Nanning is a large city in in south China. It has about 6 million people. The city is surrounded by a fertile agricultural region producing subtropical fruits and sugarcane; food processing, flour milling, sugar refining, meatpacking, and leather manufacturing are important in the city. Nanning is a centre for printing and papermaking, and heavy industry is also important—as is the production of building materials, especially cement. In the 1990s the completion of a rail line between Nanning and Kunming (west) in Yunnan province and of railways from Nanning and the port cities of Fangchenggang and Beihai on the Gulf of Tonkin provided the shortest rail transport for southern China to the sea. Nanning subsequently became the railway hub of southern Guangxi.
