On November 2, 1948, Shenyang was taken by the People's Liberation Army, and the Liaoshen campaign that had begun on September 12 came to an end with the whole of the northeast under the control of the Communist side. The fighting lasted fifty-two days. About 470,000 Nationalist officers and men were killed, wounded or captured, and the loss of the region took away the main industrial base of the country, and the campaign was the first of the three great operations of the civil war.
The campaign opened with attacks on the rail links around Jinzhou, the land route between the northeast and the rest of the country, and the Nationalist command tried to hold the corridor and to relieve the city. That did not work. Jinzhou fell in the middle of October after a short and costly siege, the force sent to break through was destroyed in the open, and Changchun surrendered later that month after a long blockade in which many civilians died.
Changchun had been surrounded since the spring and the defenders gave in on October 19, and by then the remaining Nationalist forces in the region were falling back toward Shenyang and Yingkou and the coast. The retreat broke down. Shenyang fell on November 2, and some units were taken off by sea while the rest surrendered or scattered, and the region passed into the hands of the new administration within days.
The result changed the balance of the war. The northeast had the coal and steel and railways and machine industry that the rest of the country lacked, and the People's Liberation Army gained both the factories and a large number of the men who had been taken prisoner and were then organised into new units. Two further campaigns followed within weeks, and the war ended in 1949. The northeast had settled it.