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13 - Transport and Communication Infrastructure

from Part I - 1800–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2022

By
Elisabeth Köll
Edited by
Debin Ma  and
Richard von Glahn
Debin Ma
Affiliation:
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Richard von Glahn
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Modern means of transportation and communication along water, rails, and roads had a profound impact on the economic and social development of China from the mid-nineteenth century onward. After the arrival of the steamship in the 1840s and the telegraph in the early 1860s, railroad construction began to emerge slowly at the close of the century, followed by bus and motor traffic bringing about macadamized city streets and highway expansion, with a modest level of air traffic taking off in the 1930s. This chapter addresses the structural changes in transportation and communication that characterized the transition from the last decades of the Qing empire (1644–1911) through the Republican period (1911–1949) to the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Keywords

postal communicationtelegraphsrailroadsshippingfreight transportationpassenger mobilitySouth Manchurian Railwaymotor roadsaviationpostwar reconstruction
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of China , pp. 457 - 495
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Baark, E., Lightning Wires: The Telegraph and China’s Technological Modernization, 1860–1890 (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1997).Google Scholar
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Chang, Rui-te 張瑞德, 平漢鐵路與華北的經濟發展, 1905–1937 (The Peking–Hankow Railroad and Economic Development in North China, 1905–1937) (Taipei, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1987).Google Scholar
Ding, Xiangyong 丁賢勇, 新式交通與社會變遷與民國浙江為中心 (New Communications and Social Transformation: Focusing on Zhejiang Province during the Republican Period) (Beijing, Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2007).Google Scholar
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