Lanzhou

Lanzhou or Lanchow , city (1994 est. pop. 1,295,600), capital of Gansu prov., W China, on the Huang He (Yellow River) at its confluence with the Wei. It is a rail, highway, and air hub and the junction point to remote Xinjiang in extreme NW China. Lanzhou is linked by rail to Beijing and to the Republic of Mongolia and Russia. It is on the highway to Tibet. A rapidly growing industrial city, it receives its power from a nearby hydroelectric facility and from the coal that is mined in the area. It has one of the largest oil refineries in the country, in addition to textile mills, petrochemical, rubber, and fertilizer plants, and machine manufactures. It has a gas-diffusion plant for processing plutonium, and is the center of China's atomic energy industry. An old walled city, Lanzhou was the scene (1936) of a successful Chinese Communist revolt. It is the seat of an oil research institute, Lanzhou Univ., and numerous technical colleges. The name sometimes appears as Lan-chou.

Lanzhou City on the Huang He river, w China; capital of Gansu province. An old walled city dating from the 6th century bc, it retained its importance under successive rulers. The principal industry is oil refining. Since 1960 the Chinese nuclear industry has been based here. Pop. (1999 est.) 2,909,000.