ABSTRACT
The railways are a crucial sector of the Chinese industrialisation programme. Without an efficient and growing railway system the expansion of heavy and light industry and the general widening and deepening of the national market would be impossible. The record of rehabilitation, reconstruction and growth in 1949–1952 was part of the general process of cleaning up. 1 Administration, planning and practice had previously been as diverse as the auspices under which the railways were originally constructed. The centralisation of administration and the rationalisation of practice contributed greatly to increased efficiency. Aberrations such as the narrow-gauge railways of Shansi, built at Yen Hsi-san's behest in such a way as to make effective junction with national lines impossible, were eliminated and many other essential technical reforms were introduced. Anomalies in freight and passenger rates were wiped out and railway rates discriminating against luxuries and in favour of industrial raw materials and necessaries instituted; the turnover of such agricultural raw materials as cotton from the countryside to the city and of fertilisers from the city to the countryside and, of course, of coal, iron and steel, minerals, construction materials, and the like, consequently rose sharply. Total traffic, freight and passenger combined, increased by a half in the three years 1950–1952 and by roughly as much again in the following two years. 2 (The endpaper map inside the back cover shows the railways and waterways of China.)
