Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Trans-Burma Trade Routes to China

1940; University of British Columbia; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2751052

1715-3379

John L. Christian,

Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography

STETCHING nearly i,500 miles in airline distance from Victoria Point, on the Malay Peninsula within 400 miles of Penang, to snow-covered heights beyond the headwaters of the Irrawaddy, Burma is Britain's vital eastern salient. It is today of increasing importance as an outpost guarding Singapore. Burma is also important because of the peculiar fact that there is no connection between any of the five important railway systems of southern and eastern Asia. Though there are 45,000 miles of track in the subcontinent of India, it is impossible to travel by rail outside its borders except to Duzdap, a short distance across the Iranian frontier. From Duzdap one can travel through India south to Cape Comorin, north to the Khyber Pass, and northeast to Sadiya, in Assam, within i00 miles of Burma, China, and Tibet; but across India's northeastern frontier there is neither railway nor highway. In Burma there is the same lack of outside railway connection. Burma has some 2,000 miles of meter gauge line. From Ye, on the Tenasserim coast within 300 miles of Bangkok, there is railway connection north to Myitkyina, which is 250 miles within the temperate zone and within ioo miles of China, but no railway connects Burma with Siam, India, or China. In Siam, the Royal Siamese State Railway is one of the most efficiently operated systems in Asia. There is through traffic from Chiengmai in the teak forests of northern Siam south to Bangkok and east across the barren Korat plateau to Ubon, within ioo miles of the Mekong and French Indochina; but except for the extension south to the Federated Malay States and Singapore, Siam's railways have no external connection. In French Indochina lines have been constructed from Saigon to within ioo miles of Siam and north to Hanoi, the northern connection having been completed within the past five years. The Haiphong-Yunnan line is French Indochina's only external connection by rail except for a short branch line into Kuangsi.