ABSTRACT
Attitudes and actions were moulded by the exciting new development: the approaching completion of the Chinese Eastern railway. As we saw, the new Russian minister to Peking had travelled from Russia by rail in September 1901 to take up his post. He had reached Niuchuangfrom St Petersburg in fifteen days and, after transferring to the Peking-Hsinmintung line, had arrived at his destination in twenty-one days. This was a trial run for a rather special passenger. The construction teams had been forced to open certain parts of the track, even before their work was completed. The railway therefore opened in part for passenger express traffic, and in part for slow traffic, intended for freight, for the military and for government needs. The railway had been conceived of from its origins as a carrier of goods in transit from ports on the Pacific Ocean to Russia and the reverse. The sooner the commercial viability of the Chinese Eastern route could be tested, the better from Witte's point of view.
