Japan: Advertising poster for the Shantung Railway Company. Nakayama Taiyodo, c. 1922

The Qingdao–Jinan Railway or Jiaoji Railway (simplified Chinese: 胶济铁路; traditional Chinese: 膠濟鐵路; pinyin: Jiāojì Tiělù, formerly the Shantung Railway) is a railway in Shandong Province, China. The railway is 393 km in length and connects Qingdao, on the Jiaozhou Bay, and Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong. Adolph von Hansemann and other German financiers funded construction of the railway, then known as Schantung Eisenbahn Gesellschaft, which began September 23, 1899, and was completed in 1904. In 1914, Japan occupied the city and the surrounding province during the Siege of Tsingtao after Japan's declaration of war on Germany in accordance with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. China protested Japan's violation of her neutrality but did not interfere in the operations. The failure of the Allied powers to restore Chinese rule to Shandong after the war triggered the May Fourth Movement. The city reverted to Chinese rule in December, 1922, under control of the Republic of China. However Japan maintained its economic dominance of the railway and the province as a whole. The city becam
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