Kitaysko-Vostochnaya Railway (Китайско-Восточная железная дорога) , aka Chinese Eastern Railway (中東鐵路), was constructed as a shortcut to Trans-Siberian Railway at the Far East Section. It linked Chita and Ussuriysk through Harbin ,and by-passed Khabarovsk. Being a land bridge in early 20th century Northeast Asia, the railway triggered a series of major historical events in the region, and resulted in an alternative urban landscape in contemporary China. In particular, the short influence of the Soviet Union in China during the 1950s has prevailed mostly in the process of urbanisation in the region. But through the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, China has taken the alternative approaches to interpret Socialism and create urban models that were no longer comparable to the Soviet Union. As a result, the region owns the unique urban models that extended the Soviet planning practice in a certain sense but synthesised by the Chinese interpretation of socialism.
