On the rail for China: Introduction to the special issue

Over the past 15 years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) railway infrastructure has gone through immense reorganisation. Especially, the High-Speed Rail (hereafter HSR) network has been massively expanded. China now has the second largest overall rail network and the largest HSR network in the world. ¹ In addition, China’s railway industry has become one of the most important players on the global market. Railway companies in many countries now buy rolling stock from China's train manufacturer CRRC. Especially since Xi Jinping started the “Belt and Road Initiative”, China has been involved in building railway lines all over the world. ²

This international standing is noteworthy in itself but is even more impressive considering the situation only two decades ago. In 1997, the Chinese government decided to implement a nationwide speed-up strategy, raising the maximum speed of trains to 140 km/h. In the 1980s and 1990s, China had developed indigenous Electric Multiple Unit technology, but in 2002, the Minister of Railways, Liu Zhijun, called for a leapfrog development for China’s railways. To meet his goals, it was necessary to transfer technology to China and to cooperate with foreign partners. Trains for the high-speed railways were built by foreign companies or international joint ventures in China. With the Medium- and Long-Term Railway Plan, approved in 2004, the ground was laid for building a separate HSR network. Already in 2008 the first HSR with over 200 km/h operating speed took up operation. ³

How did China get where it is today? This special issue of The Journal of Transport History does not attempt to answer this question systematically. Though China started into the railroad age comparatively late, it is still a long way from the steam operated railroads of the Qing Empire to the PRC on high speed. The first railway lines were built in China in the second half of the nineteenth century, but the development only began to gain speed at the turn of the century in a semi-colonial setting. ⁴ After the founding of the Republic, China gained more control but was still dependent on foreign support. Steam locomotives were for a long time the most important traction device. ⁵ Although main line electrification in China started at the end of the 1950s, steam locomotives were still being built in Datong for freight use up to the end of the 1980s. ⁶

The history of Chinese railroads is also a history of technology transfer between China and “the West”. The flow differs according to the necessities and agendas of each time, but at no point in time this was a one-directional flow. As the papers by Philipp Mahltig and by Thomas Spain and Oliver Betts show, at the end of the nineteenth and in the first half of the twentieth century, technical artefacts and knowledge were transferred from Western countries to China, but still this relied on a co-dependency and multidirectional flows of information and ideas. In his paper, Philipp Mahltig focuses on the German influence on railway development in China, testing the concept of “sites of knowledge”. He considers the difficulties encountered by the German engineers and shows that technology could not just be transferred as it was, but knowledge about the social-cultural and natural environment had to be acquired in advance. Among other things this led to adaptations of the technology that was to be exported from Germany.

In their paper, Thomas Spain and Oliver Bett deal with the building of the Canton-Hankou railway line and the British initiative for cooperation. They analyse the British interests and the shift in the Chinese attitude concerning the cooperation with foreign partners in railroad development. The organisational restructuring of the railway organisation starting in the 1980s is the focus of Linda Tjia’s paper. She analyses the process beginning with the Reform and Opening period and up to the beginning of the Xi era. In the first phase, the management structure was decentralised. By being granted more autonomy, regional and local railway cadres used the previously idle railway assets for market-oriented businesses which turned out to be quite profitable. After the central Ministry of Railroads had realised the positive economic effects of the reforms, it started a second phase of reorganisation to share profits between the regional organisation and the central Ministry.

The idea for this special issue was born at a 2017 workshop on “Trends, Concepts and Challenges of China’s Innovative Railway Transport” organised by the Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China of Technische Universität Berlin. At this workshop, experts from different fields – historians, social sciences and technology scholars, railway administrators, railway operators – presented and discussed their views on China’s recent and future railroad developments.

With this workshop as a starting point, this special issue aims to bridge the past with the present. The contributions open the possibility for comparing Europe and China in two ways: the historic/contemporary comparison between China and the West at certain points in time, and the comparison between the situation and ambitions of China and the West during historic phases and the current situation. ⁷

Though not explicit in any of the contributions, the papers in this special issue can contribute to the question how the historic developments relate to today’s situation. It is interesting to note from this perspective that China is now in a similar situation to that of Western countries like the United Kingdom and Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. There were industrial overcapacities as well as economic stimuli and political will to use the domestic railway industry for international business and influence. As Spain and Bett’s paper shows, overcapacity of the railroad industry in the United Kingdom in the first half of the twentieth century caused the interest in export markets like China. Similarly, China nowadays pushes towards foreign markets because of economic necessities and global political ambitions. Chinese engineers nowadays have to develop technology that is designed for foreign markets – just like the German engineers covered in Philipp Mahltig’s contribution. As Linda Tjia points out, Chinese railway management looked for adequate European models for railway restructuring. Today, European railway companies enviously look at the Chinese developments.

Therefore, the history of railways in China cannot be limited to a story of “learning from the West”. Certainly, China has largely profited from foreign assistance, technology (and knowledge) transfer. And to be sure, China has learned a lot. But this has always been a story of interdependent flows and mutual interests. Nevertheless, the interaction between China and the West within the last 130 years has changed considerably. To a large degree, China and “the West” have switched roles within a century. We hope that this special issue can contribute to the recent research debates and publications on China’s railway history ⁸ and that the contributions can offer a stimulus for further research – on Chinese railway developments in the past and the present.