Railroads and the Transformation of China

Elisabeth Köll

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780674368170
• eBook ISBN: 9780674916418
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Maps
• A Note on Measures, Romanization, and Translations
• Introduction
• I. ​Competing Interests and Railroad Construction
• II. ​Railroads in the Market and Social Space
• III. ​The Making and the Unmaking of the State
• IV. ​On Track to Socialism
• 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