Xianyang
Capital of the Qin dynasty that unified China in 221 BC. Now absorbed into Xi'an's orbit—sharing an airport handling 47M passengers (2024), expanding to 83M capacity. Cost differentials (20-30% cheaper than Xi'an) attract priced-out industries.
Xianyang served as the capital of the Qin dynasty—the empire that unified China in 221 BC. Emperor Qin Shi Huang ruled from here when he standardized weights, measures, currency, and the written script across a territory of 40 million people. The Terracotta Army, buried 40 kilometres east near Xi'an, was built by labourers conscripted from Xianyang and surrounding regions. When Liu Bang's forces captured the city in 206 BC, they burned Qin Shi Huang's palace complex—reportedly so vast that the fire burned for three months. This founder effect—the Qin administrative DNA standardizing everything from axle widths to script—still shapes Chinese governance 2,200 years later.
Modern Xianyang exists in the shadow of Xi'an, its successor capital. The two cities share an airport (Xi'an Xianyang International, handling 47 million passengers in 2024 with expansion to 83 million capacity underway) and increasingly share urban fabric—the Xi'an-Xianyang New Area formally merged planning functions in 2021. Xianyang demonstrates ecological succession: once the dominant organism in its ecosystem, it now occupies a specialized niche within a larger entity, like a barnacle that cements itself to a whale—sacrificing independent mobility for access to the host's nutrient flows.
The city's 4.3 million residents in the broader prefecture inhabit one of China's most important agricultural zones. The Guanzhong Plain anchors Shaanxi's position as a major wheat-producing province, and Xianyang's food processing industry transforms this agricultural output into packaged goods through niche construction—building processing infrastructure that converts raw commodity into higher-value product.
Electronics manufacturing has emerged as a secondary specialisation. CLP Xianyang, part of the China Electronics Corporation, produces display panels. The Xianyang High-Tech Industrial Development Zone hosts pharmaceutical and biotech firms benefiting from lower labour and land costs than Xi'an—20-30% savings on commercial rents. This cost differential functions as competitive exclusion in reverse: industries priced out of Xi'an find viable habitat in Xianyang, the way fig wasps colonize niches that larger pollinators cannot reach, creating complementary rather than competing economies.