| Dao County | |
| Postal Code Type: | Postal code |
| Postal Code: | 4253XX |
| Settlement Type: | County |
| Pushpin Map: | China Hunan |
| Pushpin Label: | Daoxian |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location of the seat in Hunan |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | People's Republic of China |
| Subdivision Type1: | Province |
| Subdivision Name1: | Hunan |
| Subdivision Type2: | Prefecture-level city |
| Subdivision Name2: | Yongzhou |
| Area Footnotes: | [1] |
| Area Total Km2: | 2441.03 |
| Population Footnotes: | [2] |
| Population Total: | 605799 |
| Population As Of: | 2010 |
| Population Density Km2: | auto |
| Coordinates: | 25.527°N 111.601°W |
| Timezone: | China Standard |
| Utc Offset: | +8 |
Dao County is a county in Hunan Province, China, it is under the administration of Yongzhou prefecture-level City.
Located on the southern margin of the province, it is adjacent to the northeastern border of Guangxi. The county borders to the northeast by Shuangpai County, to the east by Ningyuan County, to the south by Jianghua County, to the southwest by Jiangyong County, to the northwest and the north by Guanyang and Quanzhou Counties of Guangxi. Dao County covers 2448km2, as of 2015, It had a registered population of 802,800 and a resident population of 624,600.[3] The county has 11 towns, four townships and 7 subdistricts under its jurisdiction, the county seat is Lianxi (Chinese: 濂溪街道).[4]
Forces of the Taiping Rebellion stopped by Daozhou on their way to Changsha and Wuchang, Hubei. They convinced 20,000 locals to join the rebellion.
See main article: Daoxian massacre. The 1967 mass killing in Dao County, known as the Dao County Massacre, lasted 66 days from August 13 to October 17, 1967. It resulted in 4,519 dead, of whom 4,193 were killed outright and 326 were forced to commit suicide.[5]
There are two principal features of this massacre. The first one is that it took place during the Cultural Revolution. The other is that nearly 90 percent of the victims were labeled as "class enemies", i.e., the so-called Black Five Categories (landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, "bad elements," and rightists) and their family members.[6]