Analysis On Longhai Railway In The End Of Qing Dynasty(1899--1911)

There is a distinctive feature for the Longhai Railway during its constructing process in the end of Qing Dynasty, which is splice. At that time there’s no integral plan for the construction and each part of the rail was building while planning. Therefore, these parts of railways were end to end which had finally became the prototype of the main line—the Longhai Railway. As there’s no integral plan, each part of the rail had chosen motivation by thinking of their own interests, which had reflected different kinds of railway demands.After 1905, there was a road-building rush in the end of Qing Dynastic. The Bianluo Railway, the start of the Longhai Railway was proposed by Sheng Xuanhuai with his Luhan By-pass Plan. Taking the same handling method with Lunhan Rail, the Bianluo Railway also chose to get enough construction funding by borrowing money. The construction process was smooth except making some sacrifices for the right of way. Began in the spring of 1904 and completed in the end of 1909, the Bianluo Railway was the only one line that had finally completed and been open to traffic among all the lines under-construction in the end of Qing Dynastic.After 1905, many people suggested to build business railways because they thought that to build railways by borrowing money was not a good choice. The Luotong Railway in Henan Province and the Xitong Railway in Shanxi Province are all built at that time. There were two external factors for Henan Province to plan and build Luotong Railway: the first was the pressure from Belgium. At that time Belgium had coveted the Luotong Railway for a long time, once Henan Province gave up, Belgium would grasp this chance immediately; the other was the pressure from Shanxi Province. Shanxi Province wanted to plan and build the Xitong Railway very much so Shanxi Government had tried its best to persuade Henan Province to build the Luotong Railway. It seemed that the business railways had been gone on wheels, however, there were a great number of difficulties in fact. The biggest problem was that they couldn’t get enough money for the construction. Seeing from the plan and build processes of the two railways in the late period of Qing Dynasty we can find that the profits of the railways themselves are not the most important part to be considered, instead, the local interests and area interests need to be considered a lot. If the preparation of Luotong Railway can meet the interests of Henan Province, the preparation of Xitong Railway must meet the interests of both Shaanxi Province and Henan Province, or the interests of Shaanxi Provnce cannot be achieved.Besides, the Kaixu Railway, the Haiqing Railway and the Qingxv Railway were also planned for the construction of Longhai Railway. All these three railways were on the east side of Kaifeng City. Started from Kaifeng City and ended in Xvzhou City, Kaixv Railway was suggested to plan and build by Henan Province. But it was finally put aside because the government chose to build Luotong Railway first. As for the Haiqing Railway, it finally became the to-do railway because it had drawn less attention than Guaqing Railway. The Qingxv Railway was planned and built by Jiangsu Railway Company and it was also a business railway. Taking the Qingxv Railway as the main line of northern part of Jiangsu Province, Jiangsu Railway Company had proposed several plans, such as to link Qingxv Railway with Haizhou, to extend Qingxv Railway to Guazhou or to extend Qingxv railway to Tongzhou.As the sea gate problem of the East-to-west Line should be considered during the preparations of both Kaixv Railway and Haiqing Railway, Jiangsu Railway Company cannot make all the decisions all by itself. Therefore, it is the historical necessity for the government to prepare and build the two railways on the needs of the national interests.Not all the parts of the Longhai Railway are completed and opened, there’s even no name for the Longhai Railway. However, the effort to build and combine the West-to-east Line has been reflected during the plan, prepare and build process, especially for the nationalizations of all the lines. Finally the Xitong Railway was nationalized under the policy of “Stated-owned Railway” provided by Qing Dynastic while the Luotong Railway was failed nationalized in Qing Dynastic until 1915 because of its wide impacts. However, Kaixv Railway and HAiqing Railway had been nationalized because Hebei Province and Jiangsu Province didn’t submit the plan to the Qing government. The deadline of the Qingxv Railway was 4 years, and it had been nationalized because it hadn’t been finished in 4 years. Except for the Luotong Railway, almost all the lines of the Longhai Railway had been nationalized in the end of 1911, which had laid a solid foundation for the plan to build the East-to-west Line from the sea to the Qinlong place.In September 1912, the Finance Chief Zhou Xuexi, the Traffic Chief Zhu Qijin had signed the Qinlong-Yuhai Railway Loan Agreement with the representative of Belgium, Tao Pusi, which marked that the construction of Longhai Railway had entered a new stage.The choices of the motivations have become the most important perspective for studying the preparation and construction history of Longhai Railway. Different motivations may cause different choices for the preparation and build systems, construction fund sources and railway plans, which have reflected the historical complexity of the construction of the long-distance railway in modern China.