Six dynasties made Nanjing a capital; 2025 made it a case study — 181 million visits in ten months, the world’s largest inland port upstream of the delta, and Asia’s biggest high-speed station stitching it all together.
Nanjing sits where the Yangtze bends toward the sea: a walled Ming city, a republican capital, and now the western anchor of a delta economy worth ¥34.7 trillion. Its 2025 numbers tell the story — tourism revenue up 10% to ¥229.3 billion in ten months, foreign overnight stays up 18.4%, and a metro that grew past 600 km while opening China’s first cross-provincial line.
The transport stack is the argument: Lukou airport past its 30-million design capacity, Nanjing South dispatching 650+ trains a day on five corridors, the planet’s largest inland port on 208 km of riverbank, and coaches sharing one roof with all of it. Few cities let you land, rail, sail and bus within the same hour.
The studies below track each layer — what opened, who arrives, what they spend, and how the airport, rail, port and bus systems actually behave. Use the menu to move between the seven studies.
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