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

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.