Manchurian Plague: The Deadliest Epidemic in the Chinese History that Killed 60,000 People

In the autumn of 1910, alarming reports began reaching the Chinese press: a deadly plague had arrived in Harbin, in China’s far northeastern region of Manchuria. Within weeks, it was clear this was no ordinary outbreak. The disease spread with terrifying speed through densely packed communities, killing nearly everyone it touched. By the time the epidemic was brought under control in the spring of 1911, between 50,000 and 60,000 people were dead. The Manchurian Plague carried a mortality rate of 100 percent — no one who contracted it survived.

The plague did not stay confined to Manchuria’s northeastern provinces. Cases were reported sporadically in Tianjin and Beijing, and the disease followed the Beijing-Hankou railway line deep into central China. The scale of the outbreak forced the Chinese government, alongside Russian and Japanese authorities, to mount one of the most organized disease-response efforts China had ever seen.

The origin of the epidemic traced back to the marmot fur trade. German chemical companies had developed dyes that could transform cheap marmot fur into convincing imitations of sable, mink, and otter pelts. This discovery caused the market value of marmot fur to shoot up from a few kopecks to a full rouble, drawing waves of migrant hunters into Manchuria. The problem was that these new arrivals had no experience with the animals. Indigenous hunters, many of them Buryat, had long-established knowledge of how to identify and avoid marmots that were visibly sick. The migrant hunters had no such knowledge — they collected diseased marmots without hesitation, and in doing so, they picked up the plague bacteria those animals carried.

The bacteria responsible for this outbreak caused pneumonic plague — an airborne form that attacks the lungs. Unlike bubonic plague, which spreads through flea bites, pneumonic plague passes directly from person to person through respiratory droplets. The cold Manchurian winter made everything worse. Hunters crowded together in small, poorly ventilated huts to escape the freezing temperatures, creating exactly the conditions needed for the disease to jump rapidly from one person to the next. Manchuria’s extensive railway network then carried infected passengers across vast distances, seeding new outbreaks in city after city. In Kuancheng, near Jilin, over 200 deaths were reported every single day.

The victims were overwhelmingly poor, middle-aged Chinese men living in crowded settlements with little sanitation. These were the same migrant laborers and hunters drawn to the region by the fur trade boom. Foreigners who contracted the disease were almost exclusively medical workers who had been exposed while treating patients.

With no cure available, stopping the plague required strict containment. In November 1910, Chinese and Russian doctors traveled to Harbin — also known as Fujiadian — to evaluate conditions on the ground. Their conclusion was direct: the only way to slow the spread was to isolate everyone who had been exposed. Plague patients, suspected cases, and people who had come into contact with confirmed cases were all placed in quarantine inside railway carriages. If no symptoms appeared within five days, they were released. This system was imperfect but essential, and it formed the backbone of the entire response effort.

One of the most consequential decisions of the entire response came from Dr. Wu Lien-Teh, the Chinese physician placed in charge of the anti-plague operation. Wu secured imperial permission to cremate the bodies of plague victims. This was a radical step in a society where burial traditions held deep cultural and religious significance. But the thousands of corpses lying in and around Manchurian cities were actively spreading infection, and Wu understood that removing them was non-negotiable. Mass cremations were organized across multiple cities, disposing of bodies that would otherwise have continued feeding the epidemic.

The scale of the cremations was staggering. In Changchun alone, the first large cremation involved eleven separate stacks containing more than 1,400 bodies. Local officials, including Taotai He, personally supervised the operations to ensure they were carried out properly. Kerosene was poured over stacked coffins before they were set alight. The photographs taken during this period document the systematic, industrial nature of the operation — rows of coffins waiting to be stacked, piles of ash covered in lime, workers moving bodies by cart through frozen streets.

In Harbin and Fuchiatien, the scene was similar. Carts loaded with bodies were wheeled to cremation pits outside the city. Burial workers — called coolies — handled the grim logistics of moving, stacking, and burning thousands of remains. The Russian Chinese Eastern Railway authorities established sanitary zones throughout the region, monitored population movements, and demolished homes that were confirmed to be plague-infected. Disinfection teams worked daily, treating railway cars, streets, and public spaces with chemical solutions including mercury bichloride diluted to 1:3000.

Medical personnel worked in dedicated laboratories and hospitals set up across the affected cities. Doctors performed autopsies, analyzed blood smears, developed vaccines, and tracked the spread of infection city by city. Dr. Wu Lien-Teh ran the headquarters at Fuchiatien, receiving daily reports and coordinating the broader response. Other medical figures — including Dr. P.S. Huang in Changchun and Dr. Aspland in the bacteriological laboratory — worked alongside international colleagues brought in from Russia and elsewhere.

Quarantine operations were rigorous and ran around the clock. Inspection squads went door to door searching for suspected plague cases. Anyone found showing symptoms was removed and transported to a plague hospital. Those who had been in contact with confirmed patients were brought to quarantine facilities, where their temperatures were taken daily and blood smears drawn from their ears to check for infection. Separate transport vehicles were designated for the already sick, for suspects, for contacts, and for the dead — a clear illustration of just how organized and deliberate the entire system had become.

The epidemic finally came to an end by late April 1911. The combination of aggressive quarantine, mass cremation, disinfection, and the arrival of warmer spring weather broke the chain of transmission. The economic damage left behind was severe. The plague had devastated trade across Manchuria, with the soybean industry alone estimated to have lost approximately $7,000,000 in Chinese silver dollars. The fur trade and food markets suffered additional losses that took years to recover from.

Beyond the economic toll, the plague reshaped Chinese law and science. The imperial permission granted for cremation during the crisis was followed by a Presidential mandate that legalized human dissection — a significant shift given the deep cultural taboos surrounding the treatment of the dead. The epidemic also helped dismantle some of the religious superstitions tied to ancestor worship that had previously complicated public health efforts. In the wake of the outbreak, the Mukden Conference was convened — the first international scientific conference held in China. It placed Chinese scientists on equal footing with the global scientific community and marked the beginning of modern disease control in the country.