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Development of Transportation in Communist China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Victor D. Lippit
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Extract

Ambitious aspirations for railway development in China had long antecedents prior to the establishment of communist rule in 1949. During the First World War, Sun Yat-sen presented a programme calling for the construction of 100,000 miles of railroads. A quarter of a century later, in 1943, Chang Kia-ngau, Kuomintang Minister of Communications, presented a ten-year plan for railroad construction. He called for 14,300 miles of railroads to be built within ten years following the end of the war. The new lines he envisioned were to be added to a total of 12,036 miles of railroad which had been built by 1942. Of this meagre existing mileage, “3,726 miles were lost through the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and 6,566 miles were lost or destroyed during the first five-and-one-half years of the Sino-Japanese war.” While lines lost but not destroyed could presumably be utilised after the war, the scope of his programme, as can be seen from comparison with the existing mileage, was considerably beyond what China could hope to achieve with her own resources. Like Sun Yat-sen before him, Chang Kia-ngau hoped that massive conversion of Western war industries to the production of construction goods would provide the material inputs to make his programme feasible. A plan based on the expectation of a beneficence the West has yet to display to the underdeveloped world was of course foredoomed to failure.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 27 , September 1966 , pp. 101 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1966

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References

1 Kia-ngau, Chang, China's Struggle for Railroad Development (New York: John Day, 1943), p. 46Google Scholar.

2 Ibid. pp. 297–305.

3 Ibid. pp. 299–300.

4 The total length of track laid on all new lines, excluding special purpose lines, was 4,668 miles between 1930 and 1958: see Table 2.

5 In order to maintain consistency of measurement units all of the mileage figures in the tables, as well as some in the text, have been converted from kilometres at the rate of 1 kilometre=0·62137 miles. The totals have been computed from the mileage conversions.

6 Though provision of hinterland communications should ultimately spur the development of Amoy's excellent natural harbour

7 See Hunter, Holland, Soviet Transportation Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 21–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Wen-ching, Tseng, China's Socialist Industrialisation (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1958)Google Scholar, reprinted in Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS), No. 3800, p. 137.

9 Ibid. pp. 134–135.

10 Fu-chun, Li, Report on the First Five Year Plan for Development of the National Economy of the People's Republic of China in 1953–57 (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1955), p. 50Google Scholar.

11 Fu-chun, Li, Report to the Third Session of the First National People's Congress, 06 18, 1956Google Scholar. Reported in , U.S.Current Background (CB) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General), No. 393Google Scholar.

12 Both plants began production in 1960, but the departure of Russian technicians and blueprints at this critical juncture has evidently resulted in a large loss of potential production over the past five years.

13 Approximately 30,000 tons of steel rail and rolled steel together with great quantities of lumber and other raw materials are needed to build 100 miles of new railway: Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), May 12, 1964. Translation in JPRS, No. 25062.

14 Tseng Wen-ching, pp. 144–145.

15 Within the province Shanghai was overwhelmingly predominant.

16 Tseng Wen-ching, p. 135.

17 Ibid.

18 ibid. p. 136.

19 Cost norms were set for each investment category. The norms, for example, were 20 million yuan for integrated iron and steel works and 5 million yuan for the textile industry. The large-scale projects whose cost exceeded these norms formed the core of the development programme, receiving priority in material allocation and state support.

20 Fu-chun, Li, Report on the First Five Year Plan, p. 51Google Scholar.

21 Tai-yuan, Teng, Minister of Railways, speech to National People's Congress, July 21, 1955: CB, (1956)Google Scholar.

22 In actuality, 3,020 miles of new lines were built and, excluding the narrow-gauge forest railways, the overall figure comes to 5,792 miles. The figure exceeds 6,214 miles if the narrow-gauge forest railways are included.

23 Prior to the completion of this line in December 1955, China's only rail links with the Soviet rail network were through northern Manchuria: westward via the Harbin-Manchouli Railway and eastward via the Harbin-Suifenho Railway. The Tsining-Ehrlien Railway, cutting the rail distance between Peking and Moscow by more than 620 miles, has facilitated Sino-Soviet trade.

24 JPRS, No. 3605, p. 56.

25 Fu-chun, Li, Report on the First Five Year Plan, p. 24Google Scholar.

26 In 1959 Coal transport, for example, according to the Ministry of Coal Industry: “For the country as a whole, the net weight of coal loaded per car has … been rising each quarter. … Without increasing the number of cars, the tonnage of coal transported in the third quarter was 2,730,000 metric tons greater. The proportion of ‘direct destination’ trains has risen from 31·5 per cent, in the first quarter to 42·4 per cent, in the third quarter, which means a saving in coal transportation of approximately 21,400 loaded cars. Although such notable results have been achieved in coal transportation, there is still much latent capacity that can be developed ”: Coal Industry, December 1959. Reported in JPRS, No. 3686.

27 People's Daily, October 27, 1960. Reprinted in JPRS, No. 6627, pp. 57–59.

28 Translation in JPRS, No. 3781.

29 JPRS, No. 6165.

30 JPRS, No. 3781.

31 Translation from Hung Ch'i (Red Flag), May 1960, in JPRS, No. 3901.

32 Ibid.

33 “The military situation in the Formosa Strait has largely brought to a standstill the coastal trade of such important ports as Swatow, Amoy and Foochow”: Shabad, Theodore, China's Changing Map (New York: Praeger, 1956), p. 89Google Scholar.

34 While China's less developed state at the start of her First Five-Year Plan, together with her higher population density, serves to explain this phenomenon in part, it would be an error to allow these factors to suffice as a total explanation. China's development is characterised by attempts, in large measure successful, to involve the total population in the process of modernisation. The role of mass participation and local initiative in surmounting some of the constraints imposed by capital scarcity is reflected as much in the transport development programme as elsewhere in the economy.

35 In Shanghai, for example, the value of industrial output in 1959 was 24·54 billion yuan, according to official figures, nearly seven times greater than in 1949 and 43·3 per cent, greater than in 1958: see JPRS, No. 3902.

36 Translation in JPRS, No. 25638.

37 “The present effort at building roads aims at the opening up of commercial routes to the villages to facilitate the transport of locally produced goods as part of the policy of priority given to agriculture. Better roads are being built by the provincial governments, but most of them are being built on local initiative. They are rarely fit for motor traffic; on the better roads horses and ox-carts may travel; on others hand-carts … can be pushed or pulled by man,” People's Daily June 11, 1963.

38 Skinner, G. William, “ Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,” Part III, Journal of Asian Studies, 05 1965, p. 378Google Scholar.

39 JPRS, No. 27895.

40 JPRS, No. 25948.

41 Translation of January 6, 1965, Red Flag article in JPRS, 28892.

42 Wilson, Dick, “Peking's Trading Plans,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 05 20, 1965, p. 353Google Scholar.

43 Organizing Railway Transportation (Peking: People's Railway Publishing House, 1964)Google Scholar; translation in JPRS, No. 28854, p. 118.

44 Ibid. pp. 300–392.

45 It is worth while noting that even in the 1930s, periods of consolidation, such as 1957, were marked by a sharp drop in the mileage of new tracks laid, while the construction of new double-track lines expanded steadily (see Table 2).

46 JPRS, 27071.

47 Special purpose lines have continued to be built. In 1963 the People's Liberation Army laid 378 miles of narrow-gauge forest railways and an additional 416 miles in 1964, China News Analysis, No. 543 (12 4, 1964)Google Scholar.

48 Central Asian Review, No. 2 (1965), p. 174Google ScholarPubMed.

49 Price incentives have been employed to shift freight from railroads to ships. 1958 regulations, for example, allowed a 15 per cent, railroad rate reduction for freight using joint waterland routes and provided for a 30 per cent, increase in cost for coal and coke shipped entirely over railroad lines between specified locations (i.e., Peking to Shanghai) where alternative water-routing was available: Organizing Railway Transportation, p. 133.

50 Ibid. p. 128. (It is significant to note that even in 1962, a year of relatively low industrial production, the pressure on railroad transport facilities was considerable.)

51 JPRS, No. 24999.

52 JPRS, No. 27384.

53 JPRS, No. 27301, p. 27.

54 JPRS, No. 28891.