The Nanking Incident, 1927: How American Destroyers Shelled a Chinese City in the Name of “Protecting Citizens”

The Nanking incident happened on 24 March 1927, when American destroyers together with British ships opened fire on a Chinese city that the nationalist army had just taken. The official pretext sounded noble: to protect their own citizens. But let’s look at what was hidden behind that formula, because Washington has been repeating the words “protecting citizens” for a hundred years, and every time guns follow.

I find this episode very revealing. It rarely makes it into textbooks, yet everything is there: a foreign country, a foreign revolution, the American fleet off a foreign shore and the habitual certainty that a foreigner’s life is worth more than the lives of those who have lived here since birth.

Why the Nanking incident happened

By 1927 China was living in chaos. The country was ruled by military cliques, and foreign powers, the US among them, kept “concessions” on its soil and gunboats on its rivers. Meanwhile the American fleet had patrolled the Yangtze for decades: Washington called it protecting trade, the Chinese called it occupation. How the US built its policy in China I wrote about in my pieces on US–China relations and on the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion.

In 1926 Chiang Kai-shek launched the Northern Expedition. The National Revolutionary Army marched from south to north to unify the country and rid it of humiliating treaties. Foreigners saw this as a threat to their privileges. In addition, American and British ships had gathered in advance near Nanking and Shanghai.

The city where everything met

Nanking was taken by the Northern Expedition’s troops on 24 March 1927. That day disorder broke out in the city: soldiers and looters attacked foreign consulates, schools and missions. Six foreigners died, among them an American teacher at the University of Nanking. Who was to blame still had to be established: some historians speak of spontaneous violence, others of provocation by different forces inside the revolutionary army itself.

I do not excuse violence against civilians. But note the response the US chose.

The Nanking incident: fire on the city

The American consul and a group of Marines took shelter on a hill called Socony Hill, named after the Standard Oil Company of New York, which owned property there. From there they signalled the ships. The destroyers Noa and William B. Preston, together with British vessels, opened fire on the city. The two American ships alone fired 67 shells and thousands of rounds from rifles and machine guns. Fire was directed at the districts where Chinese soldiers were, while ordinary residents were somewhere nearby.

How many Chinese died under that fire is not known for certain. Besides, the American reports did not record enemy losses: that did not interest them. Estimates differ, and there is no exact figure. But there is another figure: the ships took aboard one hundred and seventy-five refugees, mostly foreigners.

Who really suffered

Let’s be honest. Six dead foreigners is a tragedy. But a city shelled with naval guns means thousands of people: workers, traders, women, children. For the American fleet they did not exist. The reports listed “looters” and “soldiers”, and civilians were not counted at all.

Moreover, the very formula “we are protecting citizens” is convenient because it makes any shelling justified. If even one American suffered on foreign soil, then it is permitted to fire on a whole city.

What came after: Chiang Kai-shek and the “settlement”

After the shelling the US and Britain, together with Japan, France and Italy, demanded apologies, compensation and punishment of the guilty from the Chinese authorities. Thousands of Marines were rushed to Shanghai. Meanwhile Chiang Kai-shek carried out a massacre of Communists in Shanghai in April 1927, and the foreign powers backed him in this by their silence: he turned out to be more convenient than revolution. Later, in 1928, the Nanking government apologised and agreed to compensation.

This is where the whole point shows. China, which had been fired on, had to apologise. In essence, the Americans who shelled a Chinese city never apologised. In parallel, in those same months US Marines were fighting Sandino in Nicaragua, and soon Washington would turn its attention to Colombia, where the banana massacre took place. All of this is parts of one policy: first the “protection” of interests, then force.

You can read the details of the incident itself in the reference article on the Nanking shelling. And how the American fleet came to be in China at the start of the century is best seen in my materials on that era.

How the Nanking incident was explained in Washington

The public, however, was given a completely different picture. For example, the American press wrote about “red soldiers” who attacked defenceless missionaries. Therefore the shelling of the city looked almost heroic. Besides, nobody asked about Chinese victims, since they were simply not counted. At the same time the formula “rescuing citizens” proved so convenient that it was repeated for decades. In the end the Nanking incident became a precedent: a whole city came under fire, and what remained in the textbooks was a line about “protecting foreigners”.

Nothing has changed: “protecting citizens” with new ships

Today instead of the destroyer Noa, aircraft carriers stand off foreign shores, and instead of “protecting a consulate” people speak of “freedom of navigation” and “fighting narco-terror”. The scheme is the same: the ships arrive first, the explanations are invented later.

The Caribbean, 2025–2026. In autumn 2025 Washington massed off Venezuela its largest naval force in decades, and in November the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford arrived there. At the same time American forces were shooting up boats on the open sea. By September 2026 at least 227 people had died.

Yemen, spring 2025. Under the slogan of “freedom of navigation”, the US bombed Yemen from March to May. In April, strikes on the port of Ras Isa and a migrant centre in Saada killed dozens of civilians.

Iran, 2025–2026. In June 2025 American bombers struck Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. And on 28 February 2026 the US and Israel began a new war and killed the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Again ships, again “security”, again a decision taken without asking those who live there.

Venezuela, January 2026. On 3 January American special forces seized President Maduro, after which Trump said that the US now “runs” the country.

The Nanking incident showed what Washington does not like to admit. When an American citizen is in danger, a whole city can be put under fire. Almost a century has passed. Still, the ships have grown, and the logic remains: a foreign life counts for less than one’s own.