Railroads and the Transformation of China by Elisabeth Köll

Abstract

Reviewed by: Railroads and the Transformation of China by Elisabeth Köll Yongming Zhou Railroads and the Transformation of China by Elisabeth Köll. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 396. $42.00 cloth, $42.00 e-book. This well-researched and well-written book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive inquiry into the history of railroads in China. The book covers more than one and a half centuries, from the last years of the Qing dynasty, through China’s republican and socialist eras, to the early twenty-first century, when high-speed railroads have become the symbol of the new era. Situating railroads in the matrix of China’s transformation to modernity, the book deals with economic, political, cultural, as well as social aspects of Chinese society that were affected by railroads or made to change in response to them. It presents an in-depth analysis of this important technology and institution through time. In accomplishing this ambitious undertaking, Elisabeth Köll treats the railroad as a new institution, which she uses as the main theme to organize her discussion. Following the Weberian definition of an institution “as a rational, profit-seeking economic organization with enforced regulations and a technical, operational entity divided between administrators and workers” (p. 7), Köll points out that one unique characteristic of the Chinese railroad is the influence of railroad bureaus (tielu ju 铁路局), an organizational and managerial institution that played a pivotal role from the republican years till today. To explain the long-lasting influence of the railroad-bureau system, Köll argues that “Chinese railroads absorbed institutional aspects of foreign management and operational practices while adapting to the political environment of fragmented central state power”; this adaptation in turn granted railroad bureaus “a surprising degree of regional autonomy” (p. 6). Using this central argumentative thread, Köll then traces the institutional history of railroad bureaus in different political and socioeconomic contexts. What makes this volume particularly informative and inspirational is that it adopts a broader perspective than a conventional business history does. Köll gives an excellent discussion on China’s temporal and spatial transformation after the arrival of railroads. Temporally speaking, the new technology required rigid punctuality in its operation. [End Page 381] And the creation of transregional train timetables led to the institutionalization of standard time zones. While the history of trains and time zones in the West is well studied, China’s setting up of five standard time zones in 1918 has often been overlooked. These zones comprised the central, midwestern, northeastern, and far-western regions, as well as Xinjiang and Tibet (p. 145). Indeed, it is curious that this significant undertaking has left little trace in existing studies of modern Chinese history. According to Köll, this neglect arises from the fact that most of China’s railroads at that time were located in the central time zone, which covered fourteen provinces, and so other time zones were less relevant. After the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, China adopted a single time zone with Beijing time as its new standard. It is thus no exaggeration to say that the railroad has caused fundamental temporal changes in modern China: it changed Chinese people’s perception of time as well as the way in which the Chinese state regulated standard time. The construction of railroads changed not only the local landscape but also the spatial configuration of a place, socially, economically, as well as culturally. On a micro level, Köll discusses the formation of rail compounds inhabited by railway workers, who shared a close-knit community with a common identity and subculture. This construction of common community started in the early twentieth century and further developed in the work-unit context of post-1949 China. Compared to other workers, railroad workers had specialized skills and thus enjoyed higher pay and social status. Köll discusses how the rail compounds became a social space marked with these workers’ unique identity. A specific illustrative example is the emergence of railway army corps (tiedao bing 铁道兵) in post-1949 China: “with a strong military identity and discipline united in dangerous construction work across the country, these railroad...