Li Hong Zhang’s United Kingdom Visit and Policy

Following defeat in the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-5), Li Hong Zhang, an imperial envoy of the first rank, visited Great Britain in August 1896. The visit lasted 20 days, and took him, in addition to London, to Southampton, Portsmouth, Manchester, Flintshire (Wales), Barrow-in-Furness (Cumbria), Glasgow, Rothbury (Northumberland) and Newcastle upon Tyne, among other places. While in the UK,

281 This part was cited from Dr. Hong Meng‟ study, Chinese in Germany at the end of the Qing-Dynasty, J. of the GCPD, Vol. 7, No. 1, October 2003. For PDF version of his study please refer to: http://www.gcpd.de/publication/wuli03/meng.pdf

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he was received by Queen Victoria at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, and also met with a number of important people, including the Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Robert Cecil), the former Prime Minister William Gladstone, and the renowned scientist, Lord Kelvin (William Thomson).

The visit of Viceroy Li Hong Zhang‟s visit was extensively recorded in the British press and official archives, and was the main object of my research indifferent libraries during the period of Mellon Foundation fellowship at the NRI in 2006-2007.

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One of the most interesting reports concerns Li‟s toast at a reception that the Great Eastern Extension (telegraph and cable) Co. gave in his honor at its headquarters in Greenwich:

“We Chinese people live in a world of evolution, in which the two principles, the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest, will always hold good. Telegraphy and railways are the fittest means of communication… I have always the amalgamation and combination of European skill with the unlimited natural resources we have in China and the prosperity of the Chinese telegraph administration shows the effect of the combination… a combination of European scientific knowledge with Chinese

282 The Needham Research Institute, is the home of the Science and Civilization in China Project, and houses the East Asian History of Science Library. As a recognized global centre of study, the NRI offers a unique collection of books and other published materials on the history of science, technology and medicine in East Asia, and welcomes scholars from all over the world. Please see:

http://www.nri.org.uk

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natural resources not only for the benefit of England and China, but for the benefit of humankind in this world”.²⁸³

Through this visit, Li Hong Zhang undoubtedly gained a more profound knowledge of the general state of the world and of the weak, impoverished condition China was in. However, his notion of achieving “Benefit of humankind in this world”

through the “Combination of European scientific knowledge with Chinese natural resources” was only a daydream in an era when Social Darwinism prevailed.²⁸⁴

Li Hong Zhang‟s era saw the worse Imperialism attacks of foreigners in China and Asia region. The Western strong powers have made plans to share Asia and its rich recourses. In this reason, they were looking for new plans throughout the continent. Building railways would make the transportation easier, so foreign powers could easily send equipments in the region when needed.²⁸⁵

In this part, the author of this study wants to dig out many key details about the Asia and Chinese territory. Here the author‟s will is making the Imperialism steps clearer for reader. Understanding the background of railway building will open a vast road for the next coming future of China. 19th century railways will be the key locations in 20th century. This part includes the background, Li Hong Zhang‟s era and later periods of railway constructions.

During the last years of the 19th century, the railway was the chosen as tool by European big empires of the West. The golden rule was: Build the railway and get the

283 The Times, Aug 15, 1896.

284 Prof. Lin Dun, Chinese Premier in Queen Victoria’s Land, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge:

Newsletter, New Series, No. 4, December 2007, p. 3

285 A study of railways in China, please see: Han, Lee-En, China’s Quest for Railway Autonomy:

1904–1911, Singapore University Press, Singapore, 1977.

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resources out. Using the advantages of railways, Europeans started to build railways all around the Asia. It was at this time that the European empires acquired their final boundaries, and the role of railways in that process was critical. Thus, on China‟s northern frontier Russian Finance Minister Sergius Witte both consolidated the Russian Far Eastern Empire and laid the abortive foundations of another in Manchuria with the building of the Tran Siberian and Chinese Eastern railways.²⁸⁶

At the same time, on China‟s southern frontier both British and French adventurers staked out imperial claims with railway proposals. The earliest proposal dated from 1866 and envisaged the connection of the British Burmese port of Moulmein with Simao in Yunnan through Chiang Mai. At that time the concept of a frontier scarcely existed on the upper Salween or Mekong, but clearly this would anticipate British domination of both northern Siam and part of Yunnan.

By the beginning of early 1880s two energetic British imperial publicists, Holt Hallett and Archibald Colquhoun, were identified with the scheme which became known as “The overland to China.” The prospect of penetrating and exploiting the putative wealth of southwestern China from Britain‟s Indian empire and only a railway could make it possible.²⁸⁷

286 In this part the author has used the study of Robert Lee‟s: Tools of Empire or Means of National Salvation? The Railway in the Imagination of Western Empire Builders and their Enemies in Asia, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, for internet version please visit:

http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/papers/robert1.htm#1.

287 Four books discussing Burma-Yunnan railway schemes are David F. Holm, The Role of the State Railways in Thai History, 1892-1932, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1977, pp. 34-8;

Robert Lee, France and the Exploitation of China: A Study in Economic Imperialism, Hong Kong:

Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 182, 248-51; and Chandran Jeshuran, The Burma-Yunnan Railway:

Anglo French Rivalry in Mainland Southeast Asia and South China, Greece: Athens, Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1971.

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The political chaos and terrible topography of the region, which made for grand adventures and fine scenery but very expensive railways, scarcely discouraged late Victorian enthusiasts from such schemes.

Even more quixotic was the first French plan to build a railway in the area.

This came from the feverish imagination of Frédéric Haas, one of France‟s most enthusiastic and long serving but least prudent consuls in China and Southeast Asia.

In 1885 he represented the Republic in Mandalay during the last months of Burmese independence. He sought to win the Ava monarchy over to alliance with France, and offered as a sweetener the construction of a railway from Haiphong to Mandalay. The line would pass through the same inhospitable country as the Hallett-Colquhoun scheme, with even less economic purpose. The government in Paris quickly disavowed Haas proposed treaty and railway, and his career thereafter did not prosper.²⁸⁸

It was a real railway, the line from Rangoon to Toungoo which had opened early in 1885, which helped determine the fate of Burma much more than any imaginary ones. British troops invading the kingdom were able to begin their journey by train. A quarter of a century later a French railway did actually penetrate Yunnan from Haiphong, but a British line from Burma, either through northern Siam at the Shan states of Burma (British territory after 1885) was never built. Strangely enough it was Curzon, a figure normally associated with imperial overreach, who recognized

288 On Haas‟ career see Lee, F France and the Exploitation of China: A Study in Economic Imperialism, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 19, 175-6. Haas appears as the fictional Maas in Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse, The Lacquer Lady, New York, Dial, 1981 (first published 1929), a novel set in the last days of independent Burma and largely based on interviews with survivors of the events, or what would later be called oral history. The details of Haas' activities are in France, Ministère des Affaires Exrangères, Archives, Correspondance politique des Consuls, Angleterre, vols 59-60, Rangoon.

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the limits of railways as a tool of empire. In 1901 he derided dreams of linking India and China by rail as phantasms, engineering and financial impossibilities: “Were a bonfire made tomorrow,” he declaimed, in Rangoon of all places, of the prolific literature to which it (the Burma-China railway) has given birth; I do not think anyone in the world would be the loser.²⁸⁹ At a time when imperialist expectations of railway construction were very high, Curzon‟s bleak realism was a rare commodity indeed.

On the whole, both ambitious railway schemes and more solid railway building in Asia were the products of Western imperialists. However, three traditional Asian states, Japan, China and Siam, retained some degree of sovereignty during the late nineteenth century including some control over railway policy. The development of railways in the two continental states, Siam and China, was influenced both by competing world views within the traditional elites and by Western imperial aspirations for which the term “Informal” seems a little too modest. They are stories rich in drama and irony in which ignorance and idealism, greed and arrogance are constantly at play.²⁹⁰

Although the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-1894) saw Chinese provincial authorities implement significant programs of economic and military modernization, railways were not adopted in any significant way at this time. This was not due to any lack of awareness of the importance of railways on the part of the self-strengtheners in the Chinese elite. As early as 1867, for example, Shen Bao Zhen,

289 This part was quoted in Lee, France and the Exploitation of China: A Study in Economic Imperialism, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 251.

290 The following accounts of Chinese and Thai railway policy are largely based on R.W. Hueneman, The Dragon and the Iron Horse, the Economics of Railroads in China, 1876-1937, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1984; Percy H.B. Kent, Railway Enterprise in China, London, Edward Arnold, 1907; Lee En-han, The Chinese Railway Rights Recovery Movement; Lee, France and the Exploitation of China; and Holm, The Role of the State Railways in Thai History.

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son-in-law of the celebrated opponent of opium and Confucian moralist Lin Ze Xu had raised the matter. His view, typically Confucian, looked to the long term:

“What shall we do about telegraphs and railroads? The Qin dynasty built the Great Wall, and at the time it was considered a calamity, but later generations relied on it. If telegraphs and railroads are built, China will likewise enjoy great benefits from them in the future.... However, although the foreigners plead with the Court to conclude a formal treaty permitting them to begin this work, this absolutely must not be done.”²⁹¹

After a decade later Shen Bao Zhen had the opportunity to be true to his word, when, as governor-general in Nanjing, he bought and then ordered the demolition of China's first railway. This line, was going from Shanghai to Wusong, it was only 16 kilometers long and built to light and cheap engineering standards. It had been funded by British merchants and was totally unauthorized when opened in July 1877. The official Shen sent to do the job was, ironically enough, the young Sheng Xuan Huai (盛宣懷), a future director of the Chinese Imperial Railways Administration. Sheng performed his destructive task with the same efficiency and commercial aptitude which were to bring him later both so much wealth and so brilliant an official career, but also, he later claimed, with a heavy heart.²⁹²

291 Quoted from Hueneman, The Dragon and the Iron Horse. p. 1

292 Albert Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsüan-Huai and Mandarin Enterprise, New York, Atheneum, 1970, p. 62.

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Why did the Self-Strengtheners build steamships, arsenals and telegraphs, adopt Western military technology and employ Western experts with such enthusiasm, but not embrace railway construction, even within their own satrapies?

The author Robert Lee thinks that, it is partly in their awareness that the railway was far more universal and pervasive than the technology and practices they did adopt. Unlike them, the railway would penetrate down to village level and directly affect, for good or ill and with consequences that could only be guessed, the lives of many millions of Chinese. The railway could have a negative impact on both Chinese cultural values, through the destruction of graves and villages, and on employment in traditional transport industries such as porterage and inland shipping. Having just suppressed the Taiping Rebellion, using conservative ideological weapons, if rather innovative financing and firepower, the Self-Strengtheners had good cause to fear the effects of such changes on the people. The thought of Robert Lee gives clear opinion about Chinese people.

Here besides the Robert Lee‟s opinion the author wants to add some of his opinions about the Chinese peoples‟ thought. As the author already wrote that the Chinese people have effected deeply by the Confucian ideology and here we can see that the thousand year old thoughts build a barrier in front of the people. Chinese people were still thinking about the spiritual side of the railway building. But at the same time Westerners were moving deeper areas in the Chinese mainland.²⁹³

Moreover the railway was beyond their control in other ways as well. The Self-Strengtheners were content to employ foreign experts in high positions, but the railway is a vastly decentralized operation, involving the employment of large

293 Please see: Robert Lee‟s: Tools of Empire or Means of National Salvation? The Railway in the Imagination of Western Empire Builders and Their Enemies in Asia, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/papers/robert1.htm#1

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numbers of people in responsible positions in remote locations. Stationmasters, engine drivers, and engineers maintaining track and rolling stock could constitute a class the like of which had never been seen in China before. Far more than officers in a semi-Westernized army, its members would need to have foreign education if the railway were to work effectively. Its business and technical operations would have to be thoroughly Western, not semi-Western like most the Self-Strengthening projects, if the railway were to operate safely and return the profits needed to cover the cost of construction. And that was another problem. Railways were enormously expensive.

The Self-Strengtheners avoided dependence on foreign loans with great success right up to 1895. However, because China did not have any modern commercial legislation until after the Boxer Rebellion it would be almost impossible to mobilize the large sums of capital required from wealthy Chinese merchants or gentry. There was simply no guarantee they would ever see their money again. Zhang Zhi Dong‟s (attempt to build the Beijing-Hankou line after 1889 using Chinese capital failed for this reason.

There were, then, four reasons why the Self-Strengtheners were hesitant about building railways. First, the railway could offend Chinese cultural values. Second, it could create unemployment among workers in traditional transport industries. Third, it would involve large numbers of Europeans or Westernized Chinese working permanently over a large area. Finally, railways would almost certainly require foreign loans.²⁹⁴

Despite those compelling factors, the Self-Strengtheners did take the first steps to create China‟s railway system. Typically it was Li Hong Zhang who took the first initiative. Moreover he did so with the astonishingly successful dissimulation that was

294 Please see: Robert Lee‟s: Tools of Empire or Means of National Salvation? The railway in the imagination of western empire builders and their enemies in Asia, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/papers/robert1.htm#1.

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the wily Viceroy‟s hallmark. One of Li‟s modern enterprises was the Kaiping Coal Mines at Tangshan, and in 1880 he had its English engineer, C.W. Kinder, build a ten-kilometer mule-drawn tram line from the mine to navigable water. Kinder built the line to the European standard gauge of 1435mm (4ft 8½ in) and to ludicrously high engineering standards for its putative purpose. What he had built, in fact, was the first stage of the Beijing to Shenyang line, and after a few months steam traction made its debut.²⁹⁵

The defeat by France in 1885 tipped sentiment at Court in Beijing in favor of further modernization, and railway construction found a champion in the form of the new Admiralty Board. This Board was intimately tied to Li, and was responsible for the Port Arthur naval base and the creation of the superficially impressive Beiyang fleet over the next decade. It soon authorized extensions to the railway essentially for military reasons. With no need for further dissembling; by 1894 it reached south to Tianjin and north to just beyond the Great Wall at Shanhaiguan. Its aim was to assist in the defense of Manchuria. The railway proved no more effective in this role than any other of Li Hong Zhang‟s tools such as the Beiyang fleet or the Port Arthur base when war with Japan did break out in 1894.

Li Hong Zhang was not the only provincial governor who saw railways as an essential part of Self-Strengthening Movement. Liu Ming Chuan actually managed to build a short line on Taiwan. More significantly, in 1889 Zhang Zhi Dong, newly installed as Viceroy at Wuchang, successfully memorialized the Court urging construction of China's first great main line from Hankou on the Yangzi to Beijing.

295 Please see: Robert Lee‟s: Tools of Empire or Means of National Salvation? The railway in the imagination of western empire builders and their enemies in Asia, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/irs/irshome/papers/robert1.htm#1.

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He proposed to use Chinese capital and even Chinese materials as much as possible.

To this second end he established the massive Hanyang Iron Works in 1890. Together with its associated mines, this formed the beginnings of modern industrialization in central China. Despite initial promises of financial support from Beijing, support lost partly because the Shanhaiguan line had greater immediate military significance and partly because his rival Li had more influence at Court, Zhang was unable to since the necessary capital from either official or private sources. The railway project, but not the ironworks, remained dormant until after the defeat by Japan, when the Court, shocked by the war, authorised construction.²⁹⁶

Shortly after Zhang sold both to Sheng Xuan Huai, desperate for a career change after the collapse of his patron, Li Hong Zhang‟s military and industrial complex in north China. Sheng, the man who had arranged the destruction of the Wusong railway, was initially determined to continue Zhang‟s policy of using Chinese capital and material, even if that delayed the railways‟ completion. Western observers, now much more powerful than before 1895, naturally wanted some of these profits, and deprecated reliance on “That gigantic white elephant, the Hanyang Ironworks”, as one English writer described China‟s most serious attempt at

Shortly after Zhang sold both to Sheng Xuan Huai, desperate for a career change after the collapse of his patron, Li Hong Zhang‟s military and industrial complex in north China. Sheng, the man who had arranged the destruction of the Wusong railway, was initially determined to continue Zhang‟s policy of using Chinese capital and material, even if that delayed the railways‟ completion. Western observers, now much more powerful than before 1895, naturally wanted some of these profits, and deprecated reliance on “That gigantic white elephant, the Hanyang Ironworks”, as one English writer described China‟s most serious attempt at