South Manchurian Railway Company

Originally a railroad terminating in the Kwangtung Leasehold, the South Manchuria Railway Company (Minami Manshu Tetsudo Kabushiki-gaisha) became a diversified Japanese industrial company whose economic interests bore on Japanese strategy in Manchuria and China. It also provided cover for human-source intelligence operations, principally by the Kwangtung Army and of which official Tokyo was not always aware.

Its first component was the southern spur of Chinese Eastern Railway (Changchun to Port Arthur), ceded to Japan by Russia after the Russo-Japanese War. The company itself was formed in 1906, transferred to Manchukuo in 1935, and dissolved in 1945.