From 1881 to 1911,
The Qing government made remarkable achievements in railway construction.
However, behind this seemingly brilliant achievement, there are countless problems and difficulties hidden.
Even though there were so many problems, why did the Qing government insist on building railways at that time.
In the earliest days, the Qing government strongly rejected railways.
The first small railway in China was the German Small Railway, a one-mile-long "exhibition railway" built along the moat outside Xuanwu Gate in Yanjing in 1865. This was the earliest railway in China.
But soon after, the Qing rulers ordered it to be demolished on the grounds that it was "horrifying to viewers".
In 1876, the British merchants of Shanghai Yihe Bank used deceptive means to build the Songhu Railway in Shanghai without the consent of the Qing government. It was completed and opened to traffic in July 1876, with a total length of 15 kilometers.
After operating for more than a year, this is the first railway in China to handle passenger and freight transportation business.
But later the Qing government used 280,000 taels of silver to redeem it, and after the redemption, it was completely demolished by the Qing government.
The main reason why they refused to build the railway so strongly was because the Qing government had begun to weaken at that time, but it was unwilling to accept that some private forces began to gradually escape from the government's control.
So they tried their best to prove their power. You see, what's the use of building the railway? It's not that I demolished it.
Including later when Zuo Zongtang went to fight in XJ, he also encountered many difficulties. At that time, he proposed to build a railway, but there was no good result.
Then why did you start taking the initiative to build the railway again in the end?
Two words: general trend.
On the one hand, there was the overall international trend at that time. Under the wave of the British Industrial Revolution, all countries in the world began industrialization changes.
On the other hand, for a country like China that has both land and sea, both are very important.
However, the Qing government at that time was already in a state of having no defense against the sea, and sea transportation was so expensive that ordinary people could not afford it and rarely went out.
Although the railway costs a lot of money, it is still much cheaper, and it is also much cheaper than sea transportation in terms of maintenance.
In addition, for a country with a vast land area like China, railways are conducive to transportation in peacetime and troop deployment in wartime, which is a double-edged sword.
The first railway in the true sense of China was the Tangshan-Xugezhuang Railway, also known as the Tangxu Railway, which was built in 1881. It was the first railway that was successful and preserved for practical use, thus opening up the history of China. The beginning of independent railway construction.
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We say that Huaxia Railway has achieved remarkable results, but it faces many problems behind the scenes.
The root cause of these problems was also caused by the weakness of the Qing government at that time.
The most important thing in building a railway is naturally the issue of funding.
Take the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway as an example. This railway, which is only 200 kilometers long, will cost a huge sum of 7 million taels of silver. This amount of money is enough to purchase two ironclad ships, such as "Dingyuan" and "Zhenyuan".
The Beijing-Hankow Railway, an artery-level railway, cost more than 40 million taels of silver, enough to form two Beiyang fleets.
The Qing government at that time was deeply in debt due to the huge indemnities paid in the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Treaty of Xinchou. They faced a serious problem: how to raise enough funds to build these railways?
At that time, many Western powers supported China's railway construction and were very enthusiastic. They even wanted to take the initiative to help China build railways.
Of course, they are not well-intentioned, but to better divide the local resources and for their own benefit.
In the early days of the Qing government, they would never agree to let foreigners build railways for themselves.
Because the conditions of foreigners are very unacceptable. Not only were they greedy to extract more money, they also demanded the Qing government use their engineers, rails and locomotives, and even demanded the right to operate the railway as collateral.
Although the Qing government was incompetent, it was not willing to be harmed by foreigners in this way. In addition, the voices of civil protests became louder and louder, so it gradually gave up the financing model of using foreign debt as collateral for road rights.
Then the Qing government thought of another way, which was to solve this problem through the "official supervision and commercial management" model.
That is, the ownership and operation rights of the railway belong to the state, and stocks are issued to attract private capital investment.
However, wealthy people at that time were skeptical about the prospects of investing in railways, and few were willing to buy stocks issued by the imperial court.
After trying many methods, the Qing government finally found that none of them worked.
You cannot borrow money from foreigners, and you cannot force businessmen to build it.
Then we can only let businessmen build it and give the rights to these businessmen.
In the end, the Qing government had no choice but to rely on domestic capital and resources and adopted the method of "borrowing domestic debt".
The Qing government finally decided to open construction rights to private capital.
Therefore, in August of the 29th year of Guangxu (1903), the Qing government promulgated the "Concise Railway Regulations".
This charter stipulates:
1. Private capital can form a railway company, but it is not allowed to absorb foreign capital as shares, and all shareholders must be Chinese;
2. After the railway is completed, the ownership and operation rights will belong to the railway company.
The introduction of this policy provides a strong guarantee for the development of private railway companies.
Because everyone has seen that the final management rights and ownership of the railways they build belong to themselves. In this case, there is nothing to worry about.
The Qing government only had the power of supervision. To put it bluntly, as long as the Qing government did not act rogue and followed the legal process, all the profits from these railways would belong to the railway companies.
Stimulated by this policy, private railway companies mushroomed and developed rapidly.
Of course, this process is not smooth either.
Even ordinary private companies have difficulty raising funds to build railways.
After all, it often costs several million taels or even tens of millions of taels of silver to build a railway, and the return on investment is not high.
These businessmen are all profit-seeking and without profit, of course they are unwilling to work directly.
In this abnormal policy and social background.
Railway companies formed by a combination of private and government companies emerged.
If there is no money, then collect it from the private sector.
At that time, Xiliang, the governor of Sichuan, began to carry out "forced shareholding".
He asked the entire province of Sichuan to levy an additional 3% tax to invest in the railway company.
This investment is called "renting shares"!
Of course, you don’t just invest in shares for no reason, you can enjoy dividends.
However, the conditions for dividends are extremely strict, that is, only when the amount of shares purchased reaches one share can you finally enjoy the dividends.
But at that time, the grain tax paid by private families at that time was only one tael of silver per year, with an additional charge of 3%. However, based on this part, even if it took hundreds of years to pay, it is estimated that only one share could be collected.
Because at that time Xiliangding’s quota per share was fifty taels of silver.
If they can't collect enough shares, they will never be able to enjoy the dividends as shareholders, which is equivalent to all the additional taxes you collect, and finally it will be given to the railway company in vain.
