China will present the single-gender women’s FIVB Nantong 2-star tournament from June 23 to 25. It will be the first time that Nantong has hosted an FIVB World Tour event. Overall, China has hosted 57 total FIVB World Tour events.

 

Nantong is one of 11 Chinese cities that has hosted an international FIVB beach volleyball event. Others have been Beijing, Dalian, Fuzhou, Lianyungang, Maoming, Qinzhou, Sanya, Shanghai, Tangshan Jiangning Nanjing and Xiamen.

Nantong is a prefecture-level city in the Jiangsu province of China. Nantong is located on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, near the river mouth. Nantong is a vital river port bordering Yancheng to the north, Taizhou to the west, Suzhou and Shanghai to the south across the river, and the East China Sea to the east. The population of Nantong is over 7 million, nearly 2 million of whom live in the built-up area made up of three urban districts.

The prosperity of Nantong has traditionally depended on salt production on the nearby seacoast, rice and cotton agriculture, and especially the production of cotton textiles. A local statesman and industrialist named Zhang Jian founded Nantong's first modern cotton mills in 1899. He then developed an industrial complex that included flour, oil, and silk reeling mills, a distillery, and a machinery shop. He also founded a shipping line and reclaimed saline agricultural land to the east of Nantong for cotton production. Thanks to these efforts, by 1911 Nantong was commonly called "Zhang Jian's Kingdom".

Although the city took a blow from the economic depression of the 1930s, as well as the Japanese occupation of the 1930s and 40s, Nantong has remained an important centre for the textile industry. Because of its deep-water harbour and connections to inland navigational canals, it was one of 14 port cities opened to foreign investment in recent Chinese economic reforms.