Nantong

Nantong is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Jiangsu province, China, on the northern bank of the Yangtze River near its mouth, across from Shanghai. The scholar-official Zhang Jian founded the Dasheng Cotton Mill there in 1895, making Nantong a major industrial center that ranked third nationally in cotton mill spindles by 1913, and Zhang Jian also founded China's first teacher training school and folk museum in the city. Occupied by Japan during the Second World War, Nantong came under Communist control in 1949 and in 1984 was designated one of China's fourteen open coastal cities; the 2020 census recorded 7,726,635 residents, with 3,766,534 in the urban core of three districts. Its economy today centers on textile manufacturing, shipbuilding and port operations, with a 2025 GDP of about 1.28 trillion yuan and infrastructure including the Sutong Yangtze River Bridge.