SOUTH MANCHURIAN RAILWAY

railway line connecting the South Manchurian sea towns of L-shun (Port Arthur) and L-ta (Dairen) with the Chinese Eastern Railway, which runs across Manchuria (Northeast provinces) from Chita in Siberia to the Russian port of Vladivostok. The line has been a source of friction between the Chinese, Japanese, and Russians throughout the 20th century. In March 1898 the Russians forced China to give them control of the Liaotung Peninsula, in southern Manchuria; shortly after that, they began construction of the South Manchurian Railway. Following the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (190405), the Liaotung Peninsula was transferred to Japan. In 1906 the Japanese made the South Manchurian Railway Company their chief instrument for the economic exploitation of Manchuria, and the company developed the enormous open-pit Fu-shun coal mine and the An-shan steelworks. Lower-echelon Japanese employees harboured ultranationalistic feelings, which encouraged the Japanese to invade Manchuria in 1931 and rule it as the puppet state of Manchukuo. At the Yalta Conference in 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to restore the railway to the Soviet Union as a partial reward for Joseph Stalin's agreement to enter the war against Japan. A treaty between the Chinese Nationalists and the Soviet Union on August 14 of the same year gave China and the Soviet Union joint control over the South Manchurian Railway for 30 years. When the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949, the Soviets were obliged to return the railway to full Chinese control.