Qing China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War greatly stimulated the railway development as the government both recognized the importance of modernization and was compelled by foreign powers to grant concessions to build railways along with settlement and mineral rights. The imperial powers then took to building railways in their spheres of influence.
The British built the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway (1905-1908) and Kowloon-Canton Railway (completed 1911). The French built the Sino-Vietnamese Railway (1904–10), a 855 km 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) line to connect Kunming with Vietnam, then a colony of French Indochina. The Germans built the Jiaoji Railway in Shandong Province. British and German industrialists jointly built the Tianjin–Pukou Railway. The Americans built the Canton – Sam Shui Railway in Guangdong in 1902-04. Czarist Russia built the China Eastern Railway (1897-1901) as a shortcut for the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Southern Manchuria Railway to Port Arthur. To prevent domination by bigger powers, the Qing Court gave the rights to the Lugouqiao-Hankou Railway to Belgians. The Japanese initially received numerous concessions along the coast of Fujian and Guangdong, and built the Chao Chow and Swatow Railway (1904–06). After winning the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, the Japanese took over the southern section of the China Eastern Railway (from Changchun to Port Arthur) and the entire Southern Manchuria Railway.
By 1911, there were around 9,000 km of rails in China. Most of the rails used the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Courtesy Wikipedia.
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