Research on the History of Foreign Debt in the Late Qing Dynasty

Author: Ma Linghe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: Foreign debt is a manifestation of financial globalization that emerged with the development of the world economy, referring to borrowing behavior conditioned on the repayment of interest. It is a form of international credit, encompassing all lending activities between countries, including various loans, credit guarantees, and bond issuances. In the late Qing Dynasty, foreign debt was a crucial and indispensable component of late Qing economic and diplomatic history research. Particularly after the First Sino-Japanese War, foreign debt became a focal issue affecting various aspects of China's finance, economy, politics, and diplomacy. The deepening of China's semi-colonialization in the late Qing period was reflected through the increasing reliance on foreign debt, while the process of China's social transformation was also advanced through the utilization of foreign capital in the form of foreign debt. The dual historical status of foreign debt has garnered increasing attention from academia. This book combines the development of late Qing foreign debt, focusing on its essential elements, to further explore the characteristics of late Qing foreign debt and provide a more accurate evaluation. Based on a chronological study, this book represents a summary of the author's reflections on the issue of foreign debt, outlining the characteristics of late Qing foreign debt from the following three perspectives:
1. Late Qing foreign debt originated from the need to compensate for the defects of the traditional fiscal system;
2. The crux of late Qing foreign debt lay in its guarantee forms;
3. The extra-economic characteristics of late Qing foreign debt.