Section 2 Restoration and Development of Post Network

In the years following the establishment of postal administration of P.R. China, the postal basis was greatly weak, with sparse offices and unbalanced layout and incomplete network. At the end of 1949, there were more than 25, 000 postal offices nationwide, among which 4207 offices were self-operated ones and 21000 offices were postal agencies distributed in large and medium-sized cities. There was no postal office in one-fourth county downtowns nationwide, and few offices in vast rural area, especially in Minority nationality regions and remote areas. The mail route nationwide, including delivery route, reached only 700,000 kilometers in length, of which, foot-route reached 450,000 kilometers in length, covering more than 60% of the total in length.

To suit the needs of national economy restoration and large scale construction, the postal departments actively restored and developed the postal and communication network with Beijing as its center, and remarkable achievements were made.

A. Generally setting up postal offices, focusing on development of authorized postal agencies.

After the establishment of postal administration of P.R. China, the policy of putting self-opening offices first and organizing the social strength to open postal .. agencies was carried out in establishing postal offices, taking rational layout and convenience for the customers as standards. During the liberation war, when one county or city was liberated, a postal office would be set up immediately if there was no postal office in it, thereafter, by the end of 1949, a postal office had been set up in every liberated county, city or banner where the people's government was situated. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, postal offices, branch postal organizations below the county and city level were greatly developed. Since 1950, the number of branch postal organizations had been gradually increased. From 1950 to 1953, 1845 postal agencies were rectified, a considerable number of postal offices were increased by a big margin, and by the end of 1955, 4457 new postal offices were built. During the cooperative movement of agriculture in 1956, I l,071 postal offices were sharply increased in one year in postal departments in order to support the agriculture. In 1957, development speed of postal offices began to decrease, however, 757 postal offices were still established, adding the total number to 22,337, approximately 4 times larger than that in 1949.

The postal department attached great importance to the service structure of postal service authorized social organizations or private postal agencies. From 1950 to 1953, a "steady development" policy was carried out towards the setup of postal agencies. It was decided at the national conference on rural postal service in 1951 that the policy on rural postal construction was to "develop steadily", giving consideration to both state and private postal service and strengthening the combination of post offices by organizing the masses. "A notice to divide postal agencies into four levels and reorganize the rural stamp-selling agencies" was issued at the same year, Pushing forward the development of postal agencies. By 1953, the postal agencies nationwide reached 45,573 in number, one time larger than that in 1949, reaching at the peak of development of the postal agencies in history.

During the socialist transformation of the capitalist industry and commerce in 1954, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications decided to rectify the postal agencies operated by the private businessmen. As a result, 4.1% of the postal agencies were changed into post offices, 4.4% changed into stamp- selling offices, 15.5% canceled and 43.8% transformed into agencies under the supply and marketing cooperatives. During one year and three months, the number of the postal agencies changed, canceled and transformed reached 30,898, covering 47.8% of the total number of the postal agencies which were rectified. Owing to a lot of difficulties in the management of the supply and marketing cooperatives as well as the Problem that the distribution of agency remuneration was not well settled, many postal agencies in the supply and marketing cooperatives took a negative attitude toward postal service, going so far as to stop their service or had to be changed into stamp-selling agencies. Most of them failed to give full play, thus reducing the service level.

B. Restoring a postal transportation network of vigorous development

After the founding of P.R. China, with the development of the communications and transportation of the country, the postal system also actively restored the postal transposition network, and took venous measures to enlarge the scale of mail route and improve the means of mail transportation. The state gave strong and favorable support to the construction of postal transportation network.

On February 15, 1950, the Finance and Economic Committee of CPC decided that sufficient tonnage would be supplied to the ordinary mail transportation by plane, railway, steamship and automobile and favorable freight would be charged. On July 16, the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued a joint order and signed "the Contract for mail transportation between the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications" on December 22. The main contents of the "contract" were as follows: (l) The railway sectors would supply suitable postal van space in accordance with the needs of post offices; (2) Railway delivery mail charge would be equal to 6.25% of the passenger transport parcel delivery price, and would be adjusted with the adjustment of railway passenger transport parcel delivery price. In 1952, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications signed "the Contract for Delivering Postal Matters on Domestic Airline" with the Ministry of Communications and signed "the Methods of Airlifting Postal Matters" with the Civil . Aviation Bureau successively. These regulations, contracts and agreements made the mail transportation get the state's support and guarantee systematically and made it favorable economically, ensuring the unimpeded mail transportation and the development of the postal cause. In 1954, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications made an investment to build a batch of self-equipped postal vans connected to train, substantially increasing the postal transportation capacity.

Post trucks on Northwest road

Simultaneously, the postal sectors also restored gradually the water transportation mail route which mainly took advantage of trunk along the bank of Yangzi River and the northern coast. On part of automobile mail transportation, besides the inland and coastal provinces which generally authorized the Public cars of traffic departments to transport postal matters, the postal departments developed self-opening automobile mail routes in Northwestern and Southwestern canons, to make up for the shortage of external communications means. With the completion of Kangding-Tibet highway in 1954, the postal departments opened a Sichuan-Tibet mail route from Chengdu to Lhasa via Changdu. Qinhai -Tibet highway was completed in 1957, and Qinghai-Tibet mail route from Xining to Lhasa via Germu was opened again. These two mail routes are 1,100 kilometers in length each, the longest and hardest self-opening trunk automobile mail routes nationwide in length and conditions at that time. The opening of the two mail routes brought an end to the history that animals were used to carry mails to Tibet, playing an important part in strengthening communication link between Tibet and inland.

By 1956, the total length of mail routes and delivery lines had been sharply increased to 2.20 million kilometers from 0.70 billion kilometers in 1949, making the mail routes which used motor-driven transportation means increased to 0.42 million kilometers in length from 95 thousand kilometers.

C. Improving urban and rural delivery

In the years just following the liberation, the basis of postal delivery was very poor, the postal departments kept adjusting and developing urban and rural delivery lines in various forms.

As to urban delivery, except a few big cities, the method of centralized and unified delivery by post offices in common cities was put into effect. With the development of service volume and increase of postal branch offices, firstly, ''centralized delivery" was gradually changed into "decentralized delivery", that was, the bigger cities were divided into several delivery areas, with several delivery sections in each delivery area, and the delivery in every area was arranged respectively, so as to improve service level and delivery efficiency. Secondly, as from 1957, the institutions, factories and schools where mails were in great numbers were separated from the delivery section and organized as single delivery sections where motor-driven vehicles were used to make delivery, accelerating the speed of mail delivery. Thirdly, the method to divide letters and newspapers delivery into shifts was brought into effect. A special shift was arranged to deliver the newspapers once according to publishing schedule of local newspapers and the second shift was in charge of inward newspapers and letters delivery, thus not only the burden of mailman was dispersed, but the needs of newspapers subscribe were also satisfied. The delivery force in rural areas fell short. There were only 8,235 rural mailmen across the country in 1949, most of whom were in old liberated areas of North China and Northeast. In this regard, the Ministry of Posts and telecommunications Put forWard the following demands: in sparsely populated areas convenient of access, in general, the postal departments would deliver mails to the administrative divisions and strive to deliver them to natural villages; in convenient areas with sparse villages situated, the postal departments would strive to deliver mails to the administrative divisions; in remote areas with a vast territory and a sparse population, the governmental correspondents would be responsible for relaying mails in areas below county. In May,1951, the national rural postal working conference put forward the principle of "combination of enhancing postal department themselves by organizing the masses". After the conference, postal departments at all levels carried out the decision conscientiously, opened new postal offices and new mail routes, and increased rural postmen, as a result, the rural delivery network was quickly enlarged. As to the administrative and natural villages which were difficult to get access to by mailmen of their own, the postal departments actively organized masses to set up voluntary rural postal stations to be responsible for collection and delivery of newspapers, Periodicals and mails in sections or village. By 1955, the rural postmen across the country were increased to 20,672 persons as against 8,000 persons in 1949. The rural mail routes and delivery lines were developed to l.424 billion kilometers in length, and 90,377 voluntary rural postal stations were set up. The steady development of rural delivery network basically met the increasing needs of rural posts and communications.

During the cooperative movement in agriculture, the postal departments learnt the experience of mailmen in the Soviet collective farms and pursued the system of mailmen in the agricultural Producers' cooperatives. The number of mailmen in the cooperatives once reached 60,000 people, and after adjustment later on, by the end of 1956, 25,000 cooperative's mailmen had left their post.