History of rail transport in China

The history of rail transport in China began in the late nineteenth century during the Qing Dynasty. Since then, it has become one of the largest rail networks in the world.

The first railways in China were built during the Qing Dynasty in the late 19th Century, after extensive railway networks were already in place in Europe, North America, India and Japan. The late arrival of railways in China was due both to the lack of industrialization and skeptical attitude of the Qing government. Although diverse and prominent personages such as Lin Zexu and Taiping rebel Wang Hongren called for the building of railways in China in the mid-19th century, the conservative Qing court considered steam engines to be "clever but useless" contraptions, and resisted the railways, which would "deprive us of defensive barriers, harm our fields and interfere with our feng shui.

In 1864, a British merchant built a 600 meter-long narrow gauge railroad outside the Xuanwu Gate in Beijing to demonstrate the technology to the imperial court. The court found it "exceedingly special and strange in the utmost" and promptly had the railway dismantled.

The first railroad to operate commercially in China opened in Shanghai in July 1876. The railway, known as the Woosung Road, ran from the American Concession in the present-day Zhabei District to Woosung in the present-day Baoshan District and was built by the British trading firm, Jardine, Matheson and Co. Construction took place without approval from the Qing government, which had paid 285,000 taels of silver for the railroad and had it dismantled in October 1877. The rails and rolling stock were later shipped to Taiwan. In late 1884, Jardine, Matheson arranged a loan of 500 million taels of silver to the Chinese government in late 1884 "for the purpose of building railways".

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