The Railway Protection Movement (simplified Chinese: 保路运动; traditional Chinese: 保路運動), also known as the "Railway Rights Protection Movement", was a political protest movement that erupted in 1911 in late Qing China against the Qing government's plan to nationalize local railway development projects and transfer control to foreign banks. The movement, centered in Sichuan province, expressed mass discontent with Qing rule, galvanized anti-Qing groups and contributed to the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution. The mobilization of imperial troops from neighboring Hubei Province to suppress the Railway Protection Movement created the opportunity for revolutionaries in Wuhan to launch the Wuchang Uprising, which triggered the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China.
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In 1905 citizens were locally managing the Canton - Hankou Railway and the Sichuan-Hankou railway (川漢鐵路) by themselves in Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan.[1][2] The railways were supposed to link up with the rest of China.
In May 1911 the Qing government officials announced that they would nationalize those two railway lines that were previously paid for by local private investors.[1] In general the Qing were under a lot of pressure having to pay back huge debts for the Boxer protocol.[3] So an announcement was made to seize the privately funded railways to payback debts to the foreigners mainly Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States.[1][4][5]
Sichuan Province established the Sichuan-Hankou Railway Company the same year.[6] To raise funds for the 1,238 km railway from Chengdu to Wuhan, the company sold shares to the public and the provincial government levied a special 3% tax on harvests paid by land owners, who were also given share certificates.[7] In one way or another, much of the Sichuan gentry and merchant class became shareholders of the railway venture.[8]
By 1911, the company had raised 11,983,305 taels of silver of which 9,288,428 million or 77.5% came from tax levies, 2,458,147 taels from public investments and 236,730 taels from government.[9] The company was beset by corruption and mismanagement by government-appointed administrators, and construction efforts made little progress. In 1907, the company management was replaced by a board of trustees consisting of gentry, merchants and retired officials.[10] In 1909, Zhan Tianyou, the Yale-educated builder of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, was hired as chief engineer. But the board remained divided by squabbles over rail route and only about 10 miles of track had been laid by 1911.[10]
Meanwhile, the Qing government, impatient with the progress of locally funded railway projects, returned to foreign lenders. In early May 1911, lenders of the "Four Powers Consortium" including Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) of Britain, Deutsch-Asiatische Bank of Germany, Banque de l'Indochine of France, and J.P. Morgan & Co., Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and First National City Bank of New York (CitiBank) of the United States, agreed with the Qing government to finance the construction of railways in central China.[11] On May 9, Sheng Xuanhuai, Minister of Posts and Communications, ordered the nationalization of all locally-controlled railway projects and on May 20, signed a loan agreement with the Four Powers Consortium pledging the rights to operate the Sichuan-Hankou and Hankou-Guangdong Railways in exchange for a 10 million pound loan, to be repaid by custom duties and salt taxes.[12] The Hankou-Guangdong Railway was locally-backed venture in Hubei, Hunan and Guangdong Province.
The nationalization order drew strong opposition across southern China, especially Sichuan, which had the largest public shareholding in the Sichuan-Hankou Railway venture. Investors were unhappy that they would only be partially compensated with government bonds, rather than silver.[13]
The amount offered to Sichuan was much lower than all other provinces.[1] Pu Dianjiun and other influential members of the Sichuan Provincial Assembly organized the Railway Protection League on June 17, and made public speeches against the plan, which was widely regarded as a seizure economic assets by the Manchu court and conversion to foreign control.[14]
On August 11-13, more than 10,000 protesters held a rally against the proposal in Chengdu and organized a series of strikes and boycotts by students and merchants.[1] On September 1, the Sichuan-Hankou Railway Company adopted a shareholders' resolution calling on the Sichuan public to withhold the payment of grain taxes to the Qing Government. On September 7, the Governor-General of Sichuan, Zhao Erfeng had Pu Dianjun and other leaders arrested and closed the company.[15] Enraged protesters then marched on the Governor-General's office in Chengdu demanding Pu's release.[15] Zhao Erfeng ordered troops to open fire and dozens of protesters were killed.[15] In Chengdu there were 32 deaths.[1]
Bloodshed further inflamed the protests.[16] Underground anti-Qing groups including the Tongmenghui and Gelaohui initiated armed clashes with Qing troops in and around Chengdu. On September 15, Wang Tianjie, head of the Gelaohui in Rong County south of Chengdu organized the Comrades' Army and led 800 followers to march on Chengdu, vowing to topple Zhao Erfeng. As the tensions escalated in Sichuan, the Qing government removed Zhao Erfeng from the governorship and offered full compensation to investors.[17] But armed groups numbering as many as over a hundred thousands were overwhelming government authorities in Sichuan.[18]
The Qing court also ordered the Governor-General of Hubei and Hunan, Duan Fang, to reinforce Sichuan with troops from Hubei. The mobilization of New Army troops from Hubei forced underground revolutionary groups there to expedite their planned uprising. The diversion of New Army troops weakened defenses in Wuhan but also took away some of the army units sympathetic to the revolutionaries.[16] On October 10, 1911, revolutionaries in the New Army units that remained in Wuhan launched the Wuchang Uprising.
After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, uprisings and clashes in Sichuan between loyalists and revolutionaries continued into November. On November 14, Zhao Erfeng released Pu Dianjun from prison and negotiated an agreement to hand over power to a newly established Great Han Military Government of Sichuan.[19] On November 27, with Zhao Erfeng and Pu Dianjun declared Sichuan's independence from the Qing Dynasty.[20] Zhao Erfeng was subsequently accused of fomenting a coup that briefly swept Chengdu in December and executed by the revolutionaries on December 28.[20][19]
The Sichuan-Hankou Railway remained unbuilt for decades due to political turmoil, warfare, shortage of funding and difficult terrain. The Chengdu-Chongqing Railway built in 1955 and the Xiangyang–Chongqing Railway completed in 1979, eventually connected Chengdu and Wuhan, but the journey takes an indirect path through Shaanxi Province. A railway along the original Sichuan-Hankou Railway route has been converted into the Shanghai–Wuhan–Chengdu Passenger Dedicated Line, a high-speed railway project. The last remaining section of this high-speed line between Wuhan and Chengdu, the Wuhan-Yichang Railway, is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2011.
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