Due to the corruption and incompetence of the Qing government, a large area of land in China was once divided by the great powers, including the "Xinugu Treaty" signed by Li Hongzhang on behalf of the Qing government in 1901, with a total of 980 million taels of silver, and the sovereignty of many places was forced to be transferred. China was completely reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.
After the Xinhai Revolution, Yuan Shikai stole the fruits of victory, and as a result, he was deposed after two months as emperor. After that, it was the warlord division and the Beiyang government was established.
Most people have extremely poor social evaluations of the period of the Beiyang government. However, the Beiyang government once did a good thing "unintentionally planting willows and willows", which is of great significance to China.
In 1920, 18 countries, including the United States, Britain, Norway, Denmark, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy and Japan, signed a very special treaty in Paris, which contained a special feature, which involved the right to use a 60,000-square-kilometer Svalbard. Later generations also referred to this treaty as the Treaty of Svalbard.
The main content of the treaty is to vest the right to use Svalbard to the above 18 countries, and the nationals of the above 18 countries can enter and leave the island at will according to the content of the treaty, or conduct some research for scientific discussion.
At that time, it was in the period of the rule of many warlords in the Beiyang government of our country, and there was no time to manage the Svalbard Islands, which were thousands of miles away, and there was no use at all. So no one signed the treaty at all.
But five years later, in 1925, for whatever reason, France strongly invited our people to sign the treaty. At that time, the leader of the Beiyang government, Duan Qirui, felt that it was not good to offend the French because of the problem of face, so he sent a minister to sign the signature on the Chinese side.
This matter was left there and left unattended, for China at that time, a land use right that was thousands of miles away, what use could it be? Moreover, at that time, transportation was not developed, and I am afraid that in the decades after the signing, I did not Chinese set foot in the Svalbard Islands at that time. At that time, the archipelago was very different in modern times.
For today's people, first of all, the annual tourism benefits of Svalbard are very impressive, and now for China, it is no longer just a Chinese can enter and exit visa-free at will. More importantly, he is the scientific research site of China's Arctic Circle.
Svalbard is located on the edge of the scientific research "Yellow River Station" built by our country, which is undoubtedly an important reliance for the work of scientific research. China's Arctic Yellow River Scientific Expedition Station has developed very well today, and it has great significance in promoting and developing the research on the marine environment of our country and even the world. France was very upset, at that time France did not sign because of other interests involved, and now it is too late to repent.