important U.S. air base supporting the Chinese armies in Guangxi, but during 1944–45 it was again under Japanese occupation.
In 1949 Nanning again became the provincial capital, first of Guangxi province and then (1958) of the renamed Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Until then Nanning had essentially been a commercial center dependent on Guangzhou and on the Xi River system. In the late 1930s a railway was begun, joining Hengyang in southern Hunan province with Guilin, Liuzhou, Nanning, and the Vietnam border, while another was begun from Liuzhou to Guiyang in Guizhou. The construction of the Nanning section of this line was halted in 1940 by the Japanese advances, however, and was not completed until 1951, after which Nanning was directly linked with central China; completion of a branch line to the port of Zhanjiang (in Guangdong) in 1957 gave it a direct outlet to the sea. During the French war in Indochina (1946–54), Nanning was the chief support base in China for the Vietnamese forces, and during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s it again became a staging post for the sending of supplies southward to North Vietnam. It was also an important military supply center during the Sino-Vietnam confrontation in 1979.
Formerly an essentially commercial and administrative center, Nanning from 1949 experienced industrial growth. The city is surrounded by a fertile agricultural region producing subtropical fruits and sugarcane; food processing, flour milling, sugar refining, meatpacking, and leather manufacture are important in the city. Nanning has been a center for printing and paper manufacture, and it is also important in heavy industry.
After the recognition of the Zhuang ethnic minority in 1958, Nanning became the chief center for the training of Zhuang leaders. Guangxi University, a large medical school, and a school of agriculture all date from the 1920s.
A cavern at Yiling, 19 km to the northwest, has a 1,100 m passage
