Nanchang

Nanchang (nän'chäng') [key], city (1994 est. pop. 1,168,700), capital of Jiangxi prov., China, on the Gan River, near the southern end of Poyang Lake. A major transportation center, it has a port, rail links to Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Hunan, and an airport. It is a large economic and industrial center with machine shops, food-processing establishments, textile and paper mills, and plants making chemicals, tractors, cement, tires, and pharmaceuticals. An old walled city, Nanchang dates from the Sung dynasty (12th cent.), but it received its present name in the Ming dynasty. Nanchang is considered the birthplace of the People's Liberation Army. There, in 1927, a force of 30,000 Communist troops, led by Zhu De, rose against the Kuomintang government and briefly established the first soviet republic in China. Occupied by the Japanese (1939–45) in World War II, Nanchang was reoccupied by the Nationalists in 1945 but fell to the Communists in 1949. An agricultural institute and a medical college are in the city. It is also called Nanjing.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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