China: Great Dragon Rising - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 299

70 ° 80 ° 90 ° 100 ° 110 ° 120 ° 130 ° 140 °

A

nb aatar

A

Ba otou

Beijing

Tianjin

Taiyu an

Xian

zh ou

Chongqing

CHINA: ENERGY RESOURCES
AND SURFACE COMMUNICATIONS

X iangg

Guan gzhou

(Hong

Mac u

Gasfield Major road

Oilpipeline
Railroad

Oilfield

Manufacturing region

Coalfield Major coal mine

0 300 600 900 Kilometers

300

0 10200 400 s e l i M 0 0 5

100 ° 110 ° Longitude East of Greenwich 120 ° 130 °

Figure 11-3
Note how surface communications are concentrated in China proper . Why is China Frontier so
devoid of road and rail transportation? From H. J. de Blij and P . O. Muller, Geography: Realms,
Regions, and Concepts , 14th Edition, 2010, p. 489. Originally rendered in color. Reprinted with
permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

industry to the interior. At that time, egalitarianism in
regional development was deemed more important than
efficiency . In 1949, most industrial centers were concen-
trated in the northeast from southern Manchuria
through Shanghai. Subsequently , other centers were de-
veloped in line with discoveries of new resources such as
coal and oil. As a result, the share of industrial output in-
creased in the interior provinces. China' s single oil well
at Y umen became only one ofhundreds across the nation.

Xinjiang became a cornerstone of natural resource
exploitation (Figure 11-3).
Railroads were extended into the interior. No longer
was the network largely concentrated in northern and
northeastern China. New links were established between
north and south and extensions were built to the northwest
and southwest. Railroads, although built for strategic rea-
sons, were critical facilitators of population redistribution
in concert with the hsia-fang program and industrialization