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 during the Great Game period. 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:

• the western branch, now the Harbin–Manzhouli Railway
• the eastern branch, now the Harbin–Suifenhe Railway
• the southern branch, now part of the Beijing–Harbin Railway

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.^[1]

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;^[2][3] later in 1945 the Soviets regained co-ownership of the railway by treaty.^[3] The Soviet Union returned the Chinese Eastern Railway to the People's Republic of China in 1952.^[4]