Caravan Modernity: The Strategic Revitalisation of China’s Dynastic Transportation System during the Second Sino–Japanese War

ABSTRACTThis article analyses how and why, during the War of Resistance (1937–1945), Nationalist China revitalised the dynastic system of transportation and communication (yiyun zhidu). Due to the blockade by the Japanese Imperial Army, it shows, everything essential to the war effort was in short supply. If essential items were available, the difficulties in securing transportation were overwhelming. This was exacerbated by the transfer of the capital to Chongqing. The relocation moved the Nationalists further away from China’s emerging modern transport infrastructure. This article examines the yiyun campaign by referring to primary sources and recent Chinese scholarship. The campaign entailed mobilising the population to partake in the transportation of goods using the age-old systems of caravans, boats, and human porters. The Nationalists, however, did not see this as resurrecting an old system. In line with their revolutionary agenda and modernising ethos they held that revitalisation would be informed by ‘scientific management’ (kexue guanli). The article illustrates the complexity of the campaign through the controversy surrounding the ‘management fee’ (guanlifei). As time progressed it became clear that recruiting people to participate in the yiyun campaign would be challenging.抽象的本文分析了在中国抗日战争时期 (1937年—1945年), 国民党治理下的中国是为何, 并且如何复兴封建朝代时期的交通运输系统——驿运制度的。本文表明, 由于日军的封锁, 战争所需的一切物资都处于短缺的状态。如果有必要的物品需要押运, 也面临着巨大的困难。由于战时首都迁到重庆, 令这情况更加恶化:迁都使国民党进一步远离中国有新兴的现代交通基础设施的地区。基于一手文献以及近年来中国学术界的研究文献, 本文考察了驿运运动。驿运需要动员民众去使用年代久远的夫, 马, 车, 船系统完成货物运输。然而, 国民党并不认为这是对旧制度的复兴。根据他们的革命议程和现代化精神, 他们认为复兴将以“科学管理”来实现。本文通过围绕“管理费”的争议阐明了驿运运动的复杂性。随着时间的推移, 受招募的驿运人员参加这项运动将面临明显的挑战。KEYWORDS: Republican ChinaSecond Sino–Japanese Warsupply linestransportationpeasant grievancesyiyun zhidu (dynastic transportation system) AcknowledgementsWe extend our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, especially Reviewer 1. Special thanks to Tan Gang (Southwest University, Chongqing) and Yang Haichao (Southwest Forestry University, Kunming) for their invaluable assistance.This article is dedicated to the memory of David Stokes (1969–2023).Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. This article uses Republican Era texts that have been digitised and made available on Chinese document portals (e.g. at https://www.cnbksy.com). Due to travel restrictions imposed during the period of the pandemic we were unable to visit other relevant archives, but fortunately we had support from scholars such as the aforementioned Tan Gang who engaged in archival work on our behalf. Nonetheless for the purposes of an exploratory article we are confident that the use of available primary sources supplemented by recent secondary sources is sufficient to provide an overview of the yiyun zhidu revitalisation campaign. In the conclusion we propose a more intense research agenda to be undertaken once the pandemic-related travel restrictions are lifted.2. These figures need to be treated with caution. While conducting the research for this article we discovered discrepancies between the figures quoted for transportation costs in the southwest and northwest (we are grateful to the reviewers for encouraging us to investigate further). By comparison to the figures just quoted, Li (Citation1997), in writing on yiyun transportation costs in the northwest, claims that from February to April 1940 the average cost was 0.0189665 yuan per tonne per kilometre. This doubled in May and June to 0.0246565 yuan. Even with such a doubling of costs in the northwest this is still far from the figure of 36 yuan per kilometre quoted by Lu (Citation1995). It turns out that both Lu (Citation1995) and Li (Citation1997) have made errors in calculating the transportation costs. In checking the original sources cited by Li (Citation1997) it is clear that the measure is not per tonne per kilometre (mei dun gongli) but rather hundredweight (CWT) per kilometre (mei guandan gongli). CWT was a unit of measure used worldwide during the 19th and 20th centuries. It was especially used in calculating transborder transportation costs and was used by customs authorities worldwide, although there were variations in the actual base figure. In China at this time one CWT was equivalent to 60.453 kilograms (qianke). Hence the actual cost per tonne per kilometre in the northwest from February to April 1940 was 0.31374 yuan, which then rose to 0.4079 yuan between May and June. This gets us a bit closer to the figure quoted by Lu (Citation1995) for the southwest, but the discrepancy is still large. When we turn to Lu’s (Citation1995) figures we discover that the original source comes from the recollections of Ma Tingbi, who was the staging post head (zhanzhang) in Kunming (see Huang, Citation1992). The figures quoted by Lu do not refer to a specific time. Hence it is quite possible that Ma was referring to transportation costs in 1944, by which time inflation had indeed wreaked great havoc (as discussed further below). By way of comparison, in 1940 in Sichuan the transportation cost on the route between Lu County and Chongqing was 0.139 yuan per tonne per kilometre (Wang, Citation1943, 85). There are other factors in determining yiyun transportation costs including the season and mode of transport (also discussed further below). We are extremely grateful to Tan Gang of Southwest University (Chongqing) for his assistance in resolving this matter.3. It should be emphasised that the yiyun system was primarily concerned with the transportation of commodities. In terms of human transportation, the contribution was relatively insignificant. Although significantly disrupted during the war, the railways continued to be the primary means of long-distance human transportation, accounting for about 60 per cent of the total (Tan, Citation2013, 227–228). Water forms of transport, as would be expected, accounted for nearly 30 per cent. Public buses made up approximately 9 per cent although these tended to be for much shorter distances. Air transportation was extremely low, at less than 1 per cent. Of course, these systems interacted – different regions had different forms of emphasis depending on geography – and we would also need to consider how in terms of refugee movements some people may have taken advantage of the revitalised yiyun routes under extreme circumstances. Unfortunately, there is no reliable data available on this point. However, it is known that the transportation of rice for the armed forces – at about 1,500 tonnes per month in 1940 – to Chongqing from Hunan and Shaanxi involved an interacting system of water transportation, trucks, and human porters (Tan, Citation2013, 151–156). The MOTC established specific command centres for these two routes. From 1942 to 1943 the number of boats on the Chuan–Xiang route increased from 141 to 285; the number of trucks (on both routes) from just two to 72; and the total number of porters employed reached 6,000.4. On this front as early as December 1934 Chiang Kai-shek had issued a decree enabling provincial governments to reimpose corvée for infrastructure projects. Thanks to Reviewer 1 for sharing this detail.5. The yiyun zhidu was not the only dynastic system to be revitalised at this time. The baojia zhidu – the system of community policing that was used in dynastic China and only abolished towards the end of the Qing – was re-established by the Nationalists in the early 1930s. Indeed, in dynastic China it was, in many cases, the baojia that was used to recruit the labour and animals necessary for road maintenance and transportation. In Republican China, even as the government created a modern state structure of civil and legal institutions, at the grassroots level it still depended on the baojia to enforce policy and resolve disputes. The baojia was particularly important for soldier recruitment during the war (Zhang, Citation2014). It was also used to enforce the demands of the yiyun campaign, but not without resistance and the undermining of population morale.6. This section focuses on the ‘administration fee’ (guanlifei) but it is worth noting that the military used a system of price fixing to manage its own cost structure. However, this system was soon out of kilter with the rapidly rising costs confronting the transportation workers. As Wang (Citation1943, 38) wrote at the time, ‘The military transport costs are too low whilst prices are always rising. The funds coming to the cart drivers and muleteers are not enough to maintain their equipment and basic living requirements which leads many to abscond and thereby impact on the yiyun campaign’ (see also Zhang, Citation1944, 4). This was even acknowledged by the Head of the Overall Yiyun Command Centre, Tan Bingxun (Citation1943b, 5), who wrote that the military logistic costs ‘ … are only 25 per cent of the commercial costs which is not enough to maintain the most basic livelihoods [zuidi shenghuo] of the transportation workers [che chuan fu ma]’. It is thus evident that the financial tensions were multifarious and all played a role in adding to the complexity.