Jinan [key], city (1994 est. pop. 1,659,900), capital of Shandong prov., E China. It lies 3 mi (4.8 km) S of the Huang He (Yellow River) and is a railroad junction on the network linking Shanghai and Nanjing with Tianjin; it has connections to Qingdao and Yantai. Jinan is an industrial center with textile, flour, paper, and iron and steel mills, food-processing establishments, machine shops, and plants making trucks, agricultural machinery, chemicals, and fertilizer. An ancient walled city, Jinan was a provincial center as early as the 12th cent. It fell to the Communists in Sept., 1948, with the loss of some 75,000 Nationalist troops. Jinan is the seat of Shandong Univ. and other institutions of higher learning. The name sometimes appears as Chi-nan.
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