Yunnan Province

In the 1870s the Yunnan Machinery Bureau was set up in Kunming to copy guns and ammunition, opening Yunnan's modern machine industry. The Gejiu tin mines had been worked since the Qing, and in the late Qing the Gejiu Mining Merchants' Bureau was established; tin became Yunnan's most important export industry, and the name "tin capital" was born. The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway opened in 1910, making Kunming one of the earliest rail-connected border provincial capitals, with mines, power plants and repair shops springing up along the line. In 1912 the Shilongba hydroelectric station at Kunming began generating — the first hydropower station designed and built by the Chinese themselves, placing Yunnan at the starting point of China's electric-power industry.

During the war of resistance a batch of state-owned factories — the Central Machine Works, the Central Electrical Apparatus Factory, the Ordnance Administration's 22nd Arsenal (optical equipment) — relocated to Kunming, making Yunnan an important rear-area base for machinery, electrical goods and ordnance. The Burma Road and later the Hump airlift made Kunming the hub of China's overseas supply route, and vehicle repair, assembly and warehousing boomed. The southward move of the National South-West Associated University brought Yunnan a cohort of top engineering talent, whose influence ran through the province's industrial and scientific-education systems for decades after the war.

The Third Front programme rolled out from 1964; the Guiyang-Kunming Railway (opened 1966) and the Chengdu-Kunming Railway (opened 1970) opened Yunnan's outward rail routes, and the Third Front siting placed a batch of defence and heavy-industry projects in the province: the Kunming Optical Instrument Plant (the Yunguang family), the Yunnan Machine Tool Plant, Anning Steel (Kunsteel's expansion), the Dongchuan Mining Bureau, technical upgrading at the Gejiu tin mines, and the Xuanwei and Xiaolongtan coal mines were built in succession. Yunnan thereby formed an industrial structure weighting non-ferrous metals, steel, machinery and optical instruments equally — many of those old plants remain provincial backbones today.

After reform and opening-up Yunnan built the nation's most important tobacco-industry base on its leaf resources; Hongtashan, Hongyun Honghe and other firms long contributed a large share of provincial revenue and industrial output, while non-ferrous metals (tin, copper, lead-zinc, aluminium), phosphorus chemicals (Anning and around Kunming) and hydropower (the Manwan, Dachaoshan and Xiaowan cascade stations) kept expanding. Tourism and bio-resource development (Pu'er tea, natural rubber, flowers) became new industry calling cards, and Yunnan's industry moved gradually from "tobacco alone" towards diversity.

Since the 13th Five-Year Plan Yunnan has played its "green-energy card", with hydro-led clean power pulling electrolytic aluminium and silicon PV to cluster in central and western Yunnan: the green-aluminium industry grew from nothing to CNY 200.284 billion of output in 2025; new-energy battery materials (lithium iron phosphate, lithium salts) scaled up fast on the province's phosphate and clean-energy advantages, with industry value added up 75.9%. The China-Laos Railway opened in 2021, making Kunming a radiation centre facing South and South-East Asia. Clean power accounts for about 87.6% of provincial generation — green manufacturing is the brightest backdrop of Yunnan's industry, and it brings large volumes of upkeep and commissioning demand at new installations.