1943, Japanese troops took the Italian concession, following a battle with its garrison, and the
Italian Social Republic formally ceded the concession to
Wang Jingwei's Japan-controlled
puppet state. Japanese occupation of the city lasted until August 15, 1945, with the surrender of Japan marking the end of World War II.
After World War II In the
Pingjin Campaign of the Chinese Civil War, the city was captured after 29 hours of fighting. The
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took Tianjin on January 15, 1949. From 1949 to February 1958, Tianjin was a municipality directly under the control of the central government. In October 1952,
Tanggu New Port officially opened its doors, and the first 10,000-ton ferry arrived at Newport Pier. In February 1958, due to the "Great Leap Forward" and the city's industrial foundation, Tianjin was incorporated into
Hebei Province, the capital of which was relocated to Tianjin for eight years. During the period, under the coordination of the State Council, the city of Tianjin implemented a separate policy for central planning, which was independent of Hebei Province. However, a number of factories and colleges in Tianjin moved to Hebei, hindering Tianjin's economic development. In January 1967, due to preparation and concerns that Tianjin would become a battlefield, Hebei Province repatriated its provincial capital to Baoding, and the
CCP Central Committee decided that Tianjin should be restored to the central municipality and remain so. In April 1970, since the central government had applied for funding for the construction of the subway, the Tianjin Municipal Government decided to raise funds on its own to establish the project using the name of the channel and by build it on the basis of the old walled river. In July 1973, five counties, including Jixian, Baodi, Wuqing, Jinghai, and Ninghe, were formally placed under the jurisdiction of Tianjin. On July 28, 1976, during the 7.6 magnitude
Tangshan Earthquake, Tianjin was affected by shock waves and experienced a loss of life. In the city, 24,345 people died and 21,497 were seriously injured. 60% of the city's buildings were destroyed and more than 30% of the enterprises and Peking Port Reservoir and Yuqiao Reservoir were seriously damaged. Nearly 700,000 people were left homeless. On October 10 of the same year, the Tianjin Underground Railway was opened to traffic. In 1981, Miyun Reservoir was built on the upper reaches of the Hai River; it is now used to supply water for Beijing; however; the reservoir stopped the river from supplying water to Tianjin, resulting in difficulty with water usage in the city. As a result, during 1976, the
State Council of the People's Republic of China decided to initiate a project to solve the problem of water usage in Tianjin by attracting individuals to the city's academic centers. In 1984, during the beginning of the Chinese government's economic reforms, Tianjin was listed as one of the 14 coastal open cities by the State Council and the
Tianjin Development Zone's economy began to develop. However, the overall speed of development in Tianjin is still slower than that of
special economic zones and that of other southeast coastal areas. In 1994, Tianjin began its industrial shift towards the east and developed the
Binhai New Area, with the
Tianjin Port as its core. In October 2005, the
Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CCP Central Committee convened; its meeting decided to incorporate the development and opening of the
Binhai New Area into its
Eleventh Five-Year Plan and the national development strategy. In March 2006, the State Council executive meeting positioned Tianjin as an "international port city, a northern economic center, and an ecological city." Since then, the dispute between the Beijing-Tianjin economic center at the policy level has come to an end. In May 2006, the State Council approved the Binhai New Area as a national integrated reform pilot area. In June of the same year, the State Council's Opinions on Promoting the Development and Opening of the Tianjin Binhai New Area were announced; they stated the following: "In financial enterprises, financial services, financial markets, and finance Major reforms such as opening up can, in principle, be scheduled to precede the Tianjin Binhai New Area." In August 2008, China's first
high-speed railway, the
Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway, which has a speed of 350 kilometers per hour, was opened. In August 2008, Tianjin was the co-host city of the
29th Olympic Games. In September 2008, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions of
World Economic Forum (also called
Summer Davos) began to be established in Tianjin; it is now held every two years. In October 2010, the UN Climate Change Conference convened in Tianjin. In 2012, the
Tianjin Metro Lines 2, 3, and 9 were completed and open to traffic, and Tianjin Rail Transit was formally networked. In October 2013, Tianjin hosted an international comprehensive event for the first time by hosting the
East Asian Games. In 2014, the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei was officially incorporated into the national strategy; Tianjin was positioned as the National Advanced Manufacturing R&D Base, Northern International Shipping Core Area, Financial Innovation Operation Demonstration Area, and Reform and Opening-up Preceding Area. In the same year, the first phase of the
South-to-North Water Transfer Project was completed, so water availability in Tianjin increased. On February 26, 2015, the Tianjin National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone was formally established. On April 21, the China (Tianjin) Free Trade Pilot Zone was also formally established. On April 27,
Jincheng Bank, the first
private bank in northern China, officially opened its doors. On August 12, 2015, a
fire and explosion occurred in a
chemical warehouse in
Tianjin Port, causing 173 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and property losses. The cost to businesses caused by the explosion was estimated to be $9 billion, making it the most expensive supply chain disruption of 2015. In 2025, Tianjin held the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. ==Geography==