In 1911, with the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising, the revolutionary movement swept the country in an instant, and in just two months, fifteen provinces in the country broke away from the rule of the Qing Dynasty, and the Manchu Dynasty came to an end.
However, after the revolutionary party took over the country, it was found that the rulers of the Qing Dynasty had only done two things in more than half a century, one was to cede land, the other was to pay reparations, and even until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, ** still owed the following strong 7300 million taels of debt.
So, where exactly did these arrears come from? For such a bad debt, how to solve it in the end?
In 1840, the First Opium War broke out, and the decaying and incompetent Manchu Dynasty was unable to resist the British ships and artillery, and the Qing Dynasty army was about to collapse at the first touch, and the British army took the opportunity to occupy Fujian, Guangzhou and other places.
At that time, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty hesitated, and successively sent several ministers to negotiate peace with the British army, signed the "Treaty of Piercing the Nose Grass" and the "Treaty of Guangzhou", paid the British 6 million silver dollars, and redeemed the Guangzhou area occupied by the British army.
After receiving this indemnity, Britain ** thought that the invasion of the Qing Dynasty was too profitable, and then expanded the scope of the war, and then fought all the way to the Nanjing area, forcing the Qing ** to sign the "Nanjing Treaty" of national humiliation, requiring the Qing Dynasty to cede Hong Kong Island and pay 21 million silver dollars in compensation. At this point, the idea of the Qing Dynasty rulers to "go to the country" was broken, and China began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
Sixteen years later, the Second Opium War broke out, Britain and France, with the support of the United States, Russia and other powers, invaded the land of China again, and the Qing Dynasty was making every effort to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, so for the British and French alliances, peace negotiations were the mainstay, and the two countries signed the "Treaty of Tianjin" respectively, paying Britain 4 million ** and France 200 **.
Afterwards, seeing that the Qing ** was so weak, the British and French repeated their old tricks to provoke the war again, and sent troops all the way into the city of Beijing, the Qing Dynasty emperor fled south in a hurry, and the British and French troops burned and looted in the city, and did all kinds of evil, robbed and burned a series of royal gardens such as the Old Summer Palace, Qingyi Yuan, and Jingmingyuan.
In the face of this phenomenon, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty still did nothing, turned around and signed the "Beijing Treaty" with Britain and France, ceded the south of the Kowloon Peninsula to the British, and compensated the other party 13 million taels ** as military expenses. As for France, although it did not receive the cession of land, it received an indemnity of 8 million taels.
Taking advantage of the threat from Britain and France, ** also took the opportunity to make a move and demanded that Qing ** cede 400,000 square kilometers of land east of the Ussuri River, including Sakhalin Island, and 440,000 square kilometers of land east and south of Lake Balkhash.
At that time, the United States proposed neither reparations nor land cession, but they demanded the same diplomatic privileges as Britain and France, including the interests of holding China's tariff sovereignty and dumping goods on China. In the face of the demands of the great powers, Qing ** is to accept all the orders, as long as the other party proposes, Qing ** will choose to agree.
However, this situation is far from over, only ten years later, Japan ** with the help of the Americans, sent 3,000 people to invade Taiwan, China, this is a matter of fault for the Japanese, but the rotten Manchu rulers dare not speak out, and even take the initiative to admit that the local Yamen in Taiwan has mishandled this matter, and compensated Japan ** 500,000 taels.
In the same year, Britain also intervened again, demanding that the Qing agree that Britain had the right to enter and leave China's southwest border on the grounds that there was a conflict between Yunnan and British merchants, and agreed to compensate Britain 200,000 taels**.
However, the truth of this matter is that British businessmen went to the border of Yunnan without authorization and clashed with the local ethnic minorities, and as a result, the Qing Dynasty was submissive, and under the blackmail of the other party, agreed to all the terms, so that Britain had the right to enter and exit China's southwest border unscrupulously.
Five years later, the tsar ** issued a threat to the Qing **, the Qing ** did not dare to negotiate with the other party at all, and finally under the coercion of the ** people, the Qing Dynasty cut out 70,000 square kilometers of the Ili region that Zuo Zongtang had finally recovered, and compensated the other party 9 million rubles.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the Beiyang Fleet, which the Qing Dynasty regarded as hope, was completely annihilated, and the Qing Dynasty minister Li Hongzhang signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan, ceding Taiwan and the Penghu Islands and other places (about 360,000 square kilometers of land), and pay the other party 200 million taels**.
At the end of the same year, Li Hongzhang negotiated with the Japanese and redeemed the Liaodong Peninsula occupied by Japan at the cost of 30 million taels of compensation to the other party.
In order to manipulate this force against the foreign powers, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty took the initiative to declare war on eight countries, including Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Austria, resulting in the emergence of the "Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China".
In the face of the invasion of foreign powers, the Qing army was defeated again and again, and the Qing rulers had no intention of resisting, and immediately signed the "Xinchou Treaty" with 11 countries, promising to suppress the Boxer Rebellion internally and apologize to the countries externally.
After this incident ended, the Qing Dynasty paid 9 againThe indemnity of 800 million taels further strengthened the imperialist plundering of China and completely reduced China to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
All the above-mentioned indemnities are as large as hundreds of millions and as small as one or two hundred thousand, in fact, the Qing ** cannot be taken out at all, due to the impact of the war for many years, the Qing ** national finances have long collapsed.
In desperation, the Qing Dynasty could only propose an installment repayment plan, among which the "Xinchou Treaty" was an example, in which the great powers divided the debt into 39 years with high interest, and the debt was not paid off until after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
On January 1, 1912, after the founding of China, Mr. Sun Yat-sen took office as the provisional president of the country, and in the face of the huge debts left by the Qing Dynasty, Mr. Sun also fell into the choice of "to pay it back or not".
First of all, from a political point of view, it is probably impossible to "not return", because at that time, *** had just been established, and Yuan Shikai in the north was eyeing it.
If *** refuses to repay the debts left by the former Qing Dynasty, it is very likely to push foreigners to the side of the former Qing Dynasty or Yuan Shikai, and at that time, whether it is the restoration of the former Qing Dynasty or Yuan Shikai***, it will be a huge blow to the Chinese revolution, so in order to avoid this phenomenon, ** has to choose to continue to repay.
Secondly, from an economic point of view, in order to repay those debts, the Qing Dynasty has mortgaged the country's tariffs, salt taxes and other major tax methods to the Western powers, even if they refuse to repay, the Western powers can also seize huge sums of money through these taxes to repay various debts.
Finally, from a military point of view, if *** refuses to repay, the Western powers will definitely not mind another "eight-nation alliance invasion of China" war, after all, the profits obtained from the war are far higher than the interests of the debt itself. At that time, China could not withstand the invasion of foreign powers, and by that time, the loss was probably far more than these repayments.
Based on the above three points, ** could only break his teeth and swallow it in his stomach, and was forced to accept the huge debt left over from the previous Qing Dynasty.
But in the process of repayment, new problems also appeared, due to the carelessness of the Manchu Dynasty, after the first came to power, China's foreign arrears were ambiguous, and many Western powers took the opportunity to lie about the arrears figures, demanding that they repay some fictitious debts.
Fortunately, the diplomats of the ** period were very smart, and they used the interests of Western countries to test each other out the debts owed by the Qing Dynasty to other countries, of which the main ** of these arrears was part of the "Xinchou Treaty", and the Qing ** borrowed 30 million taels from Russia, Germany, and France to redeem the debts of Liaodong, and the two together were about 7About 300 million taels**.
And for the 40,000,000 compatriots of Chinese, the debt of more than 700 million yuan requires each person to hand over two taels of silver, but some poor people can't earn one or two silver a year, and they have the money to pay off these debts?
In addition, in order to exploit the Chinese, these Western powers put forward the idea of settling debts with ** after discovering that ** had depreciated, with the aim of obtaining greater benefits in China.
Of course, feng shui turns around, and the countries of the world are not immutable, and during the First World War, China joined the Entente camp, defeated the Allied powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and immediately stopped paying reparations to both countries.
In 1917, after the October Revolution, the Soviet Union, in order to improve diplomatic relations with other countries, also announced that it would renounce the reparations of the "Xincho Treaty".
However, the so-called "waiver of reparations" is not always a good thing, for example, after the end of the First World War, French prices inflation and a sharp depreciation of the French currency, the real value of which was only one-third of the original.
In order to ensure their own economic interests, the French pretended to demand that China not settle in depreciated francs, but in gold francs, which were not yet in circulation in France, on the grounds of returning China's unpaid indemnities and repaying the deficit of the Sino-French Industrial Bank.
The difference in real value between the two is more than four times, nominally France gave up the reparations, but in fact it was China that suffered a big loss, bearing the huge loss of the depreciation of the franc, but paid France an extra 62 million taels**.
After China paid huge monetary compensation, the Western powers were still not satisfied, and the capitalist countries, led by the United States, began to target China's human resources when they found that China's economic interests were gradually drying up.
First of all, the United States promised to return part of the compensation on the grounds of helping China's development, but these compensation can only be used for Chinese study abroad and other projects, and these compensation is obviously Chinese's money, but it is used by Americans in their name, and in the long run, a large number of Chinese are consciously funded by the United States, and naturally begin to move closer to the United States, and then let Chinese lose a large number of people.
In the following decades, from Beiyang** to the National**, whether it was the local warlords in power or Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang reactionaries, they did not dare to resist the Western powers, and took the initiative to accept the huge debts left over from the former Qing Dynasty.
It was not until 1941, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States, that Chiang Kai-shek dared to announce the abolition of the "Xinchou Treaty" of Germany, Italy and Japan, but at this time, it had been four years since the outbreak of the all-out war of resistance in China, that is to say, before that, Japan was obviously invading our country, but Chiang Kai-shek never dared to abolish the reparations to Japan.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in the face of the humiliating diplomacy of the Qing Dynasty, Beiyang, and the people, he naturally could not accept it, and he pointed out that the current China is no longer the old China, and we must implement the diplomatic policy of "cleaning the house and then inviting guests", sweep away the unequal treaties signed by China's successive ** with the Western powers, and refuse to recognize the imperialist restrictions on China.
In addition, ** also put forward the policy of "starting anew" and "one-sided", first, to show that the People's Republic of China is definitely not the old China that was bullied by others, and secondly, to tell the Western powers that if the other side is hostile to China for a long time, then we can also join forces with other socialist countries and face the invasion of capitalist countries together.
For China's tough attitude, the Western powers generally put forward ** opinions, and asked China to continue to repay its past debts, and after learning of this, *** angrily said:"The Chinese have already repaid enough, and they will definitely not pay a penny again, and as for the huge arrears, whoever admits it will let them find who to go." ”
It is precisely because of the strong attack of *** that the Chinese people have completely stood up, so far, this rotten debt left over from the previous Qing Dynasty has completely ended, and the Chinese can also straighten their waists and be people.