At the beginning of the last century, the Qing Dynasty declined very badly, coupled with the strong rise of the Western powers, there was inevitably war and conflict between the East and the West, and after the First Opium War, the whole world knew that China, a country that looked very large, was actually a big empire, which was not used at all, so for a time all countries came to bully China.
For example, Russia in the north, although it did not join the war much, but they also asked China for territory in large quantities, according to statistics, Russia ceded a total of 1.5 million square meters of territory from China - even some of the major powers in Europe now may not have so much territory.
After this series of aggressive activities, the great powers were not satisfied with vested interests, they felt that they could get more benefits from China's soil, in order to force China to hand over more power, and because the Boxer Rebellion in China at that time was very powerful, the slogan of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the ocean" put forward made most of the powers more afraid, so in 1900, they gathered many countries together to launch the Eight-Power Alliance War of Aggression against China.
At that time, the Chinese army could not defeat one great power, and many countries were mobilized en masse, where could they fight? As a result, in addition to the sporadic resistance of the boxers, the Eight-Power Alliance, which had little resistance, suddenly attacked the capital at that time, Beijing.
In desperation, the Qing Dynasty signed a treaty with it. At this time, looking at the Qing Dynasty as a good bully, he joined several countries one after another, all of which asked the Qing Dynasty to give them benefits. Therefore, when the Treaty of Sinuki was signed, there were 11 countries: the British Empire, the United States of America, the French Third Republic, the German Empire, the Russian Empire, the Great Japanese Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Kingdom of Belgium.
In order to humiliate Chinese, the great powers decided to demand that everyone in the Chinese at that time pay one or two silver to the great powers, and China at that time had a population of about 450 million, so a total of 450 million taels of silver were lost.
At that time, China was poor and weak, many ordinary people did not say that they had one or two pieces of silver, they could not even get basic rations, some could only go to beg, nibble on tree bark, eat wild vegetables, where did they go to find one or two pieces of silver to give to the great powers? In addition, the officials at that time took advantage of this opportunity to certainly have made a big profit, so it was difficult to hand over the silver to the great powers at one time, so they decided to pay off the silver in 39 years.
However, as we all know, after 10 years, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, how can the remaining money be repaid?
It turned out that although the great powers at that time suddenly asked the Qing Dynasty lion for 450 million taels of silver, many countries later saw that the Qing Dynasty could not repay these silver, and from the long-term national political considerations, they successively cancelled a lot of arrears from the Qing Dynasty. Through its own efforts, the Qing Dynasty also slightly reduced the amount of repayment, for example, in the First World War, because the Qing Dynasty chose to join the Allies and finally became a victorious country, then Germany and Austria-Hungary, as the defeated countries, were not eligible to ask the Qing government for money.
After the October Revolution in Russia, Lenin saw that the Chinese, who was also oppressed at that time, and politically, Soviet Russia announced that it would renounce the balance of the genge. The United States refunded some of the money, and the United States used the refunded money to fund Tsinghua University, making Tsinghua University a first-class university in China.
However, some countries' money has been repaid, this part of the money was first repaid by Yuan Shikai's Beiyang warlord group, and then it became the government of chiang kai-shek's Republic of China to bear, and by 1926, britain, France, the United States, the Netherlands and other countries basically gave up the reparations. Reparations from a handful of countries continue. Japan originally promised to refund part of the money, but because it was going to carry out the war of aggression against China and asked for reparations again, Chiang Kai-shek was still losing money to the Japanese until 1937.
By 1947, as the victor of World War II, it had once again had an opportunity to cancel the reparations. On December 26, China declared the end of the Xinugu Treaty. From 1900 to 1947, with interest and principal, China compensated the great powers a total of 980 million taels of silver. At that time, the Qing government's annual fiscal revenue was only 80 million taels, and so much money needed to be paid off by the people for 12 years without eating or drinking!
The Xinugu Treaty is one of the most humiliating treaties in the history of our country, and we must cherish the new China that we have now won hard-won and contribute our own strength to the construction of socialism in the new era.