China’s Railway Soldiers: Extending Communist China’s Iron Arms with Red Hands

• In Event: New Perspectives on War, Romance, and Identity

Abstract

During the early years of Communist China, Mao Zedong ordered thousands of railway soldiers (tiedaobing) to penetrate the previously unreachable southwest and northwest frontier regions by expanding China’s national railway network. A closer look into these soldiers’ railway building activities show that they could simultaneously accomplish multiple state building projects: these soldiers were extending both the iron arms (railways) and the red hands (communist ideology) of Communist China. These soldiers provide a venue for assessing how the process of railway construction holds protean implications to state building and state power. Existing conceptualizations of Michael Mann’s “infrastructural power” often focus on one aspect of infrastructural power and are thus limited in accounting for state agencies that increase multiple facets of state power. I seek to build upon and further develop existing theories of “state infrastructural power” by tracing the activities of China’s railway soldiers during the Communist China’s state building era.

Author

• Jiwon Baik, University of Chicago