4i 6 The National Geographic Magazine 



banking establishments are largely held 

 by Chinamen, yet, despite these com- 

 mercial characteristics of the Chinamen, 

 the foreign commerce of China, with no 

 railway system, is but 85 cents per capita; 

 that of India, with 28,000 miles of rail- 

 ways, is about $2.25 per capita, and that 

 of Japan, with 4,500 miles of railways, 

 is $5 .'86 per capita. In other w 7 ords, 

 the commerce of China, without a sys- 

 tem of railways, is about one-third as 



From "An American Engineer in China," by William Barclay Parsons 

 Copyright, 1900, McClure, Phillips & Co. 



Transportation in China 

 Junks on the Han River with Hankow in the Distance 



much per capita as that of India and 

 one-sixth as much per capita as that of 

 Japan, each of which has one mile of 

 railway for each 10,000 inhabitants. 



PROJECTED RAILWAYS IN THE ORIENT 



But there is another feature of this 

 recent railway development in the East 

 which must be considered as likely to 

 prove of great importance in the future 

 relations of the Orient with the Occident. 

 China has 2,000 miles of railway, most 

 of it connected with the great Trans- 

 Siberian line, and several thousand miles 



more have been authorized or definitely 

 proposed. French Indo-China, lying 

 just at the south of China, has over 

 1,000 miles constructed and many new 

 lines projected, while the Malayan Pen- 

 insula, still farther at the south, has 

 some 300 miles, Siam about 350 miles, 

 and Burmah 1,500 miles. The French 

 Indo-China system is to be connected 

 with the railways of China by a line 230 

 miles long, now under construction, at 

 a prospective cost of some 

 20 million dollars. The 

 railway lines under con- 

 struction or projected in 

 China promise to extend 

 to her southwest border, 

 where a few hundred miles 

 of railway would connect 

 them with the systems of 

 Burmah, which in turn 

 will connect with that of 

 India, about 28,000 miles 

 in length. From India 

 the railway system again 

 stretches westward into 

 Persia, and the construc- 

 tion of but a few hundred 

 miles would put this great 

 system into communica- 

 tion with the 2,000 miles 

 of road in Asiatic Turkey, 

 which in turn connects 

 with the railways of south- 

 ern Europe, while a com- 

 paratively short stretch of 

 road at the north of India would 

 also connect the Indian railway sys- 

 tem with that of Russia. While it is 

 a fact that serious political obstacles 

 to some of these unions of railway 

 systems now exist, it is not unlikely 

 that the demand of commerce will in 

 time be sufficiently strong to overcome 

 or sufficiently modify these political 

 conditions to render possible a union 

 of these numerous systems, great and 

 small, so far as relates to an interchange 

 of passengers, freights, mails, and the 

 establishment of other transportation 



