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The story
Founding of the Syfang General Repair Works
Following the Juye Incident, the German army landed at Tsingtao in 1897. In 1898, the Qing government signed the Jiao'ao Concession Treaty with Germany, which made Tsingtao a German colony. This treaty also granted the German government the right to build the Jiaoji Railway and develop the mineral deposits along the route.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was determined to make Tsingtao a "model colony" and a bridgehead for the German army in the Far East. As a result, German authorities built a number of factories in Tsingtao between 1900 and 1910. In October 1900, while building the Jiaoji Railway, German authorities began constructing the Shantung Railway Syfang General Repair Works (Hauptreparatur-Werkstätte Syfang der Schantung-Eisenbahn), which was under the Shantung Railway Company (Schantung-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft), with a total investment of 1,587,000 marks. It became China's third rolling stock factory after Tangshan and Dalian. The factory was located near the Sifang Railway Station in Sifang Village, with more than 10,000 square meters of factory spaces and more than 400 workers, and was completed in 1902. Locomotive parts were imported from Germany and assembly was conducted by the Sifang plant. By 1914, a total of 1,148 locomotives, coaches, and wagons had been assembled or repaired.
Times of turmoil
In 1914, the First World War broke out, and Germany was occupied with war at the homefront. Japan and the United Kingdom took the opportunity and launched the Siege of Tsingtao. The Shantung Railway Syfang General Repair Works was damaged during the siege. In 1915, the Empire of Japan forced the Republic of China government to accept its Twenty-One Demands, which affirmed Japan's takeover of the German territories and railroad assets in Shantung. The Syfang General Repair Works was renamed Shantung Railway Syfang Workshop, which was temporarily managed by the Japanese Army. In March 1915, the Japanese army in Tsingtao established the Shantung Railway Administration, which had five departments: general affairs, transportation, engineering, accounting and mining, and the Tsingtao Workshop. During the Japanese occupation, additional facilities such as sand casting factories, passenger wagon yards, wheel factories, copper casting yards were built, and the number of employees reached more than 1,500.
Pre-PRC to 1949
In 1938 the Beiyang government took over control of the rolling stock manufacturer but constant political turmoil left railway development on hold until 1949.
Local growth and beyond
After 1949 the facility became Sifang Works and in 1952 produced China's first indigenous steam locomotive, August 1st, then through the 1960s and 1970s became a supplier to China Railway passenger cars and later expanded to export markets by the 1980s.
From Wikipedia’s article on CRRC Qingdao Sifang, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3