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On the night of 20th-21st April 1949, after weeks of laborious preparations and rehearsals, the Red Army began crossing the Changjiang (Yangtze) in hundreds of small boats along a 500-kilometre wide front. Meeting with little determined resistance they captured the Nationalist capital Nanjing three days later.

Any possibility of China becoming partitioned into a Communist North and a Nationalist South had been decisively smashed; and the liberation of southern China begun. The Nationalist headquarters progressively retreated, first to Guangzhou, then Chongqing and Chengdu and finally to Taipei.

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66mm   19.1g

40mm   5.2g

h. 34mm  w. 32mm   3.9g

53mm   13.1g

46mm   8.0g

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h. 54mm  w. 57mm   13.3g

h. 51mm  w. 52mm    8.6g

58mm   8.3g

plastic and printed paper (slightly foxed)

"Our mighty army, a million strong, has crossed the great river"

This line is taken from Mao's poem The Capture of Nanjing (1949). After such an unexpectedly rapid victory - in 1948 Mao had predicted they would not reach the Changjiang until autumn 1949 - he permitted himself a degree of poetic licence; it was a mere 300,000 soldiers who crossed the river during the first 24 hours of the operation.

The Great Crossing

gold sails

h. 39mm  w. 46mm   9.8g