PART VI The Establishment of Locomotive and Car Factories

The railways projected in the Fourth Program will total about 62,000 miles; and those in the First and the Third Programs about 14,000 miles. Besides these, there will be double tracks in the various trunk lines, which will make up a grand total of no less than 100,000 miles, as stated in the preliminary part of these programs. With this 100,000 miles of railways to be constructed in the coming ten years, the demands for locomotives and cars will be tremendous. The factories of the world will be unable to supply them, especially at this juncture of reconstruction after the great world war. So the establishment of locomotive and car factories in China to supply our own demands of railway equipment will be a necessary as well as a profitable undertaking. China possesses unlimited supplies of raw materials and cheap labor. What we need for establishing such factories is foreign capital and experts. What amount of capital should be invested in this project, I have to leave to experts to decide.

I suggest that four large factories should be started simultaneously at the beginning—two on the coast and two on the Yangtze. Of those on the coast, one should be at the Great Northern Port, and the other at the Great Southern Port—Canton. Of those on the Yangtze, one should be at Nanking and the other at Hankow. All four are in centers of both land and water communication, where skilled labor can easily be obtained. They are also near our iron and coal fields. Besides these four great factories, others should be established at suitable centers of iron and coal fields when our railways will be more developed.

All the factories should be under one central control. The locomotives and cars of our future railways should be standardized so as to make possible the interchange of parts of machinery and equipment. We should also adopt the standard gauge, that is, the 4 feet 8½ inch gauge which has been adopted by most of the railways of the world. In fact, almost all the railways hitherto built in China are of this gauge. The purpose of the proposed standardization is to secure the highest efficiency as well as the greatest economy.