Those who know history know that the "Xinchou Treaty" is an unequal treaty that China has suffered the greatest loss in modern times, and therefore produced the largest indemnity in modern times - Gengzi indemnity.
There are too many unfair treaties signed by China in modern times, and land cession and indemnity are common things, and in addition to creating a "national China" in China and allowing foreign troops to be stationed, the most painful thing in the "Xinchou Treaty" is probably the compensation of 450 million taels of silver.
What is the concept of 450 million taels of silver, the total population of China at that time was about 450 million people, that is, if the indemnity is evenly distributed to everyone, the debt of one tael of silver per capita. At that time, there was no family planning, and an adult family had at least two elderly people, three or four children, plus two husbands and wives, and the family had to share seven or eight taels of silver evenly.
In 1901, the annual revenue of the Qing government was about 80 million taels of silver. In other words, if you don't eat or drink, it will take about 6 years to pay back. A country can't run without money, and how can a government run without spending, so it certainly can't pay back all of its revenue. Moreover, in the nearly 100 years since the end of the Qing Dynasty, so many indemnity treaties were signed, and if they only paid the indemnity in the "Xinchou Treaty" and took care of the rest, how could the other powers give up? Therefore, the "Xinchou Treaty" stipulated that 450 million taels of silver should be repaid in 39 years, with an annual interest of 4 percent.
That's right, there is interest!
Paid off in 39 years, on the surface, it seems to have relieved the pressure of the Qing Dynasty, but the annual interest of 4% is also a terrible thing, if you really want to calculate it, a total of 980 million taels will be repaid with interest in 39 years. A debt has to fight for more than ten years of gross national income, and the key is that there are many reparation projects, but fortunately, the Qing Dynasty fell early... Wait, the government goes out of business, and the reparations are gone?
After the collapse of the Qing government, in order to gain the recognition of the international community, the Beiyang government at that time was a world power, so it did not abolish the unequal treaties signed by the former Qing Dynasty. In other words, this debt was still pressed on the Chinese people until the outbreak of World War I.
The outbreak of the First World War was purely due to the uneven "distribution of spoils" among the great powers, and the British and French occupied too many colonies, and more than half of the colonies in the world were occupied by them, and they planned to occupy them permanently.
At that time, China was still a semi-colonial society, and after the outbreak of World War I, the great powers proposed a series of favorable policies in order to win over China, and China also joined the Entente one after another, declared war on Germany and Austria, and finally won the victory.
At the Paris Peace Conference, however, China participated as the victor, but it received a new unequal treaty on its agenda: the transfer of Germany's rights and interests in Shandong to Japan! When the news came back to China, it immediately detonated the vigorous May Fourth Movement and smashed the wolf ambitions of Japanese imperialism. The May Fourth Movement put an end to the idea that imperialism continued to covet China, and it also showed people the power to cut through the elements.
Since then, China has completely freed itself from all unequal treaties and debts, and has come out of the quagmire of a semi-colonial society, the year of which was 1919.