Sun Ning Railway Company
Encyclopedia
The Sun Ning Railway Company (aka Sunning Railway Company and Xinning Railway Company) 新寧鐵路 (pinyin
: Xinning Tielu) was a standard gauge
railway in the Pearl River Delta
in Guangdong
Province founded in 1906 by Chin Gee Hee
陳宜禧 (pinyin: Chen Yixi) and Yu Shek 余灼 (pinyin: Yu Zhuo). It was South China's second railway and one of only three railways in pre-1949 China built solely with private Chinese capital.
; some sources say that further investment came from James J. Hill
, but others say that at a time when railway development in China was dominated by Europe
an nations, he "vowed not to sell shares to foreigners, to borrow money from them, or to use their engineers." Chin's partner Yu Zhuo raised further funds in China and from overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia
. Its benefits to Guangdong
's economy were cut short when it was seized by local warlord
s in 1926; it was finally destroyed during the Second Sino-Japanese War
in 1938.
While raising funds and building the railway, Chin encountered numerous obstacles: a magistrate
tried to usurp credit for organizing the company; there were many difficulties over obtaining a right of way due to clan
feuds and superstition
s (geomancy
); and gentry
-officials repeatedly attempted extortion
. Chin bought an official title to become legally one of the gentry himself, which somewhat eased the process. Still, the construction was confronted by over a hundred riots staged by local landlord forces, resulting in thirty-nine othewise unnecessary turns, which made construction more expensive and affected speed and safety.
—opened in January 1908. In 1909, it reached Doushan and the 54-mile railway was officially open for business. By 1913, it reached another 26 miles to Jiangmen
city; a further 21-mile branch line from Taishan to Baisha opened in 1920. Altogether, construction costs totalled about 9.7 million yuan
or US$
4.8 million.
Rolling stock
was purchased mainly from the United States, although three tank locomotive
s came from Germany
. Trains typically had six or seven cars, carrying both passengers (in three classes
) and freight. At its height in the 1920s, it carried three million passengers and approximately a hundred thousand tons of cargo annually, with 80% of income coming from passengers. In this same era, freight was heavily weighted toward imports: the import/export ratio was about thirty to one, in an economy heavily based on remittances from abroad.
By 1922 there was a machine shop in Kung Yick City. Chin Gee Hee claimed that it "could manufacture everything except the locomotive."
Unfulfilled 1924 plans by Chin would have extended the railway in one direction 40 miles from Doushan to the Tonggu Commercial Port and in the other to Foshan
, through which would have reached Guangzhou
and the domestic mainland. Chin also wanted to continue west through Yangjiang
and the west of Guangdong and to the Leizhou
peninsula, forming a traffic network throughout the southwest of Guangdong. Several similar proposals met similar fates: the well-connected Yuehan Railway Company had a near-monopoly on railway construction in Guangdong, some of the gentry wished to create their own railways, and while the Sun Ning finally obtained the required formal positions, by the time it got those permissions it was in financial trouble. Furthermore, the Qing government prevented them from borrowing from abroad, despite the fact that the government itself was taking foreign loans at the time. Consequently, the railway never connected to any major port or any other key city of the Chinese economy.
From 1927 to 1929, the government overtly took over the railroad, but it proved to be beyond their ability to operate it, and they returned it to civilian control. The railroad was destroyed in the Second Sino-Japanese War, dismantled in December 1938 to deny its use by the Japanese military, who nonetheless occupied Taishan. 23,782 rails were shipped to Guangxi
in 1942 to build the Qianguei Railway; all other assets, which were worth over three million yuan
, were carried off by the Japanese.
Lucie Cheng and Liu Yuzun write that, while the railway did not play major economic or strategic role in the history of Chinese transportation, "its entire life reflects the interlocking but conflicting pressures of Western imperialism
, bureaucratic
capitalism
and feudalism
which characterized early twentieth century China… Moreover [it] reflects the role of emigrant capital and nationalism
on the development of enterprises in the emigrant motherland," reflecting especially the investment by overseas Chinese in a geographic area (Taishan) which had been the homeland for so many of them.
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
: Xinning Tielu) was a standard gauge
Standard gauge
The standard gauge is a widely-used track gauge . Approximately 60% of the world's existing railway lines are built to this gauge...
railway in the Pearl River Delta
Pearl River Delta
The Pearl River Delta , Zhujiang Delta or Zhusanjiao in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea...
in Guangdong
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
Province founded in 1906 by Chin Gee Hee
Chin Gee Hee
Chin Gee Hee , courtesy name Chàngtíng , Cheun Gee Yee, was a Chinese merchant, labor contractor, and railway entrepreneur, who made his fortune in Seattle, Washington before returning to his native village in Taishan, Guangdong province, which sources variously refer to as...
陳宜禧 (pinyin: Chen Yixi) and Yu Shek 余灼 (pinyin: Yu Zhuo). It was South China's second railway and one of only three railways in pre-1949 China built solely with private Chinese capital.
Fundraising
In order to fund the railway, Chin raised $2.75 million, mainly from overseas ChineseOverseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the Greater China Area . People of partial Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area may also consider themselves Overseas Chinese....
; some sources say that further investment came from James J. Hill
James J. Hill
James Jerome Hill , was a Canadian-American railroad executive. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and Pacific Northwest...
, but others say that at a time when railway development in China was dominated by Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an nations, he "vowed not to sell shares to foreigners, to borrow money from them, or to use their engineers." Chin's partner Yu Zhuo raised further funds in China and from overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
. Its benefits to Guangdong
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
's economy were cut short when it was seized by local warlord
Warlord
A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...
s in 1926; it was finally destroyed during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
in 1938.
While raising funds and building the railway, Chin encountered numerous obstacles: a magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
tried to usurp credit for organizing the company; there were many difficulties over obtaining a right of way due to clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
feuds and superstition
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....
s (geomancy
Geomancy
Geomancy is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand...
); and gentry
Gentry
Gentry denotes "well-born and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past....
-officials repeatedly attempted extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
. Chin bought an official title to become legally one of the gentry himself, which somewhat eased the process. Still, the construction was confronted by over a hundred riots staged by local landlord forces, resulting in thirty-nine othewise unnecessary turns, which made construction more expensive and affected speed and safety.
Construction
The company was officially chartered in 1906. The first section—15 miles from Kung Yick City (公益, pinyin Gongyi) at the northern tip of the Taishan district to TaishanTaishan
Taishan is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. The city is part of the Greater Taishan Region....
—opened in January 1908. In 1909, it reached Doushan and the 54-mile railway was officially open for business. By 1913, it reached another 26 miles to Jiangmen
Jiangmen
Jiangmen , is a prefecture-level city in Guangdong province in southern China with a population of about 4.48 million in 2010. The 3 urban districts are now part of Guangzhou - Shenzhen built up area.-Names:...
city; a further 21-mile branch line from Taishan to Baisha opened in 1920. Altogether, construction costs totalled about 9.7 million yuan
Chinese yuan
The yuan is the base unit of a number of modern Chinese currencies. The yuan is the primary unit of account of the Renminbi.A yuán is also known colloquially as a kuài . One yuán is divided into 10 jiǎo or colloquially máo...
or US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
4.8 million.
Rolling stock
Rolling stock
Rolling stock comprises all the vehicles that move on a railway. It usually includes both powered and unpowered vehicles, for example locomotives, railroad cars, coaches and wagons...
was purchased mainly from the United States, although three tank locomotive
Tank locomotive
A tank locomotive or tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of pulling it behind it in a tender. It will most likely also have some kind of bunker to hold the fuel. There are several different types of tank locomotive dependent upon...
s came from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Trains typically had six or seven cars, carrying both passengers (in three classes
Travel class
A travel class is a quality of accommodation on public transport. The accommodation could be a seat or a cabin for example. Higher travel classes are more comfortable and more expensive.-Airline booking codes:...
) and freight. At its height in the 1920s, it carried three million passengers and approximately a hundred thousand tons of cargo annually, with 80% of income coming from passengers. In this same era, freight was heavily weighted toward imports: the import/export ratio was about thirty to one, in an economy heavily based on remittances from abroad.
By 1922 there was a machine shop in Kung Yick City. Chin Gee Hee claimed that it "could manufacture everything except the locomotive."
Unfulfilled 1924 plans by Chin would have extended the railway in one direction 40 miles from Doushan to the Tonggu Commercial Port and in the other to Foshan
Foshan
Foshan is a city in central Guangdong province in southern China. The prefectural area under the city's jurisdiction over an area of about 3,840 km² and a population of 5.4 million of which 1.1 million reside in the city proper ....
, through which would have reached Guangzhou
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
and the domestic mainland. Chin also wanted to continue west through Yangjiang
Yangjiang
Yangjiang , historically known as Yeungkong, is a prefecture-level city in southwestern Guangdong province, People's Republic of China. It borders Maoming to the west, Yunfu to the north, Jiangmen to the east, and looks out to the South China Sea to the south. It is famous for being the base of...
and the west of Guangdong and to the Leizhou
Leizhou
Leizhou City is a county-level city in Guangdong province, in southern China.It is under the jurisdiction of Zhanjiang prefecture-level city.-See also:* Leizhou dialect...
peninsula, forming a traffic network throughout the southwest of Guangdong. Several similar proposals met similar fates: the well-connected Yuehan Railway Company had a near-monopoly on railway construction in Guangdong, some of the gentry wished to create their own railways, and while the Sun Ning finally obtained the required formal positions, by the time it got those permissions it was in financial trouble. Furthermore, the Qing government prevented them from borrowing from abroad, despite the fact that the government itself was taking foreign loans at the time. Consequently, the railway never connected to any major port or any other key city of the Chinese economy.
From 1927 to 1929, the government overtly took over the railroad, but it proved to be beyond their ability to operate it, and they returned it to civilian control. The railroad was destroyed in the Second Sino-Japanese War, dismantled in December 1938 to deny its use by the Japanese military, who nonetheless occupied Taishan. 23,782 rails were shipped to Guangxi
Guangxi
Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...
in 1942 to build the Qianguei Railway; all other assets, which were worth over three million yuan
Chinese yuan
The yuan is the base unit of a number of modern Chinese currencies. The yuan is the primary unit of account of the Renminbi.A yuán is also known colloquially as a kuài . One yuán is divided into 10 jiǎo or colloquially máo...
, were carried off by the Japanese.
Lucie Cheng and Liu Yuzun write that, while the railway did not play major economic or strategic role in the history of Chinese transportation, "its entire life reflects the interlocking but conflicting pressures of Western imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, bureaucratic
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
which characterized early twentieth century China… Moreover [it] reflects the role of emigrant capital and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
on the development of enterprises in the emigrant motherland," reflecting especially the investment by overseas Chinese in a geographic area (Taishan) which had been the homeland for so many of them.
External links
- Gallery of the Xinning Railway, Archives of Taishan City.
- Peter Crush, http://www.hkrs.org.hk/, Hong Kong Railway Society. Includes a map of the railway and many pictures of the railway's rolling stock. (Link updated Sep 2009. Select ENGLISH, Member's Corner, Feature Articles)