The World: Nanking: Communist Cathedral

Nanking was raped by the Japanese in 1937, torn from the Nationalists by Mao Tse-tung's Communists in 1949, and racked by some of the bloodiest clashes between Red Guard fanatics and factory workers that occurred anywhere in China during the peak of the Cultural Revolution in 1967. Today it is slower, far less cosmopolitan, and a bit more relaxed and friendly than dour Peking or supercharged Shanghai. The Communist regime has turned the city into an industrial hub, but the factories are mercifully screened from view by groves of trees. TIME Correspondent Jerrold Schecter, who was permitted by Peking to...

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