It was occupied by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war and placed under the control of the Japanese puppet state known as the Reorganized National Government of China.

It is usually understood as meaning "Crooked" or "Bent River", from the meaning of Chinese 折,[10] but is more likely a phono-semantic compound formed from adding 氵 (the "water" radical used for river names) to phonetic 折 (Pinyin zhé but reconstructed Old Chinese *tet),[11] preserving a proto-Wu name of the local Yue, similar to Yuhang, Kuaiji and Jiang.

The song shows that the Yue people spoke a language that was mutually unintelligible with the dialects spoken in north and inland China.

Yue's former lands were annexed by the Qin Empire in 222 BC and organized into a commandery named for Kuaiji in Zhejiang but initially headquartered in Wu in Jiangsu.

Under the Later Han, control of the area returned to the settlement below Mount Kuaiji but authority over the Minyue hinterland was nominal at best and its Yue inhabitants largely retained their own political and social structures.

Despite the removal of their court from Kuaiji to Jianye (present-day Nanjing) and they continued development of the region and benefitted from influxes of refugees fleeing the turmoil in northern China.

The story depicts how the states of Wei (魏) and Shu (蜀), lack of material resources, avoided direct confrontation with the Wu.

It suggests that a small number of powerful, elite Chinese refugees from the Central Plain might have taken refuge south of the Yangtze River.

However, considering the mountainous geography and relative lack of agrarian lands in Zhejiang, most of these refugees might have resided in some areas in South China beyond Zhejiang, where fertile agrarian lands and metropolitan resources were available, mainly Southern Jiangsu, Eastern Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Anhui and provinces where less cohesive, organized regional governments had been in place.

Metropolitan areas of Sichuan was another hub for refugees, given that the state of Shu had long been founded and ruled by political and military elites from the Central Plain and North China.

The rump Jin state or the Southern dynasties vied against some elite Chinese from the Central Plain and south of the Yangtze River.

Zhejiang, as the heartland of the Jiangnan (Yangtze River Delta), remained the wealthiest area during the Six Dynasties (220 or 222–589), Sui and Tang.

Throughout the Tang dynasty, The Grand Canal had remained effective, transporting grains and material resources to North China plain and metropolitan centers of the empire.

The Mongol conquest and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty in 1279 ended Hangzhou's political clout, but its economy continued to prosper.

Longquan greenware is characterized by a thick unctuous glaze of a particular bluish-green tint over an otherwise undecorated light-grey porcellaneous body that is delicately potted.

Yuan Longquan celadons feature a thinner, greener glaze on larger vessels with decoration and shapes derived from Middle Eastern ceramic and metalwares.

These were produced in large quantities for the Chinese export trade to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and (during the Ming) Europe.

As in other coastal provinces, number of fortresses were constructed along the Zhejiang coast during the early Ming to defend the land against pirate incursions.

Following the Doolittle Raid, most of the B-25 American crews that came down in China eventually made it to safety with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers.

The Imperial Japanese Army began the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign to intimidate the Chinese out of helping downed American airmen.

Imperial Japanese forces killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians from the area of Hangzhou to Nanchang and also Zhuzhou while searching for Doolittle's men.

The agricultural policy favoring grain production at the expense of industrial and cash crops intensified economic hardships in the province.

[7] Zhejiang benefited less from central government investment than some other provinces due to its lack of natural resources, a location vulnerable to potential flooding from the sea and an economic base at the national average.

Tan Zhenlin (term 1949–1952), the inaugural Party Secretary, was one of the leading voices against Mao's Cultural Revolution during the so-called February Countercurrent of 1967.

The private sector in the province has been playing an increasingly important role in boosting the regional economy since Economic Reform in 1978.

[2] Zhejiang is generally regarded as having one of the strongest private sectors among Chinese provinces and its local governments typically adopt permissive business policies.

However, some economists now worry that this model is not sustainable, in that it is inefficient and places unreasonable demands on raw materials and public utilities, and also a dead end, in that the myriad small businesses in Zhejiang producing cheap goods in bulk are unable to move to more sophisticated or technologically more advanced industries.

Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, said the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April.

[52] The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 74.36% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects.

[59] The rapid development of religions in Zhejiang has driven the local committee of ethnic and religious affairs to enact policies to rationalise them[60] in 2014, variously named "Three Remodelings and One Demolition" operations or "Special Treatment Work on Illegally Constructed Sites of Religious and Folk Religion Activities" according to the locality.