The Legacy of Sun Yat-sen's Railway Plans

Abstract

Dr Sun Yat-sen is known both as a revolutionary and as a planner. As a revolutionary, he is honoured by many for being the father of modern China, whereas his development plans are often criticized for their naivete and idealism. The main focus of Sun's proposals for development was the expansion of China's railways, and it is often assumed that his 1921 railway plan map has had a significant impact on the contemporary network. This assumption appears to have originated in the work of Victor Lippit who stated that Sun's. plans influenced Nationalist proposals of the 1940s and those plans heavily influenced communist railway development in the 1950s.1 Lippit notes that 80 per cent of the mileage completed between 1950 and 1958 was included in Nationalist projections of the early 1940s and that the early 1960s was a period of little mainline development. Indeed, if Sun Yat-sen's map were taken as the base instead of the 1940s‘ plan, Lippit would have found an even higher correspondence. Twenty years have elapsed since Lippit made his study and the purpose of this article will be to reassess the significance of Sun Yat-sen's plans for the development of thec Chinese railway network up to the mid 1980s, and to give some idea of the influence of Sun's writings on the contemporary and future network.