Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu, East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a population of 9,423,400.
Situated in the Yangtze River Delta, Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties, kingdoms and republican governments dating from the 3rd century to 1949, and has thus long been a major center of culture, education, research, politics, economy, transport networks and tourism, being the home to one of the world's largest inland ports. The city is also one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only slightly less than that of a province. It has also been awarded the title of 2008 Habitat Scroll of Honor of China, Special UN Habitat Scroll of Honor Award and National Civilized City. Nanjing is also considered a Beta (global second-tier) city classification, together with Chongqing, Hangzhou and Tianjin by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranked as one of the world's top 100 cities in the Global Financial Centres Index.
As of 2021, Nanjing has 68 institutions of higher learning, including 13 double-first-class universities, ten 111-plan universities, eight 211 universities, and 97 academies. Nanjing University, which has a long history, is among the world's top 10 universities ranked by the Nature Index. The ratio of college students to the total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing has the fifth-largest scientific research output of any city in the world. As of 2024, it has been ranked as the world's second most prolific scientific research center in earth and environmental sciences and the world's third most prolific scientific research center in chemistry and physical sciences, according to the Nature Index.
Nanjing, one of the nation's most important cities for over a thousand years, is recognized as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It has been one of the world's largest cities, enjoying peace and prosperity despite various wars and disasters. Nanjing served as the capital of Eastern Wu (229–280), one of the three major states in the Three Kingdoms period; the Eastern Jin and each of the Southern dynasties (Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen), which successively ruled southern China from 317 to 589; the Southern Tang (937–75), one of the Ten Kingdoms; the Ming dynasty when, for the first time, all of China was ruled from a city, one city (1368–1421); and the Republic of China (1927–37, 1946–49), serving as the internationally recognized capital of China and the seat of the central government of China under the Kuomintang, until the government's relocation to Taipei at the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War. The city also served as the seat of the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1853–64) and the Japanese-installed collaborationist regime of Wang Jingwei (1940–45) during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It suffered devastating atrocities in both conflicts, most notably the Nanjing Massacre of 1937–38.
Nanjing became the capital city of Jiangsu province in 1952, after serving as a Direct-administered Municipality from 1949 to 1952 following the establishment of the People's Republic of China. It has many important heritage sites, including the Presidential Palace, Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum and Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. Nanjing is famous for human historical landscapes, mountains and waters such as Fuzimiao, Ming Palace, Chaotian Palace, Porcelain Tower, Drum Tower, Stone City, City Wall, Qinhuai River, Xuanwu Lake and Purple Mountain. Key cultural facilities include Nanjing Library, Nanjing Museum and Jiangsu Art Museum.
Names
The name "Nanjing" ("Southern Capital") was originally informal, appearing in Xiao Zixian's 6th-century reply to Xiao Tong during the Northern and Southern Dynasties era of Chinese history. Synonyms were also used, like Nandu (, ). Under the Hongwu Emperor who founded the Ming dynasty, after the abandonment of plans for a third capital at Fengyang, a distinction began to be made between his northern capital at Kaifeng and the southern one at Yingtian (, , "Following Heaven"). This distinction was continued and eventually formalized after his son the Yongle Emperor relocated his court to Shuntian or Beijing ("Northern Capital"). The continuation of the dual arrangement was required to respect the wishes of his father, whose Ancestral Injunctions had insisted Nanjing should remain a permanent imperial capital. The Nanjing form of Lower Yangtze Mandarin remained a prestige dialect and the imperial lingua franca for centuries, producing formerly common romanizations of the name as Nanqim, Nankin, and Nanking. The less common Wade-Giles form of Nan-ching was an earlier attempt to represent its pronunciation in the Beijing form of Mandarin, now represented in pinyin as .
The city has a number of other names, and some historical names are now used as names of districts of the city.
During the Warring States Era, settlements within modern Nanjing were known as Yuecheng (, , "Yue City") and Jinlingyi (, , "City of the Golden" or "Precious Burial Mound") or Jinling (, ), from which Nanjing is sometimes known as Jincheng (, , "Golden City"). Under the Qin, Jinling was renamed Moling (, , "Fodder Mound").
Jianye (, , "Establishing Merit") was adopted as the name of the Wu capital during the Three Kingdoms Era. The city first became an imperial Chinese capital under the Sima Jin dynasty under the name Jiankang, a change adopted to avoid the naming taboo occasioned by the elevation of Emperor Min, whose personal name was Sima Ye. Under the Tang dynasty, it was known as Shengzhou (, , "Ascending Prefecture").
The city was renamed by the Song dynasty to Jiangning (, , "Pacified area of the Yangtze"), romanized at the time as Kiangning. The Chinese abbreviation of jiāng () for Jiangning formed the first syllable of a compound (with sū from Suzhou) that was the source of the provincial name Jiangsu. As the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom from 1851 to 1864, Nanjing was known as Tianjing (, , "Heavenly Capital" or "Capital of Heaven"). With the fall of the Qing regime in 1911, the city was renamed Nanjing in 1912 and was the capital of the Provisional Government of the new Republic of China. However, the capital returned to Beijing by October of the same year, though the name change was retained. With the success of Kuomintang's Northern Expedition in 1927, Nanjing again became the capital of the Republic of China, and until the fall of the republic in 1949, the Chinese abbreviation (, "capital") was used for the city; the same abbreviation is now used for Beijing.
History
Prehistory
thumb|right|250px|[[Purple Mountain (Nanjing)|Purple Mountain or Zijin Shan, located to the east of the walled city of Nanjing, was the origin of the city's name of Jinling. The water in the front is Xuanwu Lake.]]
The 1993 discovery of "Nanjing Man" in Hulu Cave in Jiangning District established that reached eastern China around 600,000 years ago, hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously thought. Following the advent of in China and the end of the Last Glacial Period, the area around Nanjing was home to Neolithic settlements intermediate between societies along the Yellow River such as the Dawenkou culture and those around Lake Tai and Hangzhou Bay such as the Majiabang and Songze cultures. Agriculture was being practiced in Qixia District by 5000 BC, and the local Beiyinyangying culture (, ) possessed , a kind of rice wine vessel, by about 3000 BC.
About 2000 BC, the Qinhuai River Basin was the home of the dense Bronze Age settlements of the Hushu culture (, ). The earliest cities in Nanjing were formed around these settlements. Connecting the development of these ruins, Zhou-era burial mounds, and Chinese legends concerning the Zhou ancestors, some Chinese archaeologists have argued for Nanjing as the site of Taibo's original settlement of Wu as the Shang and Zhou encroached southward from the Central Plains around the 12th century BC.
Ancient history
In 571 BC, the state of Chu established Tangyi in Liuhe. This is the oldest extant administrative establishment in Nanjing. In 541 BC, Wuby then centered on Suzhoubuilt Laizhu Town in Gaochun or Gucheng. The Wu king Fuchai fortified Yecheng in Nanjing in 495BC.
Wu was conquered by Yue in 473 BC, and the city was rebuilt at the mouth of the Qinhuai River the following year. Later Yuecheng was established on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate, which was the beginning of the construction of the main city of Nanjing. In 333 BC, Chu defeated Yue and built Jinlingyi in the western part of Nanjing. It was the earliest administrative construction in the main city of Nanjing.
In 210 BC, the First Emperor of Qin visited the east and changed Jinling City to Moling. The area was successively part of the Kuaiji, Zhang, and Danyang prefectures under the Qin and Han dynasties. It was part of the Yangzhou region which was established by Han Wudi in Yuanfeng 5 (106 BC). Nanjing was later made the seat of Danyang Prefecture and served as the chief city in the Yangzhou region for about 400 years from the late Han to the early Tang.
=== Capital of the Six Dynasties === <!--linked-->
thumb|left|A [[bixie sculpture at Xiao Xiu's tomb (AD518). Stone sculptures of the Southern Dynasty mausoleums continue to be used as an icon of the city.]]
The Six Dynasties is a collective term for six Chinese dynasties that all maintained national capitals at Jiankang. The six dynasties were the Eastern Wu (AD222–280), the Eastern Jin (317–420), and the four Southern Dynasties of the Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang, and Chen (420–589).
At the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, the warlord Sun Quan, who ruled Jiangdong, moved his ruling office to Moling in 211. The following year, he built the Stone City at the site of Jinlingyi, and renamed Moling to Jianye. After Sun Quan proclaimed himself emperor in 229, Jianye served as the capital of his Eastern Wu dynasty through the Three Kingdoms period. This marked the first time a Chinese dynastic capital was moved from the north to southern China, as the north came under the rule of the Sixteen Kingdoms.
upright|thumb|The [[Śarīra pagoda in Qixia Temple. It was built in AD601 and rebuilt in the 10th century.]]
Jiankang was the center of administration in the south for more than two and a half centuries, even as China entered the Northern and Southern dynasties period. After the Eastern Jin fell in 420, it continued to serve as the capital for the Southern dynasties of Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen. During this time, Jiankang was the international hub of East Asia. Based on historical documents, the city had 280,000 registered households. Assuming an average Nanjing household consisted of about 5.1 people, the city had more than 1.4 million residents. Possibly the best preserved of them is the ensemble of the Tomb of Xiao Xiu (475–518), a brother of Emperor Wu of Liang.
Destruction and revival
The period of division ended when the Sui dynasty reunified China and almost destroyed the entire city, turning it into a small town. The city was razed after the Sui took it over. It was renamed Shengzhou under the Tang dynasty and revived during the late Tang.
It was chosen as the capital and again called Jinling under the Southern Tang (937–976), which succeeded the state of Yang Wu. It was renamed Jiangning in the Northern Song and again renamed Jiankang in the Southern Song. Jiankang's textile industry burgeoned and thrived during the Song despite the constant threat of invasions from the north by the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty. The court of Da Chu, a short-lived puppet state established by the Jurchens, and the court of Song were once in the city. In Jianyan 3 (1129), Jiankang became the temporary capital (, ) of the Song, being set as Eastern Capital (, ). Although people like Yue Fei argued for maintaining the imperial court being in the city, in Shaoxing 8 (1139) it withdrew from Jiankang to Lin'an (present Hangzhou) and Jiankang relegated to the "preserving capital" (, ).
The Southern Song were eventually destroyed by the Mongols. During the Mongols' rule as the Yuan dynasty, the city's status as a hub of the textile industry was further consolidated. According to Odoric of Pordenone, the prefectural capital of Jinling ("Chilenfu") had 360 stone bridges, which were finer than anywhere else in the world. It was well populated and had a large craft industry. In 1239, Jiankang was renamed Jiqing (集庆).
Southern capital of the Ming dynasty
thumb|250px|[[Mochou Lake, established as a garden by the Hongwu Emperor]]
thumb|250px|[[Ming Xiaoling, mausoleum of the Hongwu Emperor, founder of the Ming dynasty]]
In 1365，Zhu Yuanzhang captured Ziqing Circuit and changed its name to Yingtian Prefecture (應天府). In 1364, he was enthroned as the King of Wu and established at Yingtian the capital. He rebuilt and expand the city of Jiankang. In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang overthrew the Yuan and enthroned as the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming dynasty, he renamed the city Nanjing and made it the southern capital in 1368 (a central capital or Zhongdu was being planned in Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown Fengyang). In 1379, the Zhongdu project was abandoned and Nanjing became the capital of the Ming dynasty, called Jingshi (京师 "The Capital").
The Hongwu Emperor constructed a long city wall around Nanjing, as well as a new Ming Palace complex, and government halls. It took 200,000 laborers 21 years to finish the wall, which was intended to defend the city and its surrounding region from coastal pirates. The present-day City Wall of Nanjing was mainly built during that time and today it remains in good condition and has been well preserved. It is among the longest surviving city walls in China. The Jianwen Emperor ruled from Yingtian from 1398 to 1402. It is believed that Nanjing was the largest city in the world from 1358 to 1425 with a population of 487,000 in 1400.
Having usurped power from his nephew and uncertain of the loyalty of the region's officials, the Yongle Emperor relocated the capital in 1421 to Beiping, where he had long served as the regional governor as the Prince of Yan. Because the new status of Yingtian was included in the Hongwu Emperor's "ancestral injunctions" for his dynasty, however, the Yongle Emperor was obliged to preserve its special status, at least in name. The "northern capital" came to be known as Beijing and the 'southern capital' as Nanjing. Both controlled territories that were "directly administered" by the emperor and his staff, Beizhili in the north and Nanzhili in the south.
thumb|right|250px|The [[Ming Palace, the "Forbidden City of Nanjing", was home to the first two Ming emperors]]
The Hongxi Emperor wanted to restore Nanjing as the sole imperial capital and undertook preparations to do so. On February 24, 1425, he appointed Admiral Zheng He as the defender of Nanjing and ordered him to continue his command over the Ming treasure fleet for the city's defense.
The succeeding Xuande Emperor preferred to remain in Beijing, leaving it the primary and de facto capital Owing to the continuing importance of the ancestral injunctions, however, Nanjing was designated in official documents as the actual capital and Beijing as a temporary capital from 1425 to 1441. In 1441, the Yingzong Emperor ordered the "provisional" or "temporary" (, ) prefix removed from Beijing's government seals and further ordered that the southern imperial administration would henceforth be required to prefix "Nanjing" to their own seals to distinguish them.
Besides the city wall, other Ming-era structures in the city included the famous Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum and Porcelain Tower, although the latter was destroyed by the Taipings in the 19th century either to prevent a hostile faction from using it to observe and shell the city or from superstitious fear of its geomantic properties. A gigantic stele, cut on the orders of the Yongle Emperor, lies abandoned in the Yangshan Quarry some east of the walled city.
As the center of the empire, early-Ming Nanjing had worldwide connections. It was home of the admiral Zheng He, who went to sail the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and it was visited by foreign dignitaries, such as a king from Borneo who died during his visit to China in 1408. The Tomb of the King of Boni, with a spirit way and a tortoise stele, was discovered south of the walled city in Yuhuatai District in 1958 and has been restored.
Nanjing briefly again became the capital of the Southern Ming emperor from 1644 to 1645. After the fall of Beijing to Li Zicheng's rebel forces and then to the Manchu-led Qing dynasty in the spring of 1644, the Ming prince Zhu Yousong was enthroned in Nanjing in June 1644 as the Hongguang Emperor. His short reign was described by later historians as the first reign of the so-called Southern Ming dynasty.
Beset by factional conflicts, his regime could not offer effective resistance to Qing forces, when the Qing army, led by the Manchu prince Dodo approached Jiangnan the next spring. Days after Yangzhou fell to the Manchus in late May 1645, the Hongguang Emperor fled Nanjing, and the imperial Ming Palace was looted by local residents. On June 6, Dodo's troops approached Nanjing, and the commander of the city's garrison, Zhao the Earl of Xincheng, promptly surrendered the city to them. The Manchus soon ordered all male residents of the city to shave their heads in the Manchu queue way. They requisitioned a large section of the city for the bannermen's cantonment, and occupied the former imperial Ming Palace, but otherwise the city was spared the mass murders and destruction that befell Yangzhou.
thumb|left|[[Nanjing City Wall near Xuanwumen Gate]]
Qing dynasty and Taiping Rebellion
thumb|right|250px| ("Nanjing or Jiangnan"), the 9th provincial map of the [[Qing Empire|Chinese Empire in Martino Martini and Joan Blaeu's 1655 Under the Qing, Nanjing continued to oversee the territory of Ming Nanzhili as Jiangnan until its division into the provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui.]]
Under the Qing dynasty from 1645<!--not 1644--> to 1911, Nanjing returned to its previous name Jiangning although it continued to be referenced as Nanking in foreign sources. At first, it continued to administer the territory of Nanzhili under the name Jiangnan ("Area South of the Yangtze") but this administration was soon broken up into "Right" and "Left" governments based in Suzhou and Jiangning respectively. After a series of reorganizations, at some point under the Qianlong Emperor, Jiangnan was fully divided into the present provinces of Anhui and Jiangsu. Separately, however, these provinces were reunited under the supervision of a new Viceroy of Liangjiang after 1723, whose seat was based in Jiangning. It was the site of a Qing Army garrison. It had been visited by the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors a number of times on their tours of the southern provinces. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking, ending the First Opium War, was signed in the city harbor on Royal Navy warships.
The Taiping Rebellion secured the city in the mid-19th century, taking it as their capital under the name Tianjing. The rebellion destroyed most of the former Ming imperial buildings in the city, including the Porcelain Tower, considered up to that time as one of the wonders of the world. Both the Qing viceroy and the Taiping king resided in buildings that would later be known as the Presidential Palace. When Qing forces led by Zeng Guofan retook the city in 1864, a massive slaughter occurred in the city with over 100,000 estimated to have committed suicide or fought to the death. Since the Taiping Rebellion began, Qing forces allowed no rebels speaking its dialect to surrender and systematically slaughtered civilians within the city.
The New York Methodist Mission Society's superintendent Virgil Hart arrived in Nanjing in 1881. After some time, he succeeded in buying land near the city's Southern Gate and Confucian Temple to build the city's first Methodist church, Western hospital and boys' school. The hospital would later be unified with the Drum Tower Hospital and the boys' school would be expanded by later missionaries to become the University of Nanking and Medical School. The old mission property became the No. 13 Middle School, the oldest continually-used school grounds in the city.
Capital of the Republic and Nanjing Massacre
thumb|right|The [[Presidential Building (Nanjing)|Presidential Palace of the National Government of the Republic of China in Nanjing, 1927]]
The Xinhai Revolution led to the founding of the Republic of China in January 1912 with Sun Yat-sen as the first provisional president and Nanjing was selected as its new capital. However, the Qing Empire controlled large regions to the north, so the revolutionaries asked Yuan Shikai to replace Sun as president in exchange for the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor. Yuan demanded the capital be moved to Beijing (closer to his power base).
In March 1927, after the capture of Nanjing by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) in their Northern Expedition, foreign warships bombarded the city to defend foreign residents against rioting and looting.
thumb|The basketball court of Nanjing Central Stadium, c. 1930
The Kuomintang (KMT; Nationalist Party) under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek again established Nanjing as the capital of the Republic of China, and this became internationally recognized once KMT forces took Beijing in 1928. The following decade is known as the Nanjing decade. During this decade, Nanjing was of symbolic and strategic importance. The Ming dynasty had made Nanjing a capital, the republic had been established there in 1912, and Sun Yat-sen's provisional government had been there. Sun's body was brought and placed in a grand mausoleum to cement Chiang's legitimacy. Chiang was born in the neighboring province of Zhejiang and the general area had strong popular support for him.
thumb|The Nanjing Municipal Government during the Republic of China period (1927–1949).
In 1927, the Nationalist government proposed a comprehensive proposal, the Capital Plan (), to reconstruct the war-torn city of Nanjing into a modern capital. It was a decade of extraordinary growth with an enormous amount of construction. A lot of government buildings, residential houses, and modern public infrastructures were built. During this boom, Nanjing reputedly became one of the most modern cities in China.
thumb|left|250px|Japanese soldiers entering the walled city of Nanjing through the [[Gate of China, Nanjing|Gate of China]]
In 1937, the Empire of Japan started a full-scale invasion of China after invading Manchuria in 1931, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War (often considered a theater of World War II). Their troops occupied Nanjing in December and carried out the systematic and brutal Nanjing Massacre (the "Rape of Nanjing"). The total death toll, including estimates made by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal after the atomic bombings, was between 300,000 and 350,000. The city itself was also severely damaged during the massacre. In 1946, after the Surrender of Japan, the KMT relocated its central government back to Nanjing.
thumb|right|[[Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum is the tomb of Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the Republic of China]]
People's Republic
In April 1949, Communist forces crossed the Yangtze River and the Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) captured Nanjing. The KMT government retreated to Canton (Guangzhou) until October 15, Chongqing until November 25, and then Chengdu before retreating to the island of Taiwan on December 10 where Taipei was proclaimed the temporary capital of the Republic of China. By late 1949, the PLA was pursuing remnants of KMT forces southwards in southern China, and only Tibet and Hainan Island were left.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in October 1949, Nanjing was initially a province-level municipality, but it was soon merged into Jiangsu and again became the provincial capital by replacing Zhenjiang which was transferred in 1928, and retains that status to this day.
Geography
thumb|left|250px|1955 [[Army Map Service|AMS map of the area around the still walled city of Nanjing, labelled "Nan-ching (Nanking)"]]
thumb|left|250px|1955 AMS detail map of Nanjing, again labelled "Nan-ching (Nanking)"
thumb|Nanjing Region – Lower Yangtze Basin and Eastern China.
Nanjing, with a total land area of , is situated in the heartland of the drainage area of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and in the Yangtze River Delta, one of the largest economic zones of China. The Yangtze River flows past the west side and then the north side of Nanjing City, while the Ningzheng Ridge surrounds the north, east and south sides of the city. The city is southeast of Luoyang, south-southeast of Beijing, west-northwest of Shanghai, and east-northeast of Chongqing. The Yangtze flows downstream from Jiujiang, Jiangxi, through Anhui and Jiangsu to the East China Sea. The northern part of the lower Yangtze drainage basin is the Huai River basin and the southern part is the Zhe River basin. They are connected by the Grand Canal east of Nanjing. The area around Nanjing is called Xiajiang (, Downstream River) region, with Jianghuai dominant in the northern part and Jiangzhe dominant in the southern part. The region is also well known as Dongnan (, South East, the Southeast) and Jiangnan (, and River South, South of Yangtze).
Nanjing borders Yangzhou to the northeast; Zhenjiang to the east; and Changzhou to the southeast. On its western boundary is Anhui, where Nanjing borders five prefecture-level cities: Chuzhou to the northwest, Wuhu, Chaohu, and Ma'anshan to the west and Xuancheng to the southwest.