Telecommunications have been maintained and extended. Telegraph service has reached into hitherto untapped areas, and wireless is extensively employed. Radio services operate under the Kuomintang, not the government; stations XGOX and XGOY reach North America and Europe with propaganda in the world's leading languages. The telephone has come to be a regular part of Chinese official and business life, and is to be seen, far off the beaten track, as one of the heralds of industrialization. All these modern services would, however, be grossly insufficient for the needs of the whole nation at war. They have been supplemented through the use of every available type of pre-modern transportation. Most of these rely on man-power, and have had their own elaborate organization for many centuries: boatmen's guilds, unions of transport coolies, carters, muleteers and camel-drivers. It has been possible to ship heavy freight through country consisting of mountains traversable only by stone-flagged footpaths or torrential streams. The Ministry has regimented this complicated pre-modern world, with impromptu modernizations as startling as they are efficacious. Where once couriers trotted, they now speed by on bicycles or motorcycles; the squealing wooden-axled wheelbarrows of the Chinese countryside are yielding to pneumatic-tired carts which resemble American farm trailers. Three to eight men can drag one cart, with half a ton of freight, over any terrain, making up to forty miles a day. Provision can be made, therefore, for moving a quarter-million tons of raw materials across territory lacking even the most elementary roads. The roughness of the country, which bars the Japanese army, is no obstacle to huge coolie gangs, drafted sometimes, but more usually hired. The Minister of Communications gave the following written answers to questions put by the author:[22] 1. In view of the political interruptions to commerce through British and French territories south of China, will efforts be maintained to keep communications on the same schedules southward that they had before? Yes, because commercial and export traffic is still being carried on southward, and there is a large accumulation of important materials to be moved from the frontier inward. 2. Will the restriction of gasoline lead to the abandonment of certain truck and bus routes, and the maintenance of others, or do you expect to restrict all routes evenly? We expect to restrict all important routes evenly if the motor fuel situation becomes really acute. 3. Is a motor road running through Inner and Outer Mongolia directly north to the Trans-Siberian Railroad a feasible project? Yes, it is a feasible project. 4. For all practical purposes, is the Soviet route as it exists an adequate although expensive channel for the import of high-class American machinery, such as trucks?