Qian Yongchang:“Three-Major Plan” Developed in a Long-term Manners

“Life at sea is a book on history and geography,” said Captain Qian Yongchang, former Minister of Transport.

Blue banners with “New Maritime Age, New Silk Road” flutter in the wind on sides of some main roads in Shanghai, advocating the Maritime Day of China 2018. The event coincided with the arrival of the interview group of “Witnessing 40 Years” in Shanghai, a series interviews events featuring people witnessing and participating in the radical change that China has seen in the past four decades.

“When sailing in the Indian Ocean, you would feel the footprints of our great Chinese navigator Zheng He from the 15th century. Sailing along the Normandy coast in northern France when passing through the English Channel will remind you of the fierce battle in which 150,000 allied forces strode across the Channel in the World War II. The vast lands, the jagged mountains and the deep oceans are all deeply embedded in you......” said the 85-year-old Qian Yongchang, who has neatly combed his white hair, remembering his days at sea in a clear and bright mood.

My Skiff Has Left Ten Thousand Mountains Far Away is the title of the book recording the recollection of Qian. During the two-plus-hour interview, the correspondent experienced the revolutionary history of China’s transportation reform, among which two important historical events, the “Three-Major Plan” --- the first long-term development plan made by the Ministry of Transport in 1988 spanning several five-year plans and the opening of China's first container route in 1978, stood out. “In retrospect, there are many ‘stories’ enough to fill the gaps where there lacks historic information of transport,” said Qian.

Qian Yongchang:“Three-Major Plan” Developed in a Long-term Manners with Insights of All

The “Three-Major Plan” refers to the long-term plan for China's transportation development formulated by the Ministry of Transport in the summer of 1988. It envisioned a national transport framework in which highways, waterways and ports play the major roles. The first of its kind, the masterplan that requires decades of efforts to fulfill and covers several five-year plans since the founding of the People’s Republic. (Editor's Note: the supporting and guaranteeing system was added to the “Three-Major and One-Support Plan” in 1990, which was implemented after the approval by the State Council.)

Meetings for three regions lasted three weeks

In 1988, the State Council arranged various ministries and commissions to prepare for the formulation of the "Eighth Five-Year (1991-1995) Plan" for national development. From July 16th to mid-August, the symposiums of transportation directors from all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), divided into three regions, were held at the Huangsi Guesthouse of the Ministry of Transport. One week or so was given to the all transportation directors in each region to thoroughly report the development plans of their respective provinces. No time limit was set and the meetings were allowed to be extended, so the officials could fully elaborate their opinions. Qian Yongchang, then Minister of Transport, listened in detail to the reports of various meetings.

“The year 1988 marked the 10th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up. Despite progress made in the transportation sector, we were still at a stage of “rectifying” and “catching up”. At that point, reform and opening up began to accelerate and the national economy developed rapidly, multiplying the growth of flows of people and goods, putting tremendous pressure on transportation.” Qian Yongchang recalled: “At that time, the highway mileage was short, and the ‘dead-end highways’ in provinces were ubiquitous. The road length per capita was less than 8 cm, basically equivalent to the length of a match stick. The coastal ports were overloaded and the inland waterway ports were underdeveloped.”

At the same time, as China puts national economic development on top of the agenda, transportation was placed in the forefront of national economic development. Around 1985, the State Council, aiming to expand sources of funding, introduced a series of policies such as collecting vehicle purchase fees, raising the collection standards of road tolls, repaying the loans for road construction via tolls, levying port construction dues, and giving priority to developing ports and highways when using preferential loans from International Finance Corporation and government. This has brought a silver lining and confidence to all for solving “bottleneck problems” quickly and easing the tension of traffic conditions.

Under such a favorable environment, coming up with a masterplan that could overhaul the national transportation to meet anticipation from the public has become an urgent task before the Eighth Five-year Plan starts. This three-week meeting provided a reference for the Ministry of Transport to research and formulate the “Eighth Five-Year Plan”. Qian Yongchang said: “The speeches of the directors were carefully prepared and reported to their provincial governments before they came to Beijing. And they offered many inspirations for national planning.”

Qian Yongchang:Developing Long-term Strategic Plan to Prepare Beforehand

Qian Yongchang recalled that he was pondering several issues when he was hearing these reports: the first being the characteristics of transportation development, the second being the historical experience and lessons, and the third being the experience that could be drawn upon from abroad. How to sum up the experience of these aspects, and summarize them into an all-encompassing and concise policy document, while taking into account of various project proposals from different provinces and regions at the same time had become a very tricky task for him.

Transportation construction projects usually involves huge investment and a long period of time for implementation and recovery of the fund, therefore they normally span over one five-year plan. In particular, improvement and management of major rivers and waterways, opening of port clusters, and construction of high-level and long-distance highway networks will take decades. Connecting all the transportation integrals into a network with optimum benefit is a hard work and necessitates coordination and cooperation with neighboring provinces. Therefore, the long-term plan should be made by jumping out of the box of one five-year plan of one particular province.

In this respect, China had many lessons in history. Due to mistakes in movements or economic work, many construction plans were adjusted, rectified, interrupted, delayed or even canceled halfway, resulting in many unfinished projects that led to serious wastes and losses. Plans with the five-year limit might be insufficient in strategic vision and result in inadequate preparation and hasty implementation. Meanwhile, some plans were lacking legislative supports and were susceptible to personnel changes.

Precedents of economic development in other countries have provided valuable experience. Qian said that the 100-year plan for the Mississippi River in the United States first passed legislative process of the Congress before it was signed into law by the president. The rehabilitation of the Seine in France was also subject to a 50-year plan.

"This shows that long-term, strategic, and legislative plans should play an important role," said Qian.

Qian Yongchang:Never Isolating from the People and Building Consensus

“When I was deliberating the policy, it suddenly occurred to me that we should fully deploy the language of the public to summarize their own wisdom. So I put down the objective to develop great highways and great waterways. But how could I summarize the objectives for ports and stations?” Qian Yongchang recalled, “I clearly remember now that when I heard speeches on the morning of the last day, I scratched a lot on my notebook, and finally I came up with the words ‘great hub for ports and stations’. When concluding, I started with the following – “we have to build a transport network that features framework highways, waterways and hubs for ports and stations...”

This meeting lay down the overall objectives we should strive for: under the principal of developing comprehensive transport system we should build a transport framework where highways, waterways and ports and stations play the major roles, in order to meet the needs of national economic and social development in three to five decades starting from the Eighth Five-Year plan period. At the same time, the meeting also elaborated the specifics under these major objectives.

Great Highways—— Focus was given on the construction of 12 national main lines containing five vertical lines (Tongjiang - Sanya, Beijing - Zhuhai, Chongqing - Zhanjiang, Beijing - Fuzhou, Erenhot - Hekou) and seven horizontal lines (Lianyungang - Khorgas, Shanghai - Chengdu, Shanghai - Ruili Shi, Hengyang - Kunming, Qingdao - Yinchuan, Dandong - Lhasa, Suifenhe City - Manzhouli), to connect important cities, industrial centers, transportation hubs and ports for foreign trade across the country, and gradually form a fast and safe national road system consisting of expressways and first-class and second-class motorways compatible with the national economic development pattern and other modes of transportation.

Great waterways —— In accordance with the distribution of China's productivity and the “T” shape of water transportation resources, priority was given to the maritime channels between the north and the south along the coastline and the development of waterway transportation along major rivers, including the Yangtze River, the Heilongjiang River and the Pearl River, the Grand Canal from Beijing to Hangzhou, and the Huaihe River.  

Great ports and stations —— The development of inland ports, coastal and highway transportation hubs connecting major waterways and highways was the priority so as to form multi-functional transportation system meeting the needs of China and foreign trade. Efforts would be continued to invest in 18 coastal hub ports and four international deep-water ports of trans-shipment in Dalian Dayao Bay, Ningbo Beilun, Fujian Meizhou Bay and Shenzhen Dapeng Bay; inland waterway pivotal ports in Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing along the Yangtze River; small and medium-sized ports of different levels, 2,000 berths in coastal ports and 1200 deep-water berths; passenger and cargo distribution hubs and service centers in central cities to form a transit system with complete supporting facilities.

In February 1989, upon the opening of the National Transportation Working Conference, the Ministry of Transport reported the long-term plan to Zou Jiahua, then State Councilor in charge of transportation at that time, which was approved by him. Zou Jiahua suggested to change the name from “Three-great Plan” to “Three-major Plan” to avoid appearing over-ambitious.

Reviewing the birth of the “Three-major Plan”, Qian Yongchang believed that formulation of the long-term plan promoted the consecutiveness of construction while eliminating randomness and regional limitations.  With an aim to build a large-scale transportation network, the cadres and workers fought for its success under a unified strategic objective.

The “Three-major Plan” has already been realized ahead of schedule. For example, construction of the national major highway network depicted in the “Five Verticals and Seven Horizontals” was completed in 2007, more than ten years earlier than originally planned. At present, China's expressways have exceeded 130,000 kilometers.

In this regard, Qian Yongchang was very pleased. “The process of formulating the long-term “Three-major Plan” showed me that we must fully consider the needs of our people when doing our work. Comrade Mao Zedong’s theory of the mass line and the discussion of the practice of 'knowledge and action' has inspired me a lot. We must listen to the opinions of cadres and the masses, gather and summarize their opinions and minds to form a unified opinion and then guide our work. Only through this could we be endowed with the mass base and the plan formulated would certainly be accepted by cadres and the masses. Everyone would of course act out of their own will and better devote to the course,” said Qian.

Qian Yongchang:Developing Container Transportation in order to “Catch Up”

“When I was still a captain in the 1970s, I once went to Kobe Port in Japan. The agency staff told me: ‘Captain, if you still don't ship the goods by the container vessel, there won’t be many workers in Japan to unload the goods for you. Unloading will take a long time and you can only be moored to the berth at the edge of the port.’” Qian recalled, “I was very angry, but at the time we were not economically strong enough to develop the container fleet.”

In September 1978, Shanghai Ocean Shipping Co., Ltd. transformed the multi-purpose vessel “Pingxiang City” into a container and sailed to Sydney Harbour, Australia, marking the beginning of the container transportation in China. At that time, Qian Yongchang was the general manager of Shanghai Ocean Shipping Co., Ltd., and devoted himself to the development of the container transportation in order to catch up with other countries. Among all the businesses, the cooperation with Danish firm The East Asiatic Company (now The Santa Fe Group) was one of the most meaningful.

In 1977, Ye Fei, then Minister of Transport, visited the four Nordic countries and inspected the long-established multinational corporation, The East Asiatic Company (EAC) in Denmark. After returning China, he proposed that “as long as our ownership remains unchanged, we can learn all other things from abroad.” That represented the resolution of China to accelerate the development of the container fleet and change the status of ocean transportation. According to the decision by the Ministry of Transport, Shanghai Ocean Shipping Co., Ltd. and EAC signed a technical assistance agreement in 1978. Qian Yongchang was appointed as the team leader to fully manage the cooperation with EAC.

“At that time, people were so obsessed with politics. So whether spending days with foreigners would be a problem involving secret leakage?” Qian Yongchang said that this was a concern at the time, which made the preparation of the office for foreign experts difficult. Moreover, the office building was cramped and outdated. The staff would knock the enamel pots with their chopsticks at noon while walking through the office building. “We had to make two rooms on the first floor of the office so that experts could enter their office as soon as stepping into the office building. This was our mindset and embarrassment at the beginning of the reform and opening up. Later, the experts moved to the 12th floor of Bank of China Building on the Bund,” said Qian.

In October 1978, experts at EAC brought in a complete set of modern office appliances such as computers, typewriters and photocopiers. “Two different social systems have led to the collision of ideas, and the cooperation had been carefully promoted. The knowledge and experience they provided in container transportation and management had indeed played a role in the development of the container fleet,” said Qian.

“Container revolutionized transportation. For those of us that just got to know it, it also disrupted our understanding,” said Qian. In the beginning container transportation needed sound facilities and the cost was higher than that of break-bulk cargo. In order to make the cargo owners and the ports embrace the new model, Shanghai Ocean Shipping Co., Ltd. decided to make up for the excessive cost, which finally gained the clearance. “Our subsidy was actually today's ‘promotional cost’, the vivid advertisements. This money was well spent,” said him.

The container route pioneer “Pingxiang City” vessel, rebuilt by a multi-purpose ship, still applied the traditional eagle beak cranes for the shore cranes. Containers lifter swayed and required to be manually aligned. The dispatching department of Shanghai Ocean Shipping Co., Ltd. deployed manually-made cards to track the condition of each container. Qian Yongchang said: “It was the launch of the ‘Chinese indigenous method’. But Danish experts said that with this manual operation, capacity would be only up to 4,000 containers. More containers would cause confusion. The situation forced us to introduce the first computer management system in the freight industry, and we recruited all the 10-plus computer professionals who just graduated from Fudan University.”

“The reform and opening up enabled us to see our gap with the world's advanced level, motivating us to learn and catch up. Through the cooperation with EAC, we adhered to the principle without neglecting the reality, learned management knowledge and technology, and also successfully opened up the container routes managed by our own. By reducing the embarrassment and restraint of thought, removing all kinds of mental shackles, and opening up our mind, we can do better,” Qian Yongchang exclaimed. Today, China's maritime fleets are among the best in the global shipping industry. The container fleets sail in major ports around the world and play a pivotal role in promoting economic globalization.

Qian Yongchang:“Navigation Suffuses My Life with Challenges"

“I am proud of being one of the last students of the Wusong Merchant Marine College and one of the first graduate of Dalian Maritime University. I witnessed the progress made by China to be a maritime power in the world,” Qian Yongchang wrote with his true feelings in the article The Romance of a Navigator, “Navigation suffuses my life with challenges, sparing me the dullness of repeated daily routine.”

Qian Yongchang experienced a 22-year career at sea after graduating from college in 1953. When talking about his expectations for young sailors, he shared his experiences from three aspects: knowledge and cultivation, theory and practice, and finally, modern technology and basic skills.

"A good sailor should be both knowledgeable and well-versed. Driving vessels is not the only knowledge to be obtained, you should know more about history, read more literature and art, learn more about music, have knowledge of wider range, and nurture yourself to be a cultured person. When arriving at a foreign port, you should be familiar with enough topics to chat about when the person in charge of the port, the surveyor or the chief engineer of the ship-repair come to you for a cup of coffee,” Qian Yongchang said.

Qian Yongchang responded to the saying that navigation is boring: “It is wrong to think like that! You must be accommodating the marine life in peace, turn the unfavorable conditions of 'loneliness' at sea into favorable conditions.” Before each voyage, Qian Yongchang would make a study plan for himself, learning a foreign language, reading a novel, or delving into a subject. And navigation per se is the best book for learning history and geography. “You can travel around the world by sailing. All the monuments and relics you see would immerse you in the history. When resorting to history and geography books after you return, you will have more knowledge.”

In addition, the seafarers must balance the relationship between theory and practice, and modern technology and basic skills. “We must enrich theory with practice. The theory is not necessarily absolutely right since the sea is too complicated. For example, when I sailed through the Indian Ocean, I recorded the circulation on a daily basis. After summing up later, I found it was somewhat different from the theories in books. The navigation laws of clean, heavy and half-loaded ships vary under different states. Another example is to predict weather by looking at clouds, which requires a lot of experience. And we can also draw the weather map to foresee when a cold front will be encountered according to the weather report. Then the weather be totally under our grasp by the map and prediction.” Speaking of sailing practice, Qian Yongchang was so energetic as if he stood in the cab of the vessel.

“Despite modern and intelligent instruments and equipment, basic skills must not be lost. Once power is cut off, navigation still depends on basic skills,” he said.

"The seafarers need strong will, courage and determination, and need to be quick in response, decisive, bold yet cautious, disposed, hard working, and generous and optimistic. All these characters and spirits can only be honed and shaped in the practice of years’ sailing and through the baptism of the wind and waves.” Qian Yongchang said, “The heroic, romantic and colorful inviting experience belies the hardship. The magnificent ambition is definitely not an empty hope. Only through holding to firm belief, perseverance, and fearlessness could we reach the shore!”