of railways, much less than the that Sun Yat-sen had envisioned. In addition, half of them were in Japanese-controlled Manchuria. The slow progress of modernising China's transport was caused by conflicting foreign interests. Chinese external credits needed approval from British, French, American, and Japanese banks as stated in the 1920 New Four-Power Consortium. In addition, other foreign countries were hesitant to provide funding because of the Great Depression. However, a series of Sino-German agreements in 1934–1936 greatly accelerated railway construction in China. Major railways were built between Nanchang, Zhejiang, and Guizhou. The rapid developments could occur because Germany needed efficient transportation to export raw materials, and the railway lines served the Chinese government's need to build an industrial centre south of the Yangtze. In addition, the railways served important military purposes. For example, after the Hangzhou-Guiyang railway was built, military transport could pass through the Yangtze Delta Valley, even after Shanghai and Nanking had been lost. Similarly, the Guangzhou-Hankou railway provided transport between the eastern coast and the Wuhan area and would later prove its worth in the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The most important industrial project from the Sino-German cooperation was the 1936 Three-Year Plan, which was administered by the Chinese government's National Resources Commission and the Hapro corporation. Its purposes were to create an industrial powerhouse, which could resist Japan in the short run and create a centre for future Chinese industrial development for the long run. It had several basic components, such as the monopolisation of all operations of tungsten and antimony; the construction of the central steel and machine works in Hubei, Hunan, and Sichuan; and the development of power plants and chemical factories. Cost overrun for the projects was partly assuaged by the fact that the price of tungsten had more than doubled between 1932 and 1936. Germany also extended a 100 million Reichsmark line of credit to the Kuomintang. The Three-Year Plan introduced a class of highly educated technocrats to run the state-owned projects. At the height of the programme, trade with Germany accounted for 17% of China's foreign trade and China was the third largest trading partner with Germany. The Three-Year Plan had many promises, but many of its intended benefits would be undermined by the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. German aid to modernization of Chinese military Alexander von Falkenhausen was responsible for most of the military training.