Personnel discipline and industrial relations on the railways of Republican China

The Chinese National Railways of Republican China (1912-37) had a personnel administration the equal of any of the major railway systems of the period . Railways require a sophisticated personnel bureaucracy to train, monitor and enforce codes of conduct which would ensure the safety of passengers, f reight and the huge investment in rolling stock and fixed capital. Only the military had previously administrative structures approaching the modern r ailway companies, the first modem business to organise on such a scale larg e numbers of employees over vast geographic areas. In China the railway int roduced not only a new transport technology but also played a major role in creating the new industrial working class through the regimes of work and discipline their administration created. Drawing on neglected railway perso nnel archives, this paper examines the work organisation and structures of discipline that governed the working day of Chinese railway employees.