How much does it cost to add up these railways?

The Tangxu Railway, which was originally in time and space, was eleven kilometers long and cost 110,000 taels of silver, just 10,000 taels per kilometer.

The Beijing-Shanghai line is 1,463 kilometers, the Jinghan line is 1,214 kilometers, the Jingfeng line is 842 kilometers, and the Shitai line is 242 kilometers, adding up to 3,761 kilometers. Among them, the Beijing-Shanghai line and the Beijing-Feng line from Beijing to Tianjin overlap, this section is about 160 kilometers, so calculated, "two vertical and two horizontal" together, a total length of 3,600 kilometers.

That is to say, to build these four railways, if according to the standards of the Tangxu Railway, it will cost at least 36 million taels of silver.

Of course, the Tangxu railway line is relatively short, and the geological conditions along the way are simple; The "two vertical and two horizontal" are 1,000 kilometers long and more than 200 kilometers short, and the geological conditions along the way are much more complex than those of the Tangxu Railway, and the cost of road construction is correspondingly much higher. If you want to cross the river to build a bridge, the unit cost will double even more.

For example, the Jinghan Railway in the original time and space has 127 bridges on the whole line, and the total investment of the project, including official appropriations and loans, is as high as 43.49 million taels of silver, with an average of 35,800 taels of silver per kilometer.

But Kwan Cheuk-fan thinks this figure is not enough. At the beginning of the Jinghan Railway, the imperial court originally wanted to "supervise the business of the government", but the reputation of the Qing government at that time was already very poor, and the Chinese businessmen had a wait-and-see attitude, and the road of "official supervision and business management" did not go through. The lack of government funds and the intermittent construction are the lowest cost-effective construction methods.

Later, I finally borrowed money from the Belgians, but the project was controlled by Belgium, and the Jinghan Railway became a big fish. Taken by the Belgians. Costs are skyrocketing.

In addition, the "official office" in the late Qing Dynasty was ubiquitous with waste, corruption, and inefficiency. In the end, there was an astonishing cost of 35,800 taels of silver per kilometer of the Jinghan Railway.

Looking back at the Tangxu Railway, this railway was built by the Kaiping Mining Bureau, and the Kaiping Mining Bureau is a commercial stock, and the shareholders are staring at it, and the cost is much more reasonable. And this has already included such a factor: the Tangxu railway line is shorter, and the unit cost should be higher.

Therefore, Guan Zhuofan thinks. If he presides over it, the unit cost of the Jinghan Line may be higher than that of the Tangxu Railway, but it will definitely not reach three or four times the level.

He estimated that the total cost of "two vertical and two horizontal" with top-level planning and scale effect is roughly between 50 million and 60 million taels of silver.

This is of course a huge number, but it is not an "astronomical number", at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the annual income of the imperial court was 70 million to 80 million taels. What's more, this money is only the "total cost". It's not meant to be taken out all at once.

However, there are too many places to use the money, and if it is all allocated by the government, even if it is divided into ten years, the imperial court will have to spend at least five million taels for the railway every year, which is still an extremely heavy burden.

The usual practice, in addition to official allocation, is nothing more than two ways, first, "official supervision and business management", investment and stock raising; Second, loans.

However, Guan Zhuofan grew up in the time and space he traveled through, and he had a deep-rooted obsession with "state-owned railways" and instinctively distrusted private railways. What's more, in this time and space, "state-owned railways" is roughly equal to "railways are closed", which is of great help to Guan Zhuofan's control of the railways, and then to control the radiation areas of the railways.

This situation is the same as Guan Zhuofan's use of the Shanghai Telegraph Bureau to control the national telegraph, and then strengthen the influence of the telegraph line in the areas through which the telegraph line flows.

Therefore, China's railways can still be mainly "state-owned", and "official supervision and commercial management" can only be used as a supplement, not as a regular operation.

And for loans, the biggest problem is that there must be a mortgage.

For example, Guan Zhuofan borrowed foreign money for Zuo Zongtang to pay for military expenses, and the imperial court actually used the income of local customs as collateral. Originally, it was inevitable to transfer sovereignty, but fortunately, it was Guan Zhuofan himself who lent the loan, and the fertilizer did not flow into the fields of outsiders, so he was at ease.

Railway loans can no longer be re-mortgaged with customs revenues. Historically, it has been the practice to use the railway's own interests as collateral, i.e., the railway is managed by the lender during the repayment period.

Because the Jinghan Railway was borrowed from the Belgians, the contract stipulated that within 30 years of the loan period, all the management rights of the train would be in the hands of the Belgian company.

This is the "betrayal of the right of way" criticized by contemporaries and later generations.

Guan Zhuofan didn't think that the government at that time did anything wrong, because there was no other source of funds except loans, and loans, of course, had to be mortgaged, except for the "right of way", what else could be mortgaged to others?

The premise of "giving the right of way" is that "there is a road" to give up, and it is better than "no road" at all.

Of course, the disadvantages of this practice are indeed huge. The loss of direct economic gains during the term of the loan is secondary, and the key is the power of the lender, which naturally penetrates deep into the railway line. Belgium is a small country, far away, and has no ambitions for China, and if it changes to a certain big country, or wolf neighbors such as Tsarist Russia and Japan, it will be harmful.

Kwan Cheuk-fan can repeat his old tricks and take out a loan from Citibank. However, first, the amount of loans of this nature is too large for a single bank to bear, and it is necessary to form a syndicate, and Citi's weight will naturally be diluted; Second, the government must endorse it, and the collateral must still be the right of way, and Guan Zhuofan himself cannot come forward, and the actual management of the railway will still fall into the hands of the Americans in the future.

This is unacceptable. Managers can hire Americans, but the boss must be myself, and the dove occupying the magpie's nest cannot happen here.

So, in addition to government supervision and business offices and loans, are there any other ways to raise funds?

Yes, it is the second major event that the monarchs and ministers have discussed in the past few days: the issuance of treasury bonds.

Banks, stocks, and treasury bonds are the necessary financial preparations for an agricultural society to enter an industrial society, and they are the "nirvana" for concentrating social surplus resources into industrialization. Needless to say, banks are the financial foundation of society; As for stocks and treasury bonds, Guan Zhuofan's idea of centralizing power and planning the economy is more important than stocks.

In the course of his play, Guan Zhuofan tried his best to exaggerate the power of national bonds, saying that the issuance of national bonds is "an endless stream of military supplies", "strong ships and cannons, make the best of them", "Britain looks down on the world, and the United States has to quickly sweep away the adverse atmosphere", and so on.

It really "looks beautiful": the interest rate is lower than that of the bank, it does not require any collateral, and it can raise tens of millions of taels of funds in each installment, which is basically not much like pie in the sky.

Guan Zhuofan said: "The Queen Mother of the Two Palaces, speaking of mortgages, this treasury bond can also be said to be mortgaged, but the mortgage is not a tangible thing, but the credit of the country. The common people believed in the imperial court, and naturally they would buy national bonds; If the credit of the imperial court is not so confident, the sale of treasury bonds will inevitably be difficult. ”

The two palaces and the military plane can't help but muttering in their hearts: Do we have this "credit"?

Guan Zhuofan knew what they were thinking, and continued: "The national debt is a thing, freshly baked, and the Chinese people naturally have to have a familiar process with it, as the saying goes, 'you can't become fat by eating in one bite', when it is first released, there will be some blockages, this is a very common thing, and the queen mother of the two palaces is worried." ”

After a pause, Guan Zhuofan said: "The minister's thoughts, this treasury bond, take out 30%, and sell it in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other places where the trend is first; The remaining seventy percent are sold in the United States, and foreigners are asked to pay for us to build the railway! ”

The listeners' eyes lit up, and Cixi asked, "Are foreigners willing to buy it?" ”

Guan Zhuofan said: "Go back to the Queen Mother, I will definitely be willing." It is common for foreigners' national bonds to be sold to the United States by Britain, and to be sold to Britain by the United States. Moreover, in the eyes of foreigners, in a country as big as China, we open factories, build railways, run foreign affairs, innovate everything, forge ahead, and don't know how rich and strong it will be in the future, and how much it can grow? When foreigners buy treasury bonds, they pay the most attention to this kind of 'thinking' in the future, and whether they make money at the moment is not the most important. ”

This remark was extremely beautiful, and the Queen Mother of the Two Palaces and the Minister of Military Aircraft couldn't help but smile.

Kwan was not fooling the audience.

*(To be continued......)