What is public debt, that is, the borrowing taken by the government to solve the problem of account overdraft, which can be defined as the debt obtained by the state or the government in the form of credit at home and abroad. This is an important means of macroeconomic regulation and control that the government can use. This form of public debt was actually issued in China in the 19th century.
Before 1898, the state's revenue had always depended on land and money. In 1851, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement broke out, the Taiping Army's fierce momentum and perennial war greatly frustrated the Vitality of the Qing Government, which also caused the Qing Government's land money and grain to be sharply reduced, but the war needed to be spent, and the various weapons and equipment of the Qing Government army and military salaries needed to cost a lot, and the treasury was empty for a while. Zeng Guofan also created the "Lijin" with his staff, and some people opened the road of donating officials, just so that they could have enough working capital, but all this was just a drop in the bucket. Later, in the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing government was even more dying and its economic resources were almost cut off.
At this time, a man named Huang Siyong stood up, this Huang Siyong was born in Nanjing, was the head of the Guangxu Gengchen family, and was then a bachelor of Hanlin Academy. He proposed to emulate the Western countries to raise public debt to solve the current qing government's dilemma, Cixi received the letter, felt that this method called "debt" is not the royal face, but at present this method is the most direct and effective, so Cixi gave the public debt the name of "Zhaoxin Ticket", with the meaning of Zhaoda trust in the people, and since then China has had public debt.
In 1898, after the decision was made at the top, the "Zhaoxin Ticket" immediately printed 1 million copies and sent them to the provinces for distribution. Under the leadership of Prince Gong, officials of all sizes in the province subscribed to more than 600,000 taels, and also mobilized the merchants of the two Huai salt farms to subscribe to 1 million taels, and the public debt was raised a total of more than 10 million yuan. ”
More than 10 million taels seems to be a lot, but in fact, it is far from the target of 100 million set by the Zhaoxin ticket, and many people are not willing to subscribe to this public bond. However, this ten million taels is not completely useless, although it was initially set for military expenses, but in the end it was used for disaster relief, road construction and other matters. In terms of military expenditure, the Qing government once again borrowed from Britain and Germany.
However, the Zhaoxin ticket is said to be "Zhao Da believes in the people", but the result is that it is dishonest to the people. Seeing that the date of repayment of debts is approaching, the Qing government, which "demolished the eastern wall to make up for the western wall," simply could not come up with money to repay the debt. Several ministers of the court saw that Cixi was in trouble, so they directly told Cixi that these bills were reimbursed to the state by the people. This statement is naturally false, but even if Cixi knew that it was false, she heard it as true, and issued an edict directly saying that these coins and silver were for the people to serve the country.
In this bond issuance, the most injured people are ordinary people and small businessmen. Because they could not afford to buy such a huge denomination of national debt, but in order to complete the task of collecting, the local government forced the people and small businessmen to pay it, which brought a heavy burden to the lives of many people.
At this point, the Zhaoxin ticket was transformed from an economically significant public debt into a tool for the government to accumulate wealth.