With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and is the northernmost coastal province of the People's Republic of China.

Ning (宁, "peace") is used frequently in Chinese place names including Ningxia, Xining and Nanning.

[8] As the Han dynasty fell, warlord Gongsun Du and his family established and maintained a semi-independent state based in Liaodong, until it was defeated by Cao Wei in 238.

The state, also known as Yan, conducted numerous maritime diplomatic and trade expeditions, and had a lasting influence on Northeast Asian culture despite being short-lived.

Around 1442, a defense wall was constructed to defend the agricultural heartland of the province from a potential threat from the Jurchen-Mongol Oriyanghan (who were Ming's tributaries) from the northwest.

The Jurchen dynasty, styled "Later Jin" before being renamed to Qing, established its capital in 1616–1621 in Xingjing (兴京), which was located outside of the Liaodong Wall in the eastern part of the modern Liaoning Province.

The Qing conquest of Liaoning resulted in a significant population loss in the area, as many local Chinese residents were either killed during fighting, or fled south of the Great Wall, many cities being destroyed by the retreating Ming forces themselves.

[15] In the latter half of the seventeenth century (starting with laws issued in 1651 and 1653), the imperial Qing government recruited migrants from south of the Great Wall (notably, from Shandong) to settle the relatively sparsely populated area of Fengtian Province (roughly corresponding to today's Liaoning).

To prevent the migration of Chinese to those regions (today's Jilin and Heilongjiang, as well as the adjacent parts of Inner Mongolia), the so-called Willow Palisade was constructed (c. 1638 – c. 1672).

The Palisade encircled the agricultural heartlands of Fengtian, running in most areas either somewhat outside the old Ming Liaodong Wall, or reusing it, and separating it from the Manchu forests to the northeast and the Mongol grazing lands to the northwest.

[17] Later on, the Qing government tried to stop the migrants flow to Fengtian or even to make some settlers return to their original places of residence – or, failing that, to legalize them.

For example, an edict issued in 1704 commented on the recent Han Chinese settlers in Fengtian having failed to comply with earlier orders requiring them to leave, and asked them either to properly register and join a local defense group (保; bao), or to leave the province for their original places within the next ten years.

Ten years later, naturally, another edict appeared, reminding of the necessity to do something with illegal migrants ...[18] In any event, the restrictive policy was not as effective as desired by the officials in Beijing, and Fengtian's population doubled between 1683 and 1734.

The Chinese Civil War that took place following Japanese defeat in 1945 had its first major battles (the Liaoshen Campaign) in and around Liaoning.

At the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Liaoning did not exist; instead there were two provinces, Liaodong and Liaoxi, as well as five municipalities, Shenyang, Lüda (present-day Dalian), Anshan, Fushun, and Benxi.

In recent years, this early focus on heavy industry has become a liability, as many of the large state-run enterprises have experienced economic difficulties.

During the Japanese occupation of the area through the 1930s and early 1940s, more fossils were found, but records of them were lost after World War II ended.

[23] Aside from the famous birds and feathered dinosaurs, the Liaoning fossils include insects, fish, aquatic arthropods, and plants.

The extremely fine grain of the sediment and the chemical composition of the ash prevented the usual bacterial decay.

Prior to 1949 and the Chinese Communist Revolution, Liaoning was governed by the Fengtian clique of warlords and interchangeably officials of the Chiang Kai-shek bureaucracy.

Industries such as mining, quarrying, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals, petroleum and natural gas extraction, are all of great significance.

Liaoning is the place of origin of the Li Keqiang index, an alternative measure of economic performance where GDP figures are unreliable.

The big fish of Dandong, the jellyfish of Yingkou, and the clams of Panjin are known worldwide for their taste fresh from the sea, and in products made for domestic and international export.

[39] The Liaoning Shenyang Zhangshi Export Processing Zone was approved to be established by the state government in June 2005.

Its encouraged industries include electronic information, new materials, biological engineering, energy saving, and environmental protection.

[42] The Dalian Export Processing Zone was approved to be set up by the State Council in April 2000, with a planned area of 2.95 km2 (1.14 sq mi).

In April 2010, the State Council of the People's Republic of China approved a national development strategy for the Shenyang Metro Area.

[47] The Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Liaoning, Li Keqiang, initiated the development of a strategy entitled "5 Points and One Line", which he first proposed on a visit to Yingkou in late 2005.

Liaoyang, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in northeast China, has a number of historical sites, including the White Pagoda (Baita), that dates to the Yuan Dynasty.

The port city of Dalian, located on the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, is a tourist destination in its own right, with beaches, resorts, zoos, seafood, shopping, Russian- and Japanese-era heritage architecture, and streetcars, a rare sight in China.