The legacy of colonial rule: On the impact of the railway zones in modern China

Nan Li, Baomin Dong
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Abstract

This paper examines the long- and short-run impacts of the railway zones associated with the China Eastern and South Manchuria Railways in Manchuria, which were administered by Russia and Japan, respectively, from the early 1900s to the 1920s. Despite the fact that ‘railway imperialism’ impaired China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and constituted a humiliating quasi-colonial episode in Chinese history, railway zones nevertheless had a noticeable impact on Manchuria's local economies. Through a reconstruction of the historical dataset and cliometrics, we show that, among the railway zones in northeastern China, only those attached to the South Manchuria Railway exerted a significant and positive impact. Specifically, its railway zone had higher urbanisation and literacy rates and a higher percentage of professionals in its industrial and commercial sectors in the 1930s, and these effects persist to the present day as an unintended outcome. Apart from the agglomeration of direct manufacturing investment in these railway zones, an additional channel through which the impact took effect was the provision of public goods, such as schools and hospitals, which served as necessary conditions for long-term development. This study sheds light on understanding the persistence of colonial history as a root of development.

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殖民统治的遗产:论近代中国铁路区划的影响
本文考察了从20世纪初到20世纪20年代,分别由俄罗斯和日本管理的中国东满洲铁路和南满洲铁路对满洲的长期和短期影响。尽管“铁路帝国主义”损害了中国的主权和领土完整,构成了中国历史上一段可耻的准殖民时期,但铁路区对满洲当地经济产生了显著的影响。通过对历史数据的重建和计量分析,我们发现,在东北地区的铁路区域中,只有南满铁路的铁路区域产生了显著的积极影响。具体来说,在20世纪30年代,它的铁路区有更高的城市化和识字率,在工业和商业部门有更高的专业人员比例,这些影响作为一个意想不到的结果持续到今天。除了在这些铁路区内聚集直接制造业投资外,影响产生效果的另一个渠道是提供公共产品,如学校和医院,这是长期发展的必要条件。这项研究有助于理解作为发展根源的殖民历史的持久性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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Issue Information ‘He made it his rule never to grant licenses to married women’: Gender, licensing and the law in nineteenth-century New South Wales, Victoria and New Zealand Editor's notes Gendered enterprise: Women and Australian business history Boris Schedvin (1936–2024)
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