Source: PEKING REVIEW Vol.1 No.2, March 11, 1958
Passengers on the express run of the 312-kilometre Shanghai-Nanking Railway are spending 69 minutes less on the train. The distance is now done in the record time of 3 hours 52.5 minutes instead of the original 5 hours 2 minutes. Another notable performance by the Shanghai railwaymen is the record they set on March 4 in an emulation drive with their fellow workers at the Peking and Chinchow (north-east China) depots: they completed 1.28 million ton-kilometres per train per day, the highest yet in the railway history of China. A few days later the Peking railwaymen topped this record with a run of 1.34 million ton-kilometres per train.
These are the first contributions of the Shanghai and Peking railwaymen to the current campaign to end waste and conservative ideas and practices in the course of which they have thrown overboard many outmoded conventions, rules and regulations. In terms of economy, what they have done is equivalent to putting at least 30 per cent more wagons on the roads.
The Shanghai and Peking railwaymen are not at all unusual. Similar things are happening in other parts of the country. Men and women everywhere are participating in the battle against waste and conservatism in the present stage of the rectification campaign to improve work in all spheres and are bringing the energies of the nation into full play. It is, as the March 3 directive issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party to push the campaign ahead puts it, a campaign to make still greater strides forward in the spheres of production and culture.
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