Rudong means "Rugao Dongxiang" (that is, Rugao East). Rudong was a part of Rugao County before the founding of the People's Republic of China. 1949, Rudong county people's government of People's Republic of China (PRC) was established.
Rudong area, like other central and eastern areas in Nantong, today's Rudong area is mostly a sandbar at the mouth of the Yangtze River in ancient times or has not yet landed.
In the Han Dynasty, there was a sandbar named "Zhou Fuhai" in the middle of today's eastern China. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, this sandbar was connected with the sand mouth in the eastern part of ancient Yangzhou. This time, Yang Tai Shazui (formerly known as Liaojiaozui) extended eastward for more than 50 kilometers, reaching the east of Changsha Town today. In the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Ying, the king of Wu, led three counties and fifty cities (Rudong was in its territory), and "boiled the water in the East China Sea as salt", which opened a precedent for frying salt in Huai area, and the first batch of "salt diced" appeared in Rudong.
During the Three Kingdoms period, wars were frequent, northerners fled to the south, and many people came to Rudong. Since then, migrants have brought advanced agricultural technology from the mainland, plus the benefits of local fish and salt. For example, Rudong's local economy has been rising, and later it became a coastal defense port. Sun Jue, a poet in the Song Dynasty, wrote poems such as Hundred Troops Coming from Haikou and Thunder of Stone Guns, describing the scene at that time. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, with the construction of Gong Fan levee and other coastal projects, the land area of Rudong was basically stable.
In order to prevent and resist the Japanese invasion, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, built a "Japanese camp" in the harbor, set up a Japanese camp and a western camp, and sent heavy troops to guard it. Digging port has become the gateway of Yangzhou and the fortress of coastal defense. The increase of foreign population and non-commissioned officers has made transportation convenient, business prosperous and market prosperous. Soon, Huizhou merchants dealing in pens, ink, paper, tea, cigarettes and pot mats, Shanxi merchants dealing in brewing industry and Zhejiang merchants dealing in bamboo and wood and paint gradually occupied the market and formed a genre. Mainly seafood, the catering industry with Huaiyang flavor is more developed, and there is a saying that "the top ten hotels and three restaurants are fresh twice a day". After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, port digging was also called "Little Yangzhou" because of the gathering of merchants and prosperous business.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Zhang Jian, the last scholar who was born in Nantong, prospered the country with industry, organized gentry from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and invested in the long Jiangsu coast north of the Yangtze River estuary, including Rudong coast. Reclamation not only added new land to Rudong, but also brought immigrants from Haimen and Qidong. Reclamation has not been interrupted, and there are still some reclamation activities along the east coast.