Nanjing

A capital that emptied before it fell

By early on 23 April 1949, virtually all senior Nationalist government officials, the city government and the police had left Nanjing. Most defending troops were withdrawing, looting had begun, and a contemporary US Embassy report found no fighting inside the city.

Acting President Li Zongren, the premier and the remaining senior defence officials fled that morning. The Nationalist armies assigned to the Yangtze defence were ordered to withdraw south toward the Qiantang River line.

The night of the 23rd

At 7 p.m. the US ambassador, John Leighton Stuart, reported that civic leaders were organising night patrols while Chamber of Commerce representatives prepared to cross the Yangtze and welcome Communist forces expected the next morning. The city's electricity stayed on while looting spread and at least four ammunition dumps exploded outside the city.

Posters announced that Communist administration would begin at 7 a.m. on 24 April. One named the Ginling College president Wu Yifang as vice-chair of a peace-preservation committee; she told Stuart she had never been approached.

The date that straddles midnight

Later Chinese chronologies conventionally date the PLA's capture of Nanjing to 23 April. A Nanjing municipal history places the 35th Army's advance elements in the city late that night and the red flag over the Presidential Palace at about 2 a.m. on the 24th.

A subsequent embassy telegram reported PLA troops entering through the northwest gate at about 5 a.m. on 24 April. The commemorated date therefore compresses a transition that ran through the night rather than marking one uncontested moment.

A Nanjing Military Control Commission was established on 28 April.