The Jiangbei-Hechuan Railroad and market transformation in the Sichuan mountains

Abstract

In recent years, academic circles have leveled a number of critiques against G. William Skinner’s regional marketing theory, arguing that the theory gives insufficient attention to nonplains regions, nonagrarian societies, non-numerical distances, and other factors. The author uses the example of the first railway built in Sichuan, the Jiangbei-Hechuan Railway, to examine the relationship between traditional markets and modern markets in a mountain society in the course of industrialization. Unlike Northeast China and the coastal regions, where railways and coal mines were often controlled by imperialists, despite drawing on cross-regional knowledge, technology, and population flow, the construction and operation of the Jiangbei-Hechuan Railway were controlled from start to finish by the local society, providing a rare indigenous perspective for the discussion of modern economic transformation. Similar to Skinner’s observations, following the construction of the railway, the markets in the mountainous region were not in conflict with the traditional markets: instead, they experienced extension, development, and growth following regional restructuring. In contrast with his observations, the modern markets in the mountainous region of eastern Sichuan were not standard markets in a regular hexagonal shape, but rather extended along the river and the railway, presenting a linear form. In the modern transition from an advanced organic economy to a mineral economy, regional and national economic ties in the mountainous region of eastern Sichuan grew closer, and the Western pattern of clear separation between industry and agriculture, urban and rural areas, and tradition and modernity did not emerge.