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Chinese Eastern Railway

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Chinese Eastern Railway

The Chinese Eastern Railway or CER (Chinese: 中國東省鐵路, Russian: Китайско-Восточная железная дорога, or КВЖД, Kitaysko-Vostochnaya Zheleznaya Doroga or KVZhD), is the historical name for a railway system in Northeast China (also known as Manchuria).

The Russian Empire constructed the line from 1897 to 1902. The Railway was a concession to Russia, and later the Soviet Union, granted by the Qing dynasty government of Imperial China. The system linked Chita with Vladivostok in the Russian Far East and with Port Arthur, then an Imperial Russian leased ice-free port. The T-shaped line consisted of three branches:

which intersected in Harbin. Saint Petersburg administered the railway and the concession, known as the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, from the city of Harbin, which grew into a major rail-hub.

The southern branch of the CER, known as the Japanese South Manchuria Railway from 1906, became a locus and partial casus belli for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the 1929 Sino-Soviet Conflict, and the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945. The Soviet Union sold the railway to the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in 1935; later in 1945 the Soviets regained co-ownership of the railway by treaty. The Soviet Union returned the Chinese Eastern Railway to the People's Republic of China in 1952.

The official Chinese name of this railway was Great Qing Eastern Provinces Railway (Chinese: 大清東省鐵路; pinyin: Dàqīng Dōngshěng Tiělù), also known as Eastern Qing Railway (東清鐵路; Dōngqīng Tiělù) or Eastern Provinces Railway (東省鐵路; Dōngshěng Tiělù). After the Xinhai Revolution, the northern branches was renamed to Chinese Eastern Provinces Railway (中國東省鐵路; Zhōngguó Dōngshěng tiělù) in 1915, shortened form as (中東鐵路; Zhōngdōng Tiělù).

The southern branch was renamed to South Manchuria Railway (Japanese kyujitai/Chinese: 南滿洲鐵道) after Japanese took over from Russians in 1905.

It is also known in English as the Chinese Far East Railway, Trans-Manchurian Railway and North Manchuria Railway.

The Chinese Eastern Railway, a single-track line, provided a shortcut for the world's longest railroad, the Trans-Siberian Railway, from near the Siberian city of Chita, across northern Manchuria via Harbin to the Russian port of Vladivostok. This route drastically reduced the travel distance required along the originally proposed main northern route to Vladivostok, which lay completely on Russian soil but was not completed until a decade after the Manchurian "shortcut".

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