After the defeat of the Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, everyone was reviewing the reasons, one of which was that Empress Dowager Cixi embezzled 2 million taels of silver from the Beiyang Marine Division to repair the Summer Palace in order to celebrate her 60th birthday, resulting in the Beiyang Marine Division having no money to purchase more rapid-fire guns and main artillery shells, thus losing the naval battle.
It is true that Cixi celebrated his 60th birthday, and it is not false to embezzle Beiyang funds, but the question is, even if Cixi does not embezzle and give 200 taels of silver to the Beiyang Marine Division, will this naval battle be won? I'm afraid Li Hongzhang didn't dare to say that.
2 million silver seems to be a large amount of money, but it will not help to reverse the decline of the Beiyang Marine Division. Naval construction itself is a gold-devouring beast, 2 million silver is only enough to buy half of the "Dingyuan" ironclad ship, and the Beiyang Marine Division is not only more than two dozen warships, but also a complete naval system.
The imperial court set up the Prime Minister's Naval Affairs Bureau, under which there were bureaus for training salaries, support, ordnance, machinery, manufacturing, telegraphs, docks, and engineering, and set up separate battalions, and established water divisions, armed armament schools, hospitals, and coal plants.
From the preparation of the construction in 1875 to the beginning of the war in 1894, the Qing court spent about 40 million taels of silver on the Beiyang Marine Division, which seems to be quite a lot, but on average, the proportion of the annual financial expenditure of the imperial court is only a pitiful 2.4%.
The most important thing is that Japan's naval construction is very large, only from 1886 to 1894, it invested 76 million yen, equivalent to 50 million silver, more than 1.3 times the total investment of the Beiyang Marine Division.
The Japanese government's military expenditure in 1883 accounted for 20% of fiscal expenditure, and by 1892 it had increased to 31%, more than ten times that of the Qing Dynasty. Moreover, Japan donated coastal defense gold from the emperor to the people, and the Meiji emperor ate one less meal a day, saving 300,000 yen, equivalent to more than 200,000 taels of silver.
After the Beiyang Marine Division became an army in 1888, the annual maintenance cost was at least 2 million taels, and the Qing court cut half of it on the grounds of financial constraints, only 1 million taels, which was only enough to pay the salaries of officers and men and the most basic maintenance and military training of ships.
In 1893, Li Hongzhang applied to the imperial court for funds to purchase the main guns and shells of the two ironclad ships", "Dingyuan" and "Zhenyuan", but was rejected. At the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, the main gun shells of the two ships had only 3 stocks, and only old-fashioned armor-piercing shells could be used during naval warfare.
Therefore, in the most critical Battle of Dadonggou, both ships had shells that penetrated the Japanese warships and fell into the sea, and if they were replaced by new explosive bombs, as long as there was a hit to detonate, the Japanese warships could be destroyed or rendered ineffective.
Some people have done statistics that in the 19 years before the first noon, the total military expenditure of the Qing Dynasty was 46 million taels of silver, plus 42.8 million taels of military industrial investment, the total amount was 88.8 million taels. Japan's two armament expenditures from 1888 to 1897 were 463 million taels of silver, 5.2 times the total expenditure of the Qing Dynasty in 19 years.
Japan tightened its belt to build a navy, and the Qing Dynasty's attitude toward the navy was enough, but the problem was that the Japanese navy caught up quickly, in fact, it had surpassed the Beiyang Marine Division, but the Qing court still thought it was enough, and the fiasco of Jia Wu could not be avoided.