Chinese Eastern Railway


The Chinese Eastern Railway or CER, is the historical name for a railway system in Northeast China.
The Russian Empire constructed the line from 1897 to 1902. The Railway was a concession to Russia, and later the Soviet Union, granted by the Qing dynasty government of Imperial China. The system linked Chita with Vladivostok in the Russian Far East and with Port Arthur, then an Imperial Russian leased ice-free port. The T-shaped line consisted of three branches:
which intersected in Harbin. Saint Petersburg administered the railway and the concession, known as the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, from the city of Harbin, which grew into a major rail-hub.
The southern branch of the CER, known as the Japanese South Manchuria Railway from 1906, became a locus and partial casus belli for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the 1929 Sino-Soviet Conflict, and the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. The Soviet Union sold the railway to the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in 1935; later in 1945 the Soviets regained co-ownership of the railway by treaty. The Soviet Union returned the Chinese Eastern Railway to the People's Republic of China in 1952.

Name

The official Chinese name of this railway was Great Qing Eastern Provinces Railway, also known as Eastern Qing Railway or Eastern Provinces Railway. After the Xinhai Revolution, the northern branches was renamed to Chinese Eastern Provinces Railway in 1915, shortened form as.
The southern branch was renamed to South Manchuria Railway after Japanese took over from Russians in 1905.
It is also known in English as the Chinese Far East Railway, Trans-Manchurian Railway and North Manchuria Railway.

History

Planning

The Chinese Eastern Railway, a single-track line, provided a shortcut for the world's longest railroad, the Trans-Siberian Railway, from near the Siberian city of Chita, across northern Manchuria via Harbin to the Russian port of Vladivostok. This route drastically reduced the travel distance required along the originally proposed main northern route to Vladivostok, which lay completely on Russian soil but was not completed until a decade after the Manchurian "shortcut".
As the Western powers became increasingly active in East Asia and the Far East in the late 19th century, the Russian Empire became concerned about the situation of much of its Siberian and Far Eastern territories, which were effectively cut off from the central part of the country. There was a necessity to implement a set of urgent measures to develop the peripheries, which required to connect them with the heartland via reliable and efficient transport communications. In 1891 the decision to build the Trans-Siberian railway was made. Its construction started simultaneously from Vladivostok and Chelyabinsk, being financed by the state, and demonstrating unprecedented rates of railway construction: in 10 years 7,500 kilometres of the new railway were laid. From the eastern side, the Trans-Siberian was extended from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk, where construction works were slowed down by the necessity to build a huge bridge over the Amur River. On the western side, the railway tracks were extended to the Transbaikal region.
When work on laying the Trans-Siberian started, two variants of its passage from Transbaikal to the east were considered. According to the first option, the main line was to go along the Amur coast and the Russian-Chinese border to Khabarovsk, and according to the second option — through Manchuria to the Pacific Ocean. The second option had already been considered during the designing process, when the possibility of laying it from Irkutsk through Kyakhta to Mongolia, then through China to the Russian Primorye was discussed. Engineer Nikolai Sergeyevich Sviyagin played a prominent role in laying the route and supervising the construction of particularly challenging sections.
The proponents of the Trans-Siberian along the Amur River justified it by the subsequent growth of opportunities for economic and social development of the Russian territories of Eastern Siberia and the Far East. Sergei Mikhailovich Dukhovskoi, who was the Governor-General of Priamur in the period of 1893–1898, stated that even in case of Manchuria's annexation into the Russian Empire, the importance of the Amur railway for Russia would remain enormous, as well as its "colonisation and base-building significance". He emphasised that in no case should the construction of the railway line along the Amur River, which had been planned earlier, be discontinued.
The Manchurian option was supported by Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who believed that the railway would facilitate the peaceful conquest of Manchuria. Increased Japanese activity in the Far East, which threatened the interests of the Russian Empire in China, also played in favour of the Manchurian option. In addition, the Manchurian option gave Russia an opportunity to enter new markets in the Asia-Pacific region. In the end, the proposal of the minister of finance to build a railway line —named the "Chinese Eastern Railway"— through the territory of Manchuria won out. Only the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 demonstrated the erroneous nature of this decision to the government, which accelerated the construction of the Amur railway.
During planning of the construction of the CER, the decision to attract private capital was taken, and the appropriate preparatory work was carried out. In December 1895, the Russian-Chinese Bank was established with an initial capital of 6 million roubles. Its creation was split between several entities: 15% of the funds were provided by the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank, and 61% came from 4 French banks.
On 22 May 1896 the secret Russian-Chinese treaty on the alliance of Russia and China against Japan was formalised. The treaty was signed by Sergei Witte and Prince Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovsky on the Russian side and Li Hongzhang on the Chinese side. The treaty gave Russia the right to build a railway line through Manchuria. On 27 August 1896, the Chinese envoy to the Russian Empire, Xu Jingcheng, signed a 80-year-long agreement with the board of the Russian-Chinese Bank to grant the bank the right to build and operate a railway through Manchuria and to establish a joint-stock named the "Chinese Eastern Railway Company". The charter of this joint-stock company was approved by Tsar Nicholas II on 4 December 1896. According to it, the Russian-Chinese Bank was responsible for the formation of the joint-stock company, and the company's share capital was set at 5 million credit roubles. The society was granted the right of unconditional and exclusive management of its lands. Passengers and goods transported in transit from one Russian border station to another were exempted from visas and customs duties.
In December 1896, elections of the board of the CER Society were held in St. Petersburg. According to the results of the elections S.I. Kerbedz became vice-chairman of the board, while the elected members of the board were: Peter Mikhailovich Romanov, A.Y. Rothstein, Dmitry Dmitrievich Pokotilov, E.K. Zickler, von Schaffhausen, and Esper Ukhtomsky. In January 1897 the Emperor of China issued a decree appointing the former envoy of China in St. Petersburg and Berlin, Xu Jingcheng, as the first chairman of the CER Society.
Selection of specialists for laying the CER was supervised personally by Sergei Witte, on whose recommendation Alexander Iosifovich Jugovich, a builder of the Ryazan-Ural railway, was appointed chief engineer. The CER Construction Department —which at first was called the Sungari railway settlement— was founded on the bank of the Songhua River, on the site of its supposed crossing by the railway line, where Harbin would consequently be constructed.
On the 24th of April 1897 a vanguard detachment of the CER Construction Department, headed by engineer A.I. Shidlovsky, arrived on the banks of the Songhua River, guarded by a troop of Kuban Cossacks under Colonel Pavievsky. In order to protect the construction of the CER a special Security Guard was created, later transformed into the Zaamursky District of the Separate Corps of Border Guards.

Topographic and geodetic surveys

Russia's political and economic expansion into Manchuria in 1894-1905 was marked by, on one hand, the initial delimitation of the Russian-Chinese state border and, on the other hand, the Chinese government's adoption of a plan to build a strategic railway from Dagu to Shanhaiguan — Jingzhou — Mukden, and then through Ninguta to Hongcun on the Tumen River, the survey of which was entrusted to the British engineer Kinder and started in 1890. In the period of 1894-1895 engineering surveys were carried out according to the approved plan of 13 March 1893 along the line of the Amur railroad from Sretensk to Khabarovsk running almost parallel to the Amur River, which showed the difficulty of this direction and prompted the idea of bypassing the encountered obstacles through Manchuria. In addition, the matter had been scrutinized by the General Staff.
On the occasion of the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896 and the arrival of an extraordinary Chinese envoy, there was an official discussion at the highest level about the railroad from Novo-Tsuruhaitui through Mergen to Blagoveshchensk as a "correction of our Amur border", which was a great geopolitical and military-strategic achievement of Russia. A secret alliance treaty of Russia and China regarding the construction of the CER was concluded. As soon as the legal basis for the construction of the CER was established, the Corps of Military Topographers sent several detachements of engineers to Manchuria under the guise of scientific research.
In early 1896, Lieutenant General I. I. Stebnitsky ordered the laying of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and work began in the summer of the same year. It was proposed to lay the railway through Manchuria: "one astronomer, two heads of departments and twelve surveyors for geodetic and topographic work in the area south of Nerchinsk; one astronomer, three heads of departments and eighteen topographers to survey the area along the watershed of the Greater Khingan. The task of the topographers is to assist the surveying engineers to finally establish the direction of the railway from Ust'-Ononskaya to Qiqihar and from Girin to Nikolskoe".
In 1896, 3 survey parties of the Corps of Military Topographers worked in Manchuria. Each consisted of a supervisor and 6 surveyors. The 1st party worked in the west of Manchuria, it consisted of: Chief Lieutenant Colonel Rafailov, staff captains Kulesh, Antonov, Mamamy, Suppura, Poruchik Panfilov, and Collegiate Assessor Velinsky. The 2nd party was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Kozlovsky, composed of Captain Dukhnovsky, Staff Captain Brazhkin, Collegiate Assessor Sibirtsev, titular counsellors Zemensky and Brovkin, as well as assessors Gursky and Krukovsky. Lieutenant Colonel Boltenko was appointed to the 3rd survey party, whose members were: Staff Captain von Siegel, Lieutenant Yavshits, while collegiate assessors Kuchevsky, Nikiforov, Aganchikov and Chuklin were appointed topographic surveyors.
Based on the surveys, by March 1898 it was possible to start the construction project. Similar work on the Canadian Pacific Railway under similar topographical conditions took 10 years to complete. Topographers surveyed about 15,000 square versts —— at a two-verst —— scale.