Railroads and the Transformation of China

As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present.

China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial con...

(展开全部)

As a vehicle to convey both the history of modern China and the complex forces still driving the nation’s economic success, rail has no equal. Railroads and the Transformation of China is the first comprehensive history, in any language, of railroad operation from the last decades of the Qing Empire to the present.

China’s first fractured lines were built under semicolonial conditions by competing foreign investors. The national system that began taking shape in the 1910s suffered all the ills of the country at large: warlordism and Japanese invasion, Chinese partisan sabotage, the Great Leap Forward when lines suffered in the “battle for steel,” and the Cultural Revolution, during which Red Guards were granted free passage to “make revolution” across the country, nearly collapsing the system. Elisabeth Köll’s expansive study shows how railroads survived the rupture of the 1949 Communist revolution and became an enduring model of Chinese infrastructure expansion.

The railroads persisted because they were exemplary bureaucratic institutions. Through detailed archival research and interviews, Köll builds case studies illuminating the strength of rail administration. Pragmatic management, combining central authority and local autonomy, sustained rail organizations amid shifting political and economic priorities. As Köll shows, rail provided a blueprint for the past forty years of ambitious, semipublic business development and remains an essential component of the PRC’s politically charged, technocratic economic model for China’s future.

List of Figures and Maps*
A Note on Measures, Romanization, and Translations
Introduction
I. Competing Interests and Railroad Construction
1. Technology and Semicolonial Ventures
2. Managing Transitions in the Early Republic
· · · · · · (更多)

List of Figures and Maps*
A Note on Measures, Romanization, and Translations
Introduction
I. Competing Interests and Railroad Construction
1. Technology and Semicolonial Ventures
2. Managing Transitions in the Early Republic
II. Railroads in the Market and Social Space
3. Moving Goods in the Marketplace
4. Moving People, Transmitting Ideas
III. The Making and the Unmaking of the State
5. Professionalizing and Politicizing the Railroads
6. Crisis Management
IV. On Track to Socialism
7. Postwar Reorganization and Expansion
8. Permanent Revolution and Continuous Reform
Conclusion: The Legacies of China’s Railroad System
Appendix A. Jin-Pu Railroad organization chart, ca. 1929
Appendix B. Revenue of major Chinese government railroad lines (thousand yuan per mile of line), 1915–1935
Appendix C. Freight transported by major Chinese government railroad lines (yuan per ton), 1915–1935
Appendix D. Number of passengers by ticket class, major Chinese government railroad lines, 1918–1935
Appendix E. Average miles per passenger journey by ticket class, major Chinese government railroad lines, 1918–1935
Appendix F. Freight designated for export (tons), shipped from Hankou to Guangzhou and onward to Hong Kong by train, October 18–December 31, 1937
Abbreviations
Glossary
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
* Figures and Maps
Figures
Fig. 1.1. Illustrations of exterior and interior of a steam locomotive in Gezhi huibian, 1877
Fig. 1.2. Map based on Chinese petition indicating gravesites in Cangzhou city, 1904
Fig. 1.3. Passengers crossing the Yellow River by boat, with the unfinished railroad bridge in the background, 1912
Fig. 1.4. Invitation to the opening of the Jin-Pu railroad bridge across the Yellow River, 1912
Fig. 2.1. Qianmen railroad station in Beijing, 1909
Fig. 2.2. Map of Ji’nan, capital of Shandong province, 1915
Fig. 2.3. Railroads and the foreign settlement (shangbu) in Ji’nan, 1915
Fig. 3.1. Treasury note for 8 percent Belgian Railway Equipment Loan, issued 1922
Fig. 3.2. Commodity jam at Hanzhuang station on the Jin-Pu line, 1912
Fig. 3.3. Railroad tracks at the Hotung yard in Tianjin, 1923
Fig. 3.4. Qufu railroad station on the Jin-Pu line, 1912
Fig. 3.5. Loading salt onto freight cars on the Jin-Pu line at Linhuaiguan, 1912
Fig. 3.6. Pukou station on the northern bank of the Yangzi River, 1912
Fig. 4.1. Traveling third class on the Peking-Suiyuan line, ca. 1925
Fig. 4.2. Construction site of the Jin-Pu line station in Ji’nan, with clock, 1912
Fig. 4.3. Food vendors and passengers at a station along the Peking-Hankou line, early 1930s
Fig. 4.4. Advertisement for Nankow Railway Hotel, 1917
Fig. 4.5. Descriptions of each station along the Jin-Pu line in Quanguo tielu lüxing zhinan (National railroad travel guide), 1921
Fig 5.1. Sculpture marking the previous resting place of Sun Yat-sen’s coffin at the former Pukou railroad station before its transfer across the river to Nanjing in 1929
Fig. 5.2. Nationalist propaganda train with Sun Yat-sen’s image, 1931
Fig. 6.1. Japanese armored rail car, 1938
Fig. 7.1. Chinese Nationalist troops retreat to the Yangzi River, 1949
Fig. 7.2. Refugee family at Pukou railroad station, 1949
Fig. 7.3. Signage for Shanghai Railroad Bureau subdivisions, displaying national railroad symbol, 2017
Fig. 8.1. Train attendants organize passengers to participate in the Criticize Confucius and Lin Biao Campaign on a train from Qiqihar to Beijing, 1974
Fig. 8.2. Propaganda poster “Learning from the Freight Yard at Dandong Station,” ca. 1974
Maps
Map 0.1. Railroads in China, 1900
Map 1.1. Major railroads, 1912
Map 2.1. Major railroads, 1920
Map 4.1. Major railroads, 1928
Map 5.1. Major railroads, 1935
Map 6.1. Major railroads during the Japanese occupation, 1942
Map 7.1. Major railroads, 1957
Map 8.1. Major railroads, 1975
Map 8.2. Major railroads, 2010–2011
· · · · · · (收起)