The policy of the Chinese empire in Central Asia has always wavered, sometimes supporting Russia, sometimes supporting Britain, sometimes supporting Afghanistan, Persia and other Central Asian countries.

This kind of policy is not good-looking, but it is actually a wall-to-wall policy.

Because before the construction of the Northwest Railway, the empire's strength in the region west of Xinjiang was very weak, and Xinjiang and Kokand provinces were barren lands, with few people, and agriculture was not very developed, let alone industrial.

Although in order to support the empire's real border policy, the Imperial Asset Management Office also invested a lot of money to build arsenals in Shaanxi, Gansu and even Yili, Xinjiang, to supplement the consumption of local troops nearby, but even so, the scale of these arsenals is generally small, and the local raw materials are difficult to meet the self-sufficiency of these factories, and many raw materials still need to be transported from the developed industrial provinces in the east.

This has led to many problems such as high costs.

To exaggerate it, every bullet and shell used by the Imperial Army stationed in Kokand and Xinjiang provinces had to be transported from the Central Plains, where important personnel were located, and the transportation distance reached thousands of kilometers.

The long distance and inconvenient transportation have caused the empire to be unable to maintain a large number of troops in Central Asia for 20 years, because ammunition and other materials cannot be supplied, even if hundreds of thousands of troops are sent, it will be useless.

The only way to change this is to wait for the Northwest Railroad to open!

It's just that the more the Northwest Railway is repaired to the west, the more difficult it is, and the operating profit of the railway is getting lower and lower, that is to say, the railway company builds the Northwest Railway, the investment is large, the time required is long, and the time to recover the cost is very long, and even the operation will be at a loss.

Although the Imperial Railways is said to be a wholly-owned company of the Royal Asset Management Office, and both have the only railway franchise license in the Empire, they have a de facto monopoly on the Empire's railway-related affairs.

The choice of the railway route and the construction of the railway first will largely take into account political and national defense needs, but the Imperial Railway Company is a regular commercial company after all, and even if political issues are taken into account because of the background of the imperial capital, some railways will even be built at a loss.

However, the construction of railways by the Imperial Railways also requires costs, and it is impossible for the Empire to allocate tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of funds directly from the treasury to the Imperial Railways.

Over the years, in order to meet the needs of the empire's transportation strategy, the Imperial Railways has squeezed out every penny of its own funds, issued railway bonds, borrowed from banks, etc., raised an unimaginable amount of funds from ordinary commercial companies, and then overhauled the railways throughout the country.

In this way, the Imperial Railway Company has amassed a huge amount of capital, and its cash and fixed funds, that is, railway-related assets, have reached 180 million yen.

Its assets even exceed those of the Royal Bank, and the Imperial Railways is the most valuable and employing enterprise in the Empire's modern era.

However, the debt figures of the Imperial Railways reached a level unimaginable for ordinary people.

In 1880, the Imperial Railroad Company had a debt of 160 million won, which was equivalent to the annual military expenditure of the Empire, a figure sufficient to buy thousands of medium-sized enterprises.

After the implementation of the gold standard, one gold yuan in the empire could be exchanged for 1.5887 grams of pure gold, and the exchange rate with the pound was fixed at 4.609, and the annual income of ordinary workers in the contemporary empire was about 100 to 300 yuan, 160 million yuan, and the annual income of more than 1 million people.

If it is a farmer with a lower income, then tens of millions of farmers will not be able to save so much money in a year.

Of course, calculating the market value of a company is not a simple calculation of fixed assets and cash, and there are many relatively virtual assets, such as a section of railway, fixed assets are those land and railroad tracks may only be worth one million yuan, but because the railway can continuously generate profits, so if you want to sell this section of the railway, Then the actual price of this railway will be much more than 10 million yuan.

Because a railway with good income is a hen that constantly lays golden eggs, which can bring huge benefits every year, such as the Jiangnan Railway, the busiest railway in the empire, its profits are very high, since the operation of the railway, the first less than eight years is to recover all the costs, and the back operating profit is the net profit.

Therefore, if the Imperial Railway Company is packaged and sold, the price will definitely be far more than 1800 million, and it is difficult to say whether it is 300 million or 500 million.

If we use some market value concepts in later generations, the market value of the Imperial Railway Company is at least more than 400 million, and in this way, its debt ratio is not so terrifying, not even 50 percent, which is much stronger than the iron general of the later republic.

However, Imperial Railways will certainly not sell its shares, so the potential market value of the stock price will not be reflected, and it is impossible for Imperial Railways to obtain funds by selling shares or the like.

Therefore, there are three main means for the Imperial Railway Company to obtain funds, one is the operating profits of the completed railways, these railways can bring a steady stream of profits to the railway company, although a month and two months are not much, but over the years, it is a very considerable cash flow. The second is the hair corporate bonds, this kind of bonds have a special name in China, called railway construction bonds, although the interest is average, but for ordinary people to maintain their value, the security is no less than the national bonds.

This kind of railway bond is an investment product that many financial institutions prefer to buy.

The third point is to borrow directly from banks, which often have great interest concessions, and sometimes some local governments will have interest discount policies in order to support railway companies to build railways with them.

Due to the high debt, the principal and interest paid every year are tens of millions, and if you borrow again, it is estimated that the operating profit will not even be able to repay the principal and interest, so the Imperial Railway Company does not dare to borrow hundreds of millions more.

Funds are limited, and the empire is building so many railways, in addition to a few north-south, east-west arteries, the imperial railway company is also building a large number of railway branch lines in the east, the central plains and other provinces, all of which need funds.

Due to the particularity of the Northwest Railway, the Imperial Railway Company did not dare to spend too much money at once, so it became natural that the construction of the Northwest Railway was slow.

The Xi'an-Lanzhou section of the Northwest Railway, especially the Baoji-Tianshui railway line, was very difficult to construct, and according to the estimates of the Imperial Railway Company, it was expected that it would not be until 1883 to be able to build Lanzhou. The subsequent branch line from Lanzhou to Dihua, and then to Ili and Kokand will take at least ten years, or even longer.

The construction difficulty of the Northwest Railway is higher than that of the Northern Railway, which goes deep into Lake Baikal, although the Mongolian Province and Wutai Province through which the Northern Railway passes are also desolate and very difficult to operate, but they are all the way to the plain, and there are no large mountains or rivers blocking it, so as long as the funds and personnel are in place, the construction speed is still considerable.

The delay in the construction of the Northwest Railway to Xinjiang and Kokand provinces meant that the empire could not maintain a large number of troops in these two provinces.

With insufficient troops, it will naturally be difficult to compete with Russia and Britain.

In addition, the main theme of the contemporary empire is to focus on development and try to avoid large-scale wars and conflicts, which has led to the fact that the empire has little desire and ability to expand in a short period of time on the side of Central Asia.

In this case, the Empire's policy in Central Asia is naturally centered on the following stumbling blocks, whether it is Russia or the British, whoever wants to annex Afghanistan, the Empire is opposed.

The Russians co-opted Afghanistan and tried to control Afghanistan in the name of an alliance with Afghanistan, and the empire supported British intervention.

The British interfered too much and directly sent 30,000 or 40,000 troops into Afghanistan, and when they wanted to take full control of Afghanistan, the empire stood with the Russians and supported other local warlords in Afghanistan to resist the British.

The end result was that Afghanistan had become a huge land of war in the past two years, and it was like a quagmire for the British army to leave, and it was not possible to leave.

In this case, it is not surprising that the British want to get out of the quagmire of Afghanistan.

It's just that the British want to go easily, but this walk has been fought in vain in the past two years, so the British are also unwilling, they can go, but they also want to get the benefits of the war they deserve.

And that's why they came to the Empire.

The diplomats of the two countries sit together, and it is natural that the negotiations cannot be confined to just one Afghanistan, and every time such diplomatic negotiations are held, the two countries are always involved in many other issues.

For example, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, Alaska and other issues, and then there are some tariff issues, after all, the relationship between the two countries is entangled with many problems, and the British want to retain a lot of interests in Afghanistan, naturally they need to pay a certain price.

In the Nanjing Foreign Ministry building, Song Guanqian was holding private talks with the British Minister to the Empire, Lord Wittemar, and in the formal negotiation setting, the diplomats on both sides engaged in all kinds of bickering, which was meaningless in official tone.

Although the conversation between these two people is calm, each of them is a major event that has a great bearing on the situation in Asia and even on the situation in the world.

"Let's talk about the tariff issue first, if nothing else, the National Assembly should pass this tariff resolution!" Sir Wittoma flicked the ashes of his cigar before shifting the subject away from the tariff: "On the Ning Kingdom's side, the contemptible people still want to maintain the status quo, and I think your Excellency should think the same as ours!" (To be continued.) )