‘An imperial railway failure’: France’s disastrous colonization project on the China-Vietnam border

This Week in China’s History: April 1, 1910

The late 19th century in China was sometimes called “the carving of the melon,” as foreign powers sought to gain influence and territory as the Qing dynasty buckled. Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan were some of the biggest beneficiaries (less so Italy, as I wrote about last week), but so was France, which persistently worked to connect its colonial projects in southeast Asia to China. On April 1, 1910, a key component of this work was realized when the Yunnan-Vietnam railway opened, connecting the port at Haiphong, near Hanoi, in Annam (now northern Vietnam) with the Yunnan capital, Kunming. The project was part of the planned hopes, expressed by French governor-general in Indochina Paul Doumer, of integrating Yunnan into the French colony, a goal that was never achieved.

As many as 100,000 laborers died in the railway’s construction, according to historian Virginia Thompson, and the entire project became, in the words of Jean-François Rousseau, a “bottomless money pit.”

The 500-plus-mile-long railway was the culmination of a process that had begun with the 1885 Sino-French War. Neither side was able to claim a decisive victory after that conflict, but it did lead to the Qing withdrawal from Annam and its incorporation into the French empire. With a French colony now across the border, France continually pressured the Qing for greater concessions in southwest China, including treaty ports like Mengzi, Longzhou, and Manhao

The tragedy of France’s project in Yunnan was that in many ways it was not about Yunnan at all. To be sure, France (like its European rivals) intended to exploit the mineral wealth of the region (tin, mined in the mountains, was the main product). But more than managing this trade, France’s main motivation was integrating this region into the colonial empire centered on (what today is) Vietnam. And even that was a secondary motivation, behind the real prize: Sichuan, which was being targeted not only by the French, coming from Indochina, but the British, moving northeast from Burma. As historian Rousseau writes, “being the first to reach Kunming from their Southeast Asian colonial domains would give them the best chance at building a Yunnan to Sichuan province line. [Both Britain and France] understood reaching Yunnan as a first step for extending their influence over the country’s most populated province, then considered as an Eldorado.” French planners envisioned goods flowing into and out of central China, not through the British-dominated Yangtze and Shanghai, but southeast through a would-be French dominion in Yunnan and then through Indochina and their port at Haiphong.

The Qing defeat by Japan in 1895 gave France (and other foreign powers) the opportunity to expand its presence in China. France negotiated the right to build the railway from Haiphong to Kunming in 1895, along with an agreement to operate the line for 80 years after its completion. Construction started in 1903.

The railway tracked northwest from Haiphong along the Red River valley until it crossed the Chinese border at Hekou. From there, the original plan, surveyed in 1901, was to continue along the river for a few miles before turning north, into the mountains and the French outpost at Mengzi, continuing through rugged terrain that would eventually lead to Kunming. The route that was eventually constructed tracked slightly east of that initial plan, thanks in part to an uprising in Mengzi, but more fundamentally because the grade on the original route was judged to be impossibly steep.

As the railway took shape — spectacular steel bridges emerging from the jungle to soar high above gorges and rivers — the French celebrated their colonial project. Paul Doumer called one bridge (perhaps not coincidentally named after him!) as “the most impressive structure that the European genius had enabled to build in Indo-China.” But construction took an almost unimaginable toll. Illustrating the complexity of the project, more than 400 bridges and 150 tunnels had to be built along the railroad’s 500 miles, most of those in the more rugged Yunnan section.

Even if Thompson’s estimate of 100,000 deaths is considered too high, even more conservative assessments suggest that tens of thousands of laborers lost their lives in the difficult conditions. Tropical diseases were lethal, especially in the poor sanitary conditions of many worksites, but exhaustion from hard labor in extreme heat and humidity, treacherous footing in the mountains, blasting, and just the dangers associated with heavy industrial equipment all posed threats. On several occasions, laborers protested the grim working and recruitment conditions by attacking worksites.

Beyond the human cost was a financial one. The complex engineering shattered budget projections. Construction costs were double the initial estimates, which were already among the highest of any railroad in the world.

But, eventually, the line opened for business on April 1, 1910. As many as 80 trains a day would roll through Bisezhai, the largest station on the route, and though eventually 500,000 tons of freight went down the line annually, it never achieved any of its goals, relegated to — in the coldly descriptive title of Rousseau’s article on the topic — “an imperial railway failure.”

The changing priorities of imperialism, as well as the changing circumstances inside China, meant that no foreign-sponsored rail link to Sichuan ever emerged. French colonial ambitions in southwest China sputtered, and the railway, like the would-be “French Hong Kong” at Guangzhouwan, would be forgotten.

Militarily, the railway was meant to help France project its forces into southern China from Vietnam. Not only did this never come to pass, but just the opposite would occur in 1954, when Chinese communist forces were able to use the line to supply Vietnamese fighting against the French.

And even were we to dismiss the misguided civilizing missions, the grand strategic plans of empire, and the cruelty of building the railway, the numbers for the railway never added up. Goods never flowed into and out of China through the railway in numbers approaching the French estimates. Unsurprisingly, given its terrain, it was the most expensive to maintain in the entire French empire.

Today, no traffic runs along the railway. Many sections are unusable, though the most noteworthy spot — Bisezhai — relies not on transportation but on its colonial architecture to generate tourist revenue.

A new line connecting Yunnan and Vietnam was opened in the 2010s, this time funded by Chinese capital, and again with grand ambitions about facilitating trade across the border. Last year, a new railway opened connecting Hanoi and Chengdu. Xinhua reports that a high-speed line connecting China and Vietnam will be completed before the end of 2023, with more than 90% of the work already done. Whether or not these projects reach their potential, time will tell.