Railroads and the Transformation of China by Elisabeth Köll (review)

Elisabeth Köll's book is the most comprehensive institutional history of China's railroads to date. As such it makes important contributions on many issues in modern Chinese history. In many cases, useful parallels can be drawn with the shipping industry as discussed in Anne Reinhardt's recent book. ¹

The book is organized basically along chronological lines, but the focus on a specific period often also comes with a particular thematic emphasis. Part 1 on the early history of the railroads concentrates first of all on foreign involvement and the semicolonial aspects of the industry, before going on to examine institutional transition during the early Republic. Part 2 deals with the Republican period up to 1928 and is the only one with a predominantly economic focus, examining freight traffic in chapter 3 and passenger traffic in chapter 4. Köll argues that the railroads' main impact was on agriculture rather than industry, though coal mining might have been an exception to that. Part 3 discusses the period between 1928 and 1949, with an emphasis on the development of technical education and a skilled workforce (something that was paralleled in shipping ² ), and then looks at the role of the railroads during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The final part briefly covers the period of the People's Republic, and chapter 7 highlights institutional change and continuity after 1949 and railroad construction in the 1950s. The last substantive chapter, before a brief conclusion, follows the story of the railroads during the political upheavals of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s before touching on the development of the high-speed rail network and the partial corporatization of the railroads in the 2010s.

Köll addresses many important issues in this book, and a brief review can only allude to a few of her arguments. Like Reinhardt, ³ she emphasizes (21, 38) that any opposition to the development of modern transport in China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represented not a Luddite rejection of modernity but rather specific political and economic concerns: identification of gravesite or fengshui issues in the context of railroad construction was most often a way of squeezing more compensation out of the company. In fact, land acquisition for the railroads proceeded relatively smoothly, and Köll is skeptical of reports that the farmers were forced to sell at inadequate prices.

Second, at least up to 1949, the author highlights the regional aspects of the system. In economic and social terms, any transformation brought about by the railroads was limited to a particular region, and China was a long way from having a national system. In institutional terms (the main focus of the book), regionalism was reflected in the powerful position of the regional railroad bureaus, whose distinctiveness originated in the different foreign powers involved in the construction of the different railroads. For all the centralizing efforts of the 1930s, or even after 1949, the entrenched power of the bureaus led to regional interests often being prioritized. Even after corporatization in 2013, the bureaus remained important players. [End Page E-12]

In relation to the Second Sino-Japanese War, the book makes two arguments that contradict the standard narratives promoted in the People's Republic of China. Because of the importance of the railroads to their plans, the Japanese in fact treated railroad workers well, in terms of both wages and conditions. There were patriotic feelings among the workers, but any sabotage of railway transport that took place was the work of Nationalist much more than Communist guerrillas. A final theme that emerges from the book, though less explicitly, is how frequently the railroads were rocked by political or military upheavals: it was really only from as late as the 1980s that they were able to develop free from such noneconomic shocks.

The potential reader should be aware of the choices made by the author in her research, choices clearly explained and...