The transfer of network technologies to China, 1860-1898

This dissertation is a history of early railway development in China, rather than a history of evolving social and political circumstances in which railways developed. By focusing upon the network character of the railway technology and exploring the Chinese and Westerners\u27 understanding of its characteristics, I have demonstrated how both Chinese and Westerners responded to the potentials of the technology and tried to exploit them to advance their own interests from the 1860s to 1898. This study shows that the Chinese response to the introduction of railways was rooted as much in their understanding of the technology as in their cultural and institutional traditions. At the time when Westerners used railways as a geopolitical instrument to forge ahead with their commercial and political agendas, Chinese tried as hard as Westerners to comprehend the social and political implications of the network technology, and coped with the dilemmas of imperialist pressure for railway construction by combining conventional statecraft with modern expertise. The process of introducing railways to China was thus a dynamic process of social, political, and technical engineering of the technology by the parties of conflicting interests. It was a process in which Chinese and Westerners exploited the characteristics of the technology and negotiated for it a form meant by each party to serve its interests. This study demonstrates that, just as technical engineering often has social and political significance, technological development is shaped in important respects by social and political input. The peculiar patterns of Chinese railway networks as mapped out and constructed by the end of 1989 recorded the commercial and political designs on China by a host of competing powers, and the hopeless determination of its defenders