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The Effect of Transportation on Famine Prevention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

John Watt
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Extract

Throughout China's history widespread famine has been a frequent occurrence. While natural calamities have been primarily responsible for its appearance, there is no doubt that consistent lack of communications has always been a serious obstacle to the relief of famine areas. During, for example, the great drought famine of 1877–78, which affected Shensi, Shansi, Honan and Hopei, efforts to get food into the Shansi plateau foundered because of the difficulty in sending supplies up the only direct track from the eastern ports, where food was arriving in abundance. As a consequence of these conditions up to thirteen million people may have lost their uves. Since then there have been a number of other severe droughts and floods, but with the introduction of railways and gradual improvement of the existing system of communications, distribution of relief has undoubtedly become more effective and loss of life less widespread. This brief survey will accordingly examine China's present transportation system and its ability to alleviate the hardship caused by last year's natural calamities.

Type
Recent Developments
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 6 , June 1961 , pp. 76 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1961

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References

1 State Statistical Bureau, Ten Great Years, Statistics of the Economic and Cultural Achievements of the People's Republic of China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1960) p. 144.Google Scholar See also Wang Shou-tao, Minister of Communications, in Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), 09 23, 1959.Google Scholar

2 State Statistical Bureau, op. cit., p. 148.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 146.

4 Wang Shou-tao, op. cit. Mention of these junks was made in Jen-min Jih-pao, 09 26, 1959Google Scholar, and by New China News Agency, December 4, 1959, which stated that there were then 400 motorised junks in Hunan and Kiangsu. Eight-sail junks were invented in 1958.

5 State Statistical Bureau, op. cit., p. 144Google Scholar and Jen-min Jih-pao, 02 19, 1960.Google Scholar

6 Wang Shou-tao, op. cit. See also his speech to the first session of the National People's Congress, April 29, 1959.

7 New China News Agency (NCNA), 08 8, 1960Google Scholar, and speech by Lu Cheng-tsao, Deputy Minister of Railways, to the Second Session of the National People's Congress, Jen-min Jih-pao, 04 9, 1960.Google Scholar

8 NCNA, 08 3, 1960.Google Scholar

9 NCNA, 08 20, 1960.Google Scholar

10 State Statistical Bureau, op. cit., pp. 70, 73, 74.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. p. 73.

12 For a recent survey of catastrophic deterrents in China see Ho, Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959) pp. 227–236.Google Scholar