 These were governed by a Governor and Governor-general respectively.A special case was the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone, which was governed as a concession granted by Imperial China to the Russian 'Chinese Eastern Railway Society' (in Russian "Obshchestvo Kitayskoy Vostochnoy Zheleznoy Dorogi"; established on 17 December 1896 in St. Petersburg, later moved to Vladivostok), which built 1,481 km of tracks (Tarskaya – Hilar – Harbin – Nikolsk-Ussuriski; 3 November 1901 traffic opened) and established on 16 May 1898 the new capital city, Harbin; in August 1898, the defense for Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) across northeast China was assumed by Russia (first under Priamur governor).On July 1, 1903, the Chinese Eastern Railway was opened and given authority of its own CER Administration (Russian