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The Emperor’s New Road: China and the Project of the Century

Page 25

by Jonathan E. Hillman


  17. Piquet, “Suez Company’s Concession in Egypt.”

  18. Fondation Napoléon, “Speech Given by Monsignor Bauer.”

  19. Eric Toussaint, “Debt as an Instrument of the Colonial Conquest of Egypt,” Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, June 6, 2016, http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=13562.

  20. Fletcher, “Suez Canal and World Shipping,” 564 (quoting the Economist).

  21. In 1842, after a military defeat to the British, the Qing government had opened five treaty ports: Shanghai, Canton, Fuzhou, Xiamen, and Ningbo. These ports gave foreigners legal protection and tax advantages, allowing them to own land and conduct business in these zones.

  22. Albert Feuerwerker, “The Foreign Presence in China,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 12, Republican China 1912–1949, Part 1, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 128–207.

  23. Shannon R. Brown, “The Transfer of Technology to China in the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Direct Foreign Investment,” Journal of Economic History 39, no. 1 (1979): 181–197.

  24. Liu Hsi-hung, quoted in Li Kuo-ch’i, History of the Early Chinese Railway Development (in Chinese) (Taipei, 1961); cited in Arthur L. Rosenbaum, “China’s First Railway: The Imperial Railways of North China, 1880–1911” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1972), 17.

  25. Jonathan Hillman, “Is China Making a Trillion-Dollar Mistake?,” Washington Post, April 9, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/09/one-belt-one-road/?utm_term=.fac88ad702df.

  26. Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, “CPRR FAQs,” accessed February 4, 2020, http://web.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/wordpress/faqs/.

  27. Edson T. Strobridge, “The Chinese at Promontory, Utah, April 30–May 10, 1869,” Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum, December 6, 2001, http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_at_Promontory_ETS.html.

  28. Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: Norton, 2012), 24.

  29. Erle Hearth, “A Railroad Record That Defies Defeat: How Central Pacific Laid Ten Miles of Track in One Day Back in 1869,” Southern Pacific Bulletin 16, no. 5 (May 1928): 3–5, http://cprr.org/Museum/Southern_Pacific_Bulletin/Ten_Mile_Day.html.

  30. Edgar A. Haine, Railroad Wrecks (New York: Cornwall Books, 1993), 195.

  31. White, Railroaded, 485.

  32. T. Reed and A. Trubetskoy, “Assessing the Value of Market Access from Belt and Road Projects” (Policy Research Working Paper WPS 8815, World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019).

  33. Michele Ruta, Matías Herrera Dappe, Chunlin Zhang, Erik Churchill, Cristina Constantinescu, Mathilde Lebrand, and Alen Mulabdic, Belt and Road Economics: Opportunities and Risks of Transport Corridors (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2019).

  34. “A Journal of Civilization,” Harper’s Weekly 11 (November 16, 1867): 723.

  35. “W. F. Mayers, memorandum of a conversation with Li Hung-chang,” September 1, 1865, FO 223/78, Public Record Office, London.

  36. Rosenbaum, “China’s First Railway,” 19 (quote), 270–308.

  37. “Railways in China,” London and China Telegraph, July 14, 1873, 465.

  38. Bradford later faced charges of using his public office for private gain. “Statement of Richard Phoenix to G. Wiley Wells,” October 15, 1877, Library of Congress, accessed February 4, 2020, https://memory.loc.gov/service/gdc/scd0001/2009/20091021001st/20091021001st.pdf.

  39. Rosenbaum, “China’s First Railway,” 107.

  40. David Pong, “Confucian Patriotism and the Destruction of the Woosung Railway, 1877,” Modern Asian Studies 7, no. 3 (1973): 669–670, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X00005333.

  41. Hsien-Chun Wang, “Merchants, Mandarins, and the Railway: Institutional Failure and the Wusong Railway, 1974–1877,” International Journal of Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 31–53, doi:10.1017/S1479591414000205.

  42. Albert Feuerwerker, “Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Empire, 1870–1911,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11, Late Chi’ing 1800–1911, Part 2, ed. John K. Fairbank and Kwang-ching Liu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 11–52.

  43. In 1895, Zongli Yamen, the Qing government body in charge of foreign affairs assumed responsibility for railway matters. E-Tu Zen Sun, “The Pattern of Railway Development in China,” Far Eastern Quarterly 14, no. 2 (1955): 179–199, www.jstor.org/stable/2941730.

  44. Rosenbaum, “China’s First Railway,” 117.

  45. Sun, “Pattern of Railway Development in China.”

  46. For foreign share of debt, see Sun. For default rates, see Chi-ming Hou, The Evolution of International Business, 1800–1945, vol. 8, Foreign Investment and Economic Development in China, 1840–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 37.

  47. Daniel R. Headrick, “A Double-Edged Sword: Communications and Imperial Control in British India,” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 35, no. 1 (131) (2010): 51–65, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20762428.

  48. Headrick, Invisible Weapon.

  49. Alan J. Richardson, “The Cost of a Telegram: The Evolution of the International Regulation of the Telegraph,” Accounting History 20, no. 4 (2015): 405–429, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/72789463.pdf.

  50. Bruce J. Hunt, “The Ohm Is Where the Art Is: British Telegraph Engineers and the Development of Electrical Standards,” Osiris 9 (1994): 48–63.

  51. Daniel R. Headrick, “Strategic and Military Aspects of Submarine Telegraph Cables,” in Communications under the Seas: The Evolving Cable Network and Its Implications, ed. Bernard Finn and Daqing Yang (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 187.

  52. Charles Bright and Edward Brailsford Bright, The Life Story of Sir Charles Tilston Bright, Civil Engineer: With Which Is Incorporated the Story of the Atlantic Cable, and the First Telegraph to India and the Colonies (London: A. Constable, 1908), 143.

  53. Headrick, Invisible Weapon (quote on 22).

  54. Siemens, “Building the Indo-European Telegraph Line 150 Years Ago,” accessed February 4, 2020, https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/company/about/history/news/indo-european-telegraph-line.html.

  55. Headrick, Invisible Weapon, 24.

  56. Paul M. Kennedy, “Imperial Cable Communications and Strategy, 1870–1914,” English Historical Review 86, no. 341 (1971): 728–752.

  57. Walter S. Rogers, “International Electrical Communications,” Foreign Affairs 1, no. 2 (1922): 156, https://archive.org/stream/jstor-20028220/20028220#page/n13.

  58. Hunt, “Ohm Is Where the Art Is.”

  59. Daniel R. Headrick and Pascal Griset, “Submarine Telegraph Cables: Business and Politics, 1838–1939,” Business History Review 75, no. 3 (2001): 553.

  60. Headrick, “Double-Edged Sword,” 51–65.

  61. Quoted in Erik Baark, Lightning Wires: The Telegraph and China’s Technological Modernization, 1860–1890 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997), 74. Shen also became a major proponent for the introduction of railways and telegraph lines in later years.

  62. Quoted in Baark, 81.

  63. Jorma Ahvenainen, The Far Eastern Telegraphs: The History of Telegraphic Communications between the Far East, Europe, and America before the First World War (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1981), 59–60.

  64. Ariane Knuesel, “British Diplomacy and the Telegraph in Nineteenth-Century China,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 18, no. 3 (2007): 517–537, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592290701540249.

  65. Baark, Lightning Wires, 80–81, 83–84.

  66. Quoted in Baark, 108.

  67. Baark, 177.

  68. Baark, 194–195.

  69. Xinhua, “Full Text of Xi Jinping’s Report at 19th CPC National Congress,” China Daily, updated on November 4, 2017, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-11/04/content_34115212.htm.

  70. Zongyi Liu, “Khan’s Visit Infuses Momentum in Ties,” Global Times, November 4, 2018, http:/
/www.globaltimes.cn/content/1125776.shtml.

  71. Michael Adas, “Imperialism and Colonialism in Comparative Perspective,” International History Review 20, no. 2 (1998): 371–388, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40108227.

  72. Andrew Lawler, “How Europe Exported the Black Death,” Science Magazine, April 26, 2016, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/how-europe-exported-black-death.

  Chapter Three. The Crossroads: Central Asia

  1. City Extremes, “Center of World Population,” accessed June 4, 2019, http://cityextremes.com/averagedistance.php.

  2. Daniel Garcia-Castellanos and Umberto Lombardo, “Poles of Inaccessibility: A Calculation Algorithm for the Remotest Places on Earth,” Scottish Geographical Journal 123, no. 3 (May 2007): 227–233, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14702540801897809.

  3. Charles Stevens, “Along the New Silk Road—Khorgos: Where East Meets West,” Geographical, October 25, 2018, https://geographical.co.uk/people/development/item/2979-along-the-new-silk-road-khorgos-where-east-meets-west.

  4. Wade Shepard, “Khorgos: Why Kazakhstan Is Building a ‘New Dubai’ on the Chinese Border,” Forbes, February 28, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/02/28/will-a-place-called-khorgos-become-the-next-dubai/#22ab2a27f4b7.

  5. Andrew Higgins, “China’s Ambitious New ‘Port’: Landlocked Kazakhstan,” New York Times, January 1, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/world/asia/china-kazakhstan-silk-road.html.

  6. “Why Railway Gauge in Russia Is Wider than in Europe” (in Russian), FactorЭ, accessed February 4, 2020, http://factor-e.ru/samopoznanie/istoriya/pochemu-zheleznodorozhnaya-koleya-v-rossii-shire-chem-v-evrope.html.

  7. Vladimir Kosoy, “A Future of EU-EAEU-China Cooperation in Trade and Railway Transport” (presentation at the Working Party on Transport Trends and Economics 5, thirtieth session, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Geneva, 2017), https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2017/wp5/WP5_30th_session_Mr_Kosoy.pdf.

  8. Shigeru Otsuka, “Central Asia’s Rail Network and the Eurasian Land Bridge,” Japan Railway & Transport Review 28 (September 2001), http://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/jrtr28/pdf/f42_ots.pdf.

  9. Vladimir Kontorovich, “The Railroads,” in The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System, ed. Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich (London: Routledge, 1992), 174–189.

  10. For an account of this economic collapse, see Johannes F. Linn, “Economic (Dis)Integration Matters: The Soviet Collapse Revisited” (paper presented at the “Transition in the CIS: Achievements and Challenges” conference, Academy for National Economy, Moscow, September 13–14, 2004), https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/200410linn.pdf; see also Ellman and Kontorovich, Destruction of the Soviet Economic System.

  11. Richard Pomfret, The Economies of Central Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 39.

  12. Julien Thorez, “The Post-Soviet Space between North and South: Discontinuities, Disparities and Migrations,” in Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus—Migration, Democratisation and Inequality in the Post-Soviet Era, ed. Sophie Hohman, Claire Mouradian, Silvia Serrano, and Julien Thorez (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 215–241, https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01482275/document.

  13. “Uzbekistan Resumes Flights to Dushanbe after 25 Years,” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, April 11, 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/uzbekistan-resumes-flights-to-dushanbe-after-25-years/28422811.html.

  14. Richard Pomfret, “Trade and Transport in Central Asia” (paper presented at Eurasia Emerging Markets Forum, Thun, Switzerland, January 23–25, 2010), http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.831.1845&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

  15. United Nations Economic and Social Council, Fifty Years of the Asian Highway (Bangkok: United Nations, 2018), https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/651570/files/E_ESCAP_CTR_5-EN.pdf?version=1.

  16. These include the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank.

  17. U.S. Congress, Senate, Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999, S. Rept. 106-4, 1st sess., introduced by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) in Senate, March 10, 1999, https://www.congress.gov/bill/106th-congress/senate-bill/579/text.

  18. David Michael Gould, Critical Connections: Promoting Economic Growth and Resilience in Europe and Central Asia (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018), 203, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/30245/9781464811579.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y.

  19. KTZ-Freight Transportation Joint Stock Company, “The Volume of Rail Traffic between Kazakhstan and China Grew by 33%” (in Russian), May 16, 2018, https://www.ktzh-gp.kz/ru/media/news/news_main_section_ru/11560/.

  20. Vitaly Lobyrev, Andrey Tikhomirov, Taras Tsukarev, and Evgeny Vinokurov, Belt and Road Transport Corridors: Barriers and Investments (Saint Petersburg, Russia: Eurasian Development Bank, 2018), 22, https://eabr.org/upload/iblock/245/EDB-Centre_2018_Report-50_Transport-Corridors_Barriers-and-Investments_ENG.pdf.

  21. “COSCO Shipping Invests in the Development of the Khorgos–Eastern Gate FEZ” (in Russian), Kazakh TV, May 22, 2017, https://kazakh-tv.kz/ru/view/business/page_185044_cosco-shipping-investiruet-v-razvitie-sez-.

  22. Jonathan E. Hillman, “Trains from China Laden with Hype and Subsidies,” Financial Times, July 26, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/dd6196f8-715e-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c; Hillman, “The Rise of China-Europe Railways,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 6, 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/rise-china-europe-railways.

  23. UN Economic Commission for Europe, “Information from Participants on Recent Developments in Transport Infrastructure Priority Projects on EATL Routes,” May 28, 2015, https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2015/wp5-eatl/id15-05e.pdf.

  24. Xinhua, “Xinhua Headlines: China, Europe on Path of Expanding Belt and Road Cooperation,” Xinhuanet, March 17, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-03/17/c_137902322.htm.

  25. Xu Zhang and Hans-Joachim Schramm, “Eurasian Rail Freight in the One Belt One Road Era” (paper presented at the Nordic Logistics Research Network Conference, Kolding, Denmark, June 2018), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328880505_Eurasian_Rail_Freight_in_the_One_Belt_One_Road_Era.

  26. Roland Berger, “Eurasian Rail Corridors: What Opportunities for Freight Stakeholders?,” International Union of Railways, October 2017, https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/corridors_exe_sum2017_web.pdf.

  27. Babak Besharati, Gansakh Gansakh, Feifei Liu, Xiaomin Zhang, and Ming Xu, “The Ways to Maintain Sustainable China-Europe Block Train Operation,” Business and Management Studies 3, no. 3 (September 2017): https://doi.org/10.11114/bms.v3i3.2490.

  28. Xinhua, “New China-Europe Freight Train Links China’s Jiangxi, Uzbekistan,” Xinhuanet, July 9, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-07/09/c_136429735.htm.

  29. Patrick Sawer, “East Wind Train Blows In from China to Re-open Silk Road Trail,” Telegraph, January 18, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/18/east-wind-train-blows-china-re-open-silk-road-trail/; Tracy McVeigh, “Silk Road Route Back in Business as China Train Rolls into London,” Guardian, January 14, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/14/china-silk-road-trade-train-rolls-london.

  30. Hans-Joachim Schramm and Sabrina Zhang, “Eurasian Rail Freight in the One Belt One Road Era” (paper presented at the thirtieth annual NOFOMA Conference: Relevant Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Kolding, Denmark, July 13–15, 2018), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328880505_Eurasian_Rail_Freight_in_the_One_Belt_One_Road_Era.

  31. This is not a new problem, nor is it one that is limited to rail or even trade between China and Europe. At any time, some 45 percent of dry-bulk cargo ships, which typically carry commodities, are traveling without cargo. The shipping giant Maersk estimates that it spends $1 billion repositioning empty containers each year.

  32. Edward Schatz, “When Capital Cities Move: The Poli
tical Geography of Nation and State Building,” Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, February 2003, https://kellogg.nd.edu/sites/default/files/old_files/documents/303.pdf.

  33. Xi Jinping, “Speech by H. E. Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, at Nazarbayev University,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, September 7, 2013, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1078088.shtml.

  34. “Each Region of Kazakhstan Will Benefit from the EXPO 2017 in Astana—Nazarbayev” (in Russian), Zakon.kz, November 28, 2012, http://www.zakon.kz/4527418-vygodu-ot-provedenija-expo-2017-v.html.

  35. Trading Economics, “Kazakhstan Average Monthly Wages,” accessed February 4, 2020, https://tradingeconomics.com/kazakhstan/wages.

  36. Zhazira Dyussembekova, “In Astana, Hilton’s VP for Operations Talks New Hotel and Industry Trends,” Astana Times, December 4, 2017, https://astanatimes.com/2017/12/in-astana-hiltons-vp-for-operations-talks-new-hotel-and-industry-trends/.

  37. Expo 2017 Astana, “Infographics,” accessed February 4, 2020, https://www.expo2017astana.com/en/page_id=65.

  38. Xinhua, “Xi Visits Chinese Pavilion at Astana Expo, Eyes Better Cross-Border Transportation,” Xinhuanet, September 6, 2017, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-06/09/c_136350902.htm.

  39. Expo 2017 Astana, “USA Pavilion Welcomes Presidential Delegation from United States to Expo 2017,” August 28, 2017, http://www.usapavilion2017.org/usa-pavilion-welcomes-presidential-delegation-from-the-united-states-to-expo-2017/.

  40. Ed Zuckerman, “In Kazakhstan, a World Expo Is All about Energy (and Dancing),” New York Times, August 23, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/travel/kazakhstan-world-expo-astana.html/.

  41. Eric McGlinchey, “New Policy Memo: Central Asia’s Autocrats: Geopolitically Stuck, Politically Free,” PONARS Eurasia: New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia, August 17, 2015, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/article/new-policy-memo-central-asias-autocrats-geopolitically-stuck-politically-free.

 

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