Chapter 29 Section 3 The Loss of Postal Rights in Modern Times

Before my country formally established the state-owned modern postal service, in addition to the official postal post, the folk letter bureau, and the Overseas Chinese Approval Bureau, there were also forms of "passenger post" run by the imperialists in modern times, and the customs concurrently ran postal services. The so-called "guest post" refers to the post offices forcibly set up by imperialist countries on our territory. In 1834, Britain opened the first British post office in Guangzhou, my country. After the Opium War in 1840, Britain further set up post offices in my country's treaty ports.Then, other imperialist countries followed suit under the pretext of "equal benefits and equal opportunities".France established its own post offices in China in 1861, the United States in 1867, Russia in 1870, Japan in 1876, and Germany in 1886.During the Second Opium War, the Sino-Japanese War, the Eight-Power Allied Forces’ War of Aggression against China, and the Russo-Japanese War that fought in China, various countries used various excuses to continuously expand the scope of "customer mail", not only in large and medium-sized cities along the coast of China Set up post offices arbitrarily, even going deep into China's frontiers such as Xinjiang, Yunnan, Heilongjiang, Tibet and other places.During the First World War, Japan invaded Shandong Province of China and set up a Japanese field post office in an important place along the Jiaoji Railway.These post offices violated China's sovereignty and were not under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government. The Qing government even nicknamed them "Guest Post".The so-called "guest mail" has no basis in any treaty, nor has it obtained the permission of the Qing government. It is completely serving the purpose of foreign invaders' political, military, economic, and cultural aggression against our country.These post offices implement their own national stamps, use their own national stamps, but add postmarks of Chinese place names; they not only mail the mail of their overseas Chinese, but also accept and send mail sent by Chinese people within China.Some countries even rely on the privilege of "passenger mail" mailbags from being exempted from customs inspection, trafficking in opium, morphine and other drugs in large quantities, evading customs duties, and conducting smuggling activities.In addition, the consulates of the imperialist powers in China, the concession authorities, foreign firms, and speculators also opened "letter offices" and "local post offices" at will.Many of them pretended to deliver letters, but actually engaged in illegal activities such as speculation and fraud.

At that time, the leader of my country's customs and post office was the British colonialist Hurd.Since the signing of the unequal Sino-British Treaty of Nanjing after the Opium War, our country has lost its tariff autonomy, and foreigners have managed our customs. In 1863, after being appointed by the Qing government as the General Taxation Department of the Customs, Hart not only took control of the power of my country’s customs, but also further attempted to seize the postal power of our country. .In 1878, Hurd sent people to test postal services in Beijing, Tianjin, Yantai, Niuzhuang (now Yingkou), and Shanghai, and issued the first set of Dalong stamps in my country.Afterwards, Hurd tried several postal routes from Beijing to Tianjin and Zhenjiang, from Tianjin to Niuzhuang, from Jihe in Shandong to Yantai, etc., to handle Chinese and foreign mail.Until 1884, where there were customs offices, customs post offices were basically opened.After Hurd took control of our country's postal power, on the one hand, he not only failed to adopt the "boycott strategy" he promised to the "customer mail" of various imperialists, on the contrary, he reached agreements with relevant countries to recognize the establishment of post offices in treaty ports; On the one hand, he took the insidious means of gradually devouring and phasing out the self-run civil letter bureaus and post stations in order to destroy and strangle them.

British imperialism monopolizes China Post through the hands of Hurd, so how can other imperialists not be jealous?Therefore, the French imperialists repeatedly negotiated with the Qing government through the ministers stationed in China, demanding to intervene in China Post. On May 19, 1896, just two months after the signboard of "Great Qing Post" was hung, the French Minister Shi Alan sent a note to the Qing government: "In the future, the Chinese Post Office will continue to promote and recruit foreign personnel. Do it." In 1898, French Minister Lupin threatened the Qing government more bluntly, saying: "There is a shortage of postmasters in China" and "the French should make up for it."In April of this year, the French envoy openly asked the Qing government to declare: "When the Chinese state sets up the Prime Minister Post Office in the future, it intends to hire foreign officials to help. And the thoroughly corrupt Qing government actually replied: "It is permitted to do so." Britain and France fought openly and covertly over the issue of China's postal rights, which became increasingly fierce.In order to ease the conflict between Britain and France in China, the treacherous and cunning Hurd arranged a "General Post Office" under the Chief Post Office, which he himself concurrently held, in 1901, and asked the Frenchman Pellet to take over. In 1909, Hurd returned to China due to illness, and Peri followed Hurd and took control of China's postal power. In 1911, in order to deceive the people, the Qing government announced that it was "preparing to establish a constitution" and decided to transfer the "Great Qing Post", which was also run by the customs, to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Post and Communications.However, although the General Post Office is appointed by the Ministry of Posts and Communications as the director, the real power is still in the hands of the General Post Office and many foreigners, and everything remains intact.The customs has operated the post office for more than 40 years. When it was handed over to the postal department, not only did it not earn a penny for the Qing government, but on the contrary, it said that the customs had advanced more than 1.84 million taels of silver for the post office in the past 45 years, and the Qing government should pay an annual interest of 4%. Pay it back in five years.

In the late Qing Dynasty, there were also new postal services independently run by us Chinese.It started with the reform of Taiwan Governor Liu Mingchuan.Taiwan was separated from Fujian Province in 1881 (the seventh year of Guangxu), and the first governor was the innovative Liu Mingchuan.At the beginning of 1888 (the fourteenth year of Guangxu), he founded the "Taiwan Post Office" to serve the communication between the government and businessmen, and issued two kinds of stamps, the official "Taiwan Stamp" and the civilian "Post Commercial Stamp". .These two kinds of stamps are two-page stamps, which are cut open when they are released, one page is glued to the envelope, and the other page is used as a stub, and they are only sold when mailing letters.This new postal system is rebuilt on the basis of the original post station system in Taiwan. The station heads, soldiers, and servants of the original post station can be retained as new postal staff after learning.Liu Mingchuan's successful experiment has accumulated valuable experience for the mainland's reform of postal services.This should be given full attention and affirmation in the history of my country's postal development.It is a pity that after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, Japanese imperialism invaded and occupied Taiwan, our territory, so this reform could not continue.

Finally, talk about the birth of my country's telecommunications industry.The invasion of my country's telecommunications rights by foreign invaders in modern times is also a painful history.Since the invention of telegraph, telephone and radio communication technology, Britain, the United States, Tsarist Russia and other countries quickly used this scientific achievement as a tool of aggression, and then launched a fierce competition to control my country's telecommunications rights. In 1871, under the instigation of Britain and Tsarist Russia, the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Denmark laid submarine cables privately in my country, and set up a telegraph office in the Shanghai Concession to start telegraph business. In 1881, British businessmen set up telephones in Shanghai.Then other imperialist countries rushed to set up telegraph and telephone services in our country.The concessions, consulates, barracks, and even hotels, restaurants, and private houses set up by the imperialists in various cities in our country, as well as the villages and towns in the interior, have their telephones or radio stations everywhere.

At the same time that the imperialists invaded my country's telecommunications rights, the Qing government also began to run telegraph, telephone and radio communication services on its own.In terms of telegraphs, in 1877 and 1879, the Qing government successively set up military telegraph lines in Taiwan and Tianjin. In 1881, the Tianjin-Shanghai telegraph line with a total length of 3,075 miles was built, and the public telegraph service was launched.This is the beginning of China's public telecommunications business.By 1902, the Qing government successively built telegraph lines from Tianjin to Beijing, Shanghai to Guangzhou, Nanjing to Wuhan, and Wuhan to Chongqing, and built intra-provincial telegraph lines in more than 20 provinces; The telegraph office also ran the telephone business, and successively installed local telephones in major cities and some medium-sized cities across the country; in terms of radio communications, the Qing government began to focus on radio military communications. In 1899 and 1905, the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi and the Beiyang Fleet respectively set up some radio stations for military communication.Later, some civilian radio stations were built one after another.Generally speaking, although the Qing government has made some progress in self-managed telegrams, self-managed telephones and self-managed radio communications, the scale is still relatively small and the speed is still relatively slow.