ABSTRACT
The ‘ten wasted years’ were not, in fact, entirely wasted. Despite all the disorder and disruption, progress was made in many areas. New railway lines were opened linking Beijing with places in Shanxi and Hebei provinces. The first underground railway in China was opened late in 1969, running from the new Beijing Railway Station near Chongwen Men to Pingguoyuan in the western suburbs. Construction of the circular underground line, following the course of the walls of the Manchu City, was begun in 1971. Roads were improved. The first flyover interchanges were built. In 1974, flights linking Beijing (via Shanghai) to Osaka and Tokyo in Japan and (via Karachi) with Paris were inaugurated. A new long-distance telecommunications building opened in Beijing in 1976. It was also during the Cultural Revolution that rings burning bottled gas began to replace small coal-burning stoves (usually burning very impure coal briquettes) for cooking in Beijing, which considerably reduced air pollution in the city. The use of these briquettes in the city has recently been banned. Foreign relations were improved, despite such unpleasant incidents as the attack by Red Guards from Qinghua University on the British Mission in Beijing in August 1967 and the detention of the British journalist Anthony Grey for more than two years, from 1967 until 1969. In 1971, the People’s Republic of China finally replaced the Nationalists of Taiwan at the United Nations. The following year, US President Nixon visited China and met Mao Zedong in Beijing. It is a reasonable assumption, however, that progress would have been faster if the Cultural Revolution had not taken place.
