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Description
When Japanese forces launched their full-scale invasion of China in 1937, they set in motion a large westward mobilisation. Not only did the Nationalist government move from Nanjing to Chongqing but immense parts of industry, universities, and expert personnel relocated to the Chinese hinterland (Huang 1994, Yan 2018). Historians have retold the subsequent reconstruction of Sichuan and its Southwest environs (Howard 2004, Zhou et al. 2014, Rodriguez 2022). They have put less emphasis on the reimagination of the Northwest, including the rediscovery of the ancient “Silk Roads” transport route, that likewise occurred as part of the spatial reemphasis of the Sino-Japanese War (Lin 2008, Tai 2015).
Despite its richness in natural resources, various economic hurdles stymied the growth of the Northwest in comparison to the Southwest. Nonetheless, planners and travel writers imagined Lanzhou as the transport hub of the Northwest and the geographic centre of China proper. The city would connect with Xi’an to the West and Chongqing to the South and function as a portal to the Soviet Union via Xinjiang (Baker 2023, Pelzer 2024) and India via Qinghai and Tibet. In 1941, Lanzhou officially gained city status, resulting in a municipal government that started to publish a range of statistical data.
Research on Lanzhou’s urban growth is usually limited to the post-war era (Li et al. 2011, Guo & Liu 2022). The paper demonstrates that to properly explain its development, an analysis must consider the infrastructural planning of the 1940s. Apart from surveying statistical data that situate Lanzhou within the economic history of the region, the study uses GIS based on archival maps to understand changes in the city’s urban layout and its role within the national transport system. The paper argues that Japanese bombing and wartime spatial planning laid some of the foundations for modern Lanzhou.
Biography
Thorben Pelzer is a postdoc researcher at the Research Centre Global Dynamics, Leipzig University, Germany. He studies the social history of Modern China, including the role of infrastructure and space. He has an expertise in digital and global history. He studied in Japan, China, and Taiwan, and is an alumnus of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is also a board member of the German Association of Chinese Studies. Recent publications include Engineering Trouble: US–Chinese Experiences of Professional Discontent, 1905–1945 (Brill, 2023) and 100 Karten über China (Katapult 2022).
