Yuan Dahua's suggestion on road construction

On the way from Shandong to Xinjiang, Yuan Dahua met with Chang Geng, governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, and Enshou, governor of Shaanxi, to discuss border affairs. They all have patriotic aspirations to resist foreign aggression; It seems that everyone is a little ignorant about the grim domestic situation. At that time, some people of insight, starting from resisting the aggression of Russia, a strong neighbor in the north, advocated the construction of a railway to Xinjiang several times, which seemed to be a fashion. As a new government official, Yuan Dahua is duty-bound to guard this land. 19 1 1 in the summer of, he wrote a memorial, pleading with the imperial court to borrow foreign money to build the east-west railway, so as to protect the western regions and consolidate the overall situation, and stressed that this was the opinion after consulting with the two governors Chang Geng and Enshou, so as to enhance the weight of this memorial. Yuan Dahua said in the throne: Britain built mountains and roads in India and coveted Tibet; Russia surveyed the railway line from omsk to Tashkent, which is almost the same as the Sino-Russian border, just for the purpose of playing Xinjiang. Xinjiang is poor in Wan Li, where nothing grows and traffic is inconvenient. Once you have the border police, where should you start? He believes that foreigners' territorial expansion is guided by railways. In order to keep its territory and turn it from weak to strong, China should first build railways in Shaanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang provinces. With this railway, immigrants and fund-raising for training can be manipulated freely. The difficulty is that the line is too long and the cost is too high. It is best to take the funds of the "New Deal" as relief, or borrow money from the United States with the railway proceeds as collateral. He pointed out that if the railway is not repaired for a long time, foreign countries will inevitably compete for the right to build roads, and things will be difficult. Judging from Yuan Dahua's performance, the three governors in northwest China have a clear understanding of the world situation and the surrounding environment in Xinjiang. However, corrupt politics, tight financial resources, and harsh conditions of borrowing foreign debts, committing and humiliating the country, and humiliating the country seem to have given little consideration to the three governors; Plus, because I don't understand technology, I am too blind, which is purely an armchair strategist. It is inevitable that the discussion of road construction will eventually become empty talk. When Yuan Dahua proposed a memorial hall for road construction in the remote western Xinjiang, a "railway storm" broke out in the mainland. In the name of state-owned railways, the Qing government forcibly recovered the road rights of Sichuan-Han and Guangdong-Han railways that had been allowed to be privately owned, and then transferred them to banking groups in Britain, France, Germany and the United States. This traitorous behavior aroused the opposition of local gentry and people, and quickly developed into a movement to protect railways. The repression of the Qing government even aroused large-scale resistance and armed uprising. For such a severe domestic situation, the three princes seemed to know nothing, perhaps they thought that the Qing Dynasty was impregnable!