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Nanjing
is the capital of
Jiangsu
Province in the southeast
on the south bank of the Yangzi River. It has a rich history as a
political center, as the capital of early regimes in the south and as
the Southern Capital during the Ming dynasty, as well as the seat of the
Nationalist Government in the 20th century. Today Nanjing’s three
special economic zones are
home to manufacturing and production facilities for some of the
world’s leading multinational corporations.
Nanjing’s
position on the Yangzi offered strategic protection and made it an
important gateway for trade and shipping to the regions farther west.
It is 2 1/2 hours west of Shanghai by tourist express train.
Nanjing is hot and humid in summer, considered one of China’s four
“furnace cities.” Winters are cold, with frequent rain or
drizzle and low visibility.
Nanjing
has an extremely rich and complex history, derived from its position as
a political and economic center for the agriculturally rich southeast
China region. Habitation in the area goes back some 5,000 years,
documented by the discovery of several prehistoric, Shang and Zhou era
sites. During the Warring States period there was a walled city that had
an armaments foundry there. After the break up of the Han dynasty,
Nanjing became the capital of a number of short-lived dynasties,
especially for the southern dynasties during the 4th-6th century
period of division between barbarian Northern and native Chinese
Southern dynasties. At that time Nanjing was also a center for the
propagation of Buddhism. When China was reunified under the Sui in the
late 6th century, the Sui ruler established his capital at present day
Xi’an and demolished all the old palace buildings at Nanjing. The
building of the Grand Canal, however, aided the economic importance of
the city, and it became a center of weaving, especially of brocade, and
of metal foundries.
Nanjing’s
decline lasted until the founding of the Ming dynasty, when it was
established as the capital of the Ming by its founder, Zhu Yuanzhang
(the Hongwu Emperor). Hongwu repopulated the city with in-migrant
craftsmen and wealthy families from elsewhere in southeastern China,
meanwhile deporting most of the resident population to far away
Yunnan. He also undertook a massive building program, including
an imperial palace and massive city walls, parts of which still stand.
The city became an administrative center and the site of imperial
examinations, as well as a manufacturing center.
The
third Ming emperor, known by his reign title a the Yongle emperor,
usurped the throne from his brother and moved the capital back to
Beijing, close to his princely power base and the former capital during
the Yuan. Nanjing continued as a secondary capital, with its own shadow
bureaucracy, a site for an imperial university and metropolitan
examinations, and an important textile production center. When the
Manchus invaded north China Nanjing held out briefly as a center of Ming
resistance, but eventually fell.
With
the overthrow of the Manchus in 1911 and the establishment of a Chinese
Republic, Nanjing again became the national capital. The unhappy and
often violent history of the city continued, however, as it was the site
of mass executions of Communists by Chiang Kai-shek
in 1927, and of the infamous “Nanjing
Massacre” by
Japanese forces who occupied the city in 1937, when some 300,000
residents of the city perished. After 1945 Nanjing again became the
capital of the Kuomintang government. After peace talks between the
Kuomintang and the Communists held there in 1947 broke down, Nanjing was
captured by People’s
Liberation Army in 1949. Today it is an important industrial base
for the automobile, electronics, and machine tool industries,
petrochemical production and steel foundries, and aeronautical training.
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