A Brief Analysis About The Railway Legislation Of The Late Qing Dynasty

The railway legislation came out with the railway construction in the late Qing Dynasty. The legislators at that time made a lots of laws concentrated in aspects of foreign loans, construction and management of railway, railway transportation and requisition of lands to protect the right of road and promote development of the national capital, and then amended them in practice.The Introduction introduces the historical background of emergence of railway legislation in the late Qing Dynasty and the discussion before it in the cabinet. From the Introduction we can see the hard course of emergence of the railway legislation. In the first section, we point out the following four:(I) The appearance and development of railway career in China stimulated the amendment of railway legislation objectively; (II) In the whole legislative background of late Qing, the railway legislation was also brought into the agenda, began its legislative process; (III) The international treaties effected the Qing’s railway legislation to some extent; (IV) The guiding ideology of railway legislations was identical with the one of overall legislations’amendment, that is "having effects both in China and Foreign Nation, do good for governing".The second section of this article discusses the main content of the Qing’s railway legislations. The content covers the constructions of railway, the gauge of rails, the lands for railway, the railway management, the railway transportation and the part concerning foreign affairs of railway, etc.The third section of this article discusses the amendment of legislations of Qing’s railway. Here, we talk about the reasons and concrete content of amendment.The forth section of this article discusses qualities of Qing’s railway legislations.The fifth section concerns about the evaluation of the late Qing’s legislations.This article is based on historical documents and data, look through the relevant historical materials to unveil the true facts of the late Qing’s railway legislations. There were both success and failures in the railway legislative activities. Its successfully constrained the western powers to plunder the rights of railway build and protected the development of national railway career by a series of encouraging and protecting measures. Its failure was that to encourage the merchants running railway impractically. By reason of the insufficiently development of national capitalism economy and the destruction of both national feudalism economy and foreign capital the national capitalism are incapable of undertaking the mission of national railway construction.