CHAPTER V.

RAILWAYS IN CHINA.

As I approached China, the subject of railway construction began to fill the air. On board the steamer by which I travelled to Shanghai were two English railway engineers going to China for survey work. At Shanghai the people were full of railway schemes. At Peking I found an English Member of Parliament waiting there to obtain or complete railway concessions. The managers of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, and of the Russo-Chinese Bank, were both deep in railway concessions. The foreign ministers were being worried, and were worrying the Tsung-li-Yamen, about railways; and, generally speaking, it was impossible to avoid the subject of railway construction.

The subject may be considered from either a political or financial point of view, subject to the unfortunate fact that political and financial objects are inextricably mixed. Great Britain, Russia, France, and Germany are openly mixed in the matter politically. Belgian and American subjects

are in it from a purely financial standpoint. The Government of China is in it, not from the point of view that a strong Government would be in it, not from the point of view of commercial advantage to China, not from a desire to promote the wellbeing and happiness of the Chinese people, but solely as a body that gives reluctant assents to pressing demands, and is suspicious of evil and harm in the whole.

The chief railway that exists in China at present is from the forts of Taku at the entrance to the Pei-ho River, and on to Tientsin and from thence to Peking, with a connection northwards from Taku to Kaiping and Shan-hai-kwan, and a hope of extending that connection to Niu-chwang. That railway, as regards the line to Peking, exists for general traffic, and as regards passenger traffic it is undoubtedly successful. The connection to Kaiping and Shan-kai-wan was suggested originally by the fact that there exist at Kaiping old-established and successful coal-mines, which could use, and do use, the railway for mineral shipment. But the line is also very much used for miscellaneous goods and passenger traffic, and, incidentally, it has enabled the Peking people to create for themselves a charming watering-place at Pei-ta-ho. Another line, of purely local importance, connects the Woosung anchorage with the town of Shanghai.

As regards the railways that are proposed to be

built, we find Russia making frankly political connection from her great Trans-Siberian railway southwards to Port Arthur and Talienwan. I call that frankly political, inasmuch as, while the railway will no doubt be used for both the import and export needs of Siberia, it is admitted that the governing condition of recent events is the natural desire of Russia to have an ice-free port in the China seas, and an always open naval station at the end of her great military railway. In the attainment of that aim it may be assumed that Russia will politically dominate Manchuria, which by a wall of railway she cuts off from China proper.

The interest of Britain is to have the Great Plain and the Yang-tsze Basin, with their teeming populations, opened to general trade, and, for the same reason, to have railway connection between Hong Kong and Canton, and, if possible, into or approaching the districts of Yunnan and Szechuan. For the same reasons Britain desires that the prolongation of the railway northwards from the Taku forts on the Pei-ho River shall be extended to the treaty port of Niu-chwang. For reasons less immediately confined to trade, and more definitely political, many people are keenly eager that Britain shall soon obtain her railway access from Burmah through Yunnan and Szechuan to the Upper Yangtsze. It is thus fair to note that even with the British standpoint reasons of trade and of politics

are unavoidably mixed together. For instance, Britain cannot, and does not, look complacently upon even a strong scheme for a trunk railway that would open up the Great Plain, but would at the same time lead to the probability of the introduction of Russian and French influence there.

The German Government naturally desires to take up any railway scheme that will open up the Province of Shantung. But from a German point of view, not unnaturally, any such scheme must be in German hands. Thus we recently found the Germans opposing a scheme that would have driven a railway through Shantung, the opposition being based upon the fact that the scheme was not under German control. This was the concession that had been granted to Mr. Yung-Wing, an American Chinaman, and had then fallen into British hands. As the result of the German opposition, a compromise has been arrived at by which the concession passes into Anglo-German hands, and may be worked with all due precautions for the maintenance of German influence in the Shantung portion of the line.

France desires to construct certain railways leading inland from French Indo-China into the district of Nanning and towards Yunnan. The admitted intention is to obtain the trade of Yunnan for French Indo-China rather than for Hong Kong or for Burmah. But although the intention is quite clear, and although the colonial newspapers of France

write about these railway schemes in a spirit alternately sanguine and angry, it does not seem that France is eager to find the money. These French schemes may for the moment be dismissed.

Turning to those concessionaires who have no political object in view, the chief of these is the Belgian Syndicate, which proposes to construct a great trunk railway that will proceed southwards from Peking into the heart of the Great Plain and the Yang-tsze Valley. Now, while it must at once be admitted that the Belgian concessionaires individually have no political objects, yet it is round this scheme that political controversy is likely to rage most fiercely. The Belgian concessionaires are financiers pure and simple, but it is argued that the meaning of their contract makes them the mere nominees of the Russo-Chinese Bank. The conditions of the contract are such that it would seem that in any dispute with the Chinese Government the arbitrator for the concessionaires shall be the Belgian Minister at Peking, and the umpire shall be the Russian or the French Minister at Peking. It is but fair to say that the Belgian concessionaires write strongly denying that they intend to be made use of for political purposes. The denial, however, seems to be out of accord with the terms of the concession, which are detailed later in this chapter. Further, from a purely financial point of view, the denial offered by the Belgian concessionaires seems