Liaoxi Corridor
The Liaoxi Corridor (Chinese: 辽西走廊), also known as the Yu Guan Corridor (Chinese: 渝关走廊), is an important historical region located within the modern eastern Hebei and western Liaoning provinces, encompassing territories from the prefectural cities of Qinhuangdao, Huludao and Jinzhou. The region is an elongated coastal fluvial plain 185 km (115 mi) long and 8–15 km (5.0–9.3 mi) wide between branching ranges of the Yan Mountains to its northwest and the Liaodong Bay to its southeast, stretching southwest-to-northeast from the banks of the Dai River west of Qinhuangdao to the Daling River east of Jinzhou.
Historically, the Liaoxi Corridor has been the main route of land transport between the North China Plain and the Northeast China Plain, and a strategically crucial area for trades and military incursions into and from Northeast China. The famous Shanhai Pass, where the Ming Great Wall is at its easternmost extension out to the seashore, is located on the east bank of the Shi River at the western end of the Corridor and commands the narrowest choke point of the entire region.
History
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Prior to the Song Dynasty, the nowadays Liaoxi Corridor was often difficult to traverse due to tidal flooding, though the Northern Qi Dynasty, Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty constructed fortresses (known as Yu Guan back in the day) to defend the region. Since the 10th century, the Khitan Liao Dynasty started to settle abducted Song civilians into the region, and developed the region enough to allow reliable transport. The subsequent Jin Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty also continued developing the region. The modern day Shanhai Pass was built during the Ming dynasty by Xu Da, and the surrounding area was further developed into a fortified city by Qi Jiguang. The entire Liaoxi Corridor was organized into a costly defense line (Guan-Ning-Jin Line) by Yuan Chonghuan against the Jurchen Later Jin rebels led by Nurhaci, though after the Battle of Song-Jin in 1642 all the fortresses east of the Shanhai Pass were eventually isolated and fell to the Jurchens under Hong Taiji. After the fall of Beijing in 1644 and the subsequent defection of Wu Sangui, the Jurchens finally entered and breached the Liaoxi Corridor and defeated Li Zicheng's Shun army at Yipianshi, before conquering the Southern Ming and establishing the Qing Dynasty.
As the Jurchen Manchus were an ethnic minority now ruling over the much more numerous Han Chinese, they were constantly anxious about being reversely assimilated and wanted to keep Manchuria mainly inhabited by the Tungusic peoples in case they needed to flee if the rule over China proper collapsed. Starting from 1648, the Willow Palisade was constructed to restrict Han immigration into lands east of the Shanhai Pass (known as Guandong), and the Kangxi Emperor decreed in 1668 a further prohibition of any non-Eight Banners people relocating into this area. The Liaoxi Corridor remained closed to non-official transportation throughout the first two centuries of the Qin Dynasty, although an increasing number of Han peasants still settled into Manchuria both illegally and legally to cultivate land for Manchu landlords. During the 18th century, Han Chinese farmed 500,000 hectares of privately owned land and 203,583 hectares of state-owned/nobility-tenured land in Manchuria, and made up 80% of the population in garrisons and towns.[1][2] Wasteland was reclaimed by Han Chinese squatters in addition to other Han who rented land from Manchu landlords.[3][4] The Qianlong Emperor also allowed Han peasants suffering from drought to move into Manchuria despite issuing edicts from 1740 to 1776 in favor of banning them.[5][6][7] To increase the Imperial Treasury's revenue, the Qing Government also sold formerly Manchu lands along the Songhua River to Han settlers at the beginning of the Daoguang Emperor's reign, and Han Chinese filled up most of Manchuria's towns by the 1840s according to Abbé Huc.[8]
The sparse population of the Qing Empire's northeastern borderlands facilitated the annexation of Outer Manchuria (the regions north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri, roughly the modern day Russian Far East federal subjects of Amur, Khabarovsk, Primorsky and Sakhalin) by the expanding Russian Empire, finalized by the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and the Convention of Peking in 1860. In response, the Qing officials such as Tepuqin, the Military Governor of Heilongjiang in 1859–1867, made proposals to open parts of Guandong for more Han settlers in order to counter further Russian incursion.[9] The Qing Government subsequently relaxed the immigration restriction, resulting in a massive influx of landless farmers from the nearby Zhili (the present-day Hebei) and Shandong, mostly entering into Manchuria through the Liaoxi Corridor. The exact numbers of migrants cannot be counted, but based on the reports of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and later the South Manchurian Railway, modern historians Thomas Gottschang and Diana Lary estimated some 25.4 million arrived into Manchuria and 16.7 million went back during the period 1891–1942, giving a total net migration of approximately 8.7 million people.[10] This scale of the migration was comparable to the American westward expansion, the Russian expansion into Siberia, or on a smaller scale, the Japanese immigration to Hokkaido after the Meiji Restoration.
In the early 1890s, the Board of Ministers for Foreign Affairs suggested extending the existing Imperial North China Railway through the Liaoxi Corridor into Manchuria to encounter the increasing Japanese interference into Joseon Korea. The motion was approved on March 13, 1891, and Imperial Chinese Railway Administration was established at Shanhai Pass to oversee the project, which is the first state-constructed railway in China. The construction was delayed due to Qing Dynasty's loss of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895, and was further interrupted by the Siege of the International Legations in 1900, but by then had reached Dahushan fully traversing the entire Liaoxi Corridor. The railway stopped at Xinmin due to the Russian using the Liaodong Lease as basis for objection to the Liao River Bridge, and eventually reached Fengtian in 1911 after an agonizing negotiation with the Japanese (who seized control of the city from the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War) allowed the underpass construction of the railway beneath the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway. During the chaos of the Warlord Era after Qing Dynasty's collapse, the Jingfeng Railway was eventually completed in 1924 by warlord Zhang Zuolin, who also ordered the upgrade of the Fengtian Terminal in 1930.
Modern era
During the Chinese Civil War, the Communist People's Liberation Army successfully cut off the Liaoxi Corridor and blocked Nationalist reinforcements from Huludao at Tashan to ensure the outcome of the siege of Jinzhou, resulting in the eventual victory of the Liaoshen Campaign and the capture of the entire Northeast China, tipping the strategic balance in favor of the Communists. The remaining Nationalist troops then fled the Northeast and evacuated the Liaoxi Corridor entirely, allowing the PLA to gain direct access into North China. After the Pingjin Campaign, Huaihai Campaign, Yangtze River Crossing Campaign and Shanghai Campaign, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan Island and the Communist People's Republic of China conquered the entire mainland.
On August 16, 1999, China started to construct the Qinhuangdao–Shenyang passenger railway, which opened on October 12, 2003 as the first dedicated passenger-only high-speed rail in China, costing a total of CN¥15.7 billion (US$1.9 billion).[11] The electrified double-track railway was designed for a top speed of 200 km/h (120 mph), but in 2002 the experimental China Star achieved a top speed of 321 km/h (199 mph), setting a speed record for Chinese trains. By 2007, the Qinshen railway's top operational speed was increased to 250 km/h (160 mph).
See also
References
- ↑ Richards 2003, p. 141.
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2000, p. 504.
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2000, p. 505.
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2000, p. 506.
- ↑ Scharping 1998, p. 18.
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2000, p. 507.
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2000, p. 508.
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2000, p. 509.
- ↑ Lee 1970, p. 103
- ↑ Reardon-Anderson 2005, p. 98
- ↑ "China opens first dedicated high-speed line: China continues to expand its railway network. It is also improving the technology it employs in constructing new lines and developing new rolling stock in an effort to increase train speeds". International Railway Journal. 1 August 2003. Archived from the original on 9 April 2016. Retrieved 3 May 2015 – via HighBeam Research. Unknown parameter
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