Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China


The Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China is an agency responsible for railway, road, air and water transportation regulations of the Mainland China. Before March 2013, it was not in charge of the conventional railway transportation, which was administrated by the Ministry of Railways. It is a constituent department of the State Council of the People's Republic of China.

History

The MOT's origins date back to 1912 when the Ministry of Transportation and Communications of the Republic of China was established.
In early March 1995, The 2008 National People's Congress announced the creation of the super ministry for road, air and water transport. The Ministry of Communications, Civil Aviation Administration and the State Postal Bureau are merged into the new Ministry of Transportation of the People's Republic of China. This excluded rail transport which was administered solely by the Ministry of Railways until March 2013.
The Ministry of Transport has several agencies reporting to it. They are the:
The predecessor to the current ministry was the Ministry of Communications. In other countries, the Ministry of Communications is responsible for telecommunications and broadcasting. However, the Chinese Ministry of Communications had no such responsibilities. Instead, the MOC supervised road and water transport, while other ministries oversaw telecommunications and broadcasting. The discrepancy was caused by changes in the English language that took place after the Ministry was first created.
One definition of the English word communication is the linking of two points by a means of transport. Roads, railways, and waterways were all considered to be forms of communication. When the Qing Dynasty established the Ministry of Posts and Communications in 1906, the English word communication still carried this meaning. After the People's Republic of China was established, other ministries were created to oversee railways, airlines, postal services, and telecommunications. The remaining transportation functions remained with the Ministry of Communications.
However, the English language moved in the opposite direction. By 1907, communication had begun to acquire a different meaning: a system of transmitting information over a distance. This eventually became the primary meaning of the word communication, while transport and transportation became the preferred terms for the linking of two points. As a result, the Chinese Ministry of Communications ended up with a different set of responsibilities from the Ministry of Communications in other countries. The Republic of China did not have this problem because it kept telecommunications and postal services in its Ministry after 1949, renaming it the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.

List of Ministers