As stipulated in the sixth paragraph of the Xin Chou Treaty, the Qing government compensated Russia, Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Japan, Italy, Austria and Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Norway for their military expenses and losses of 450 million silver, and the compensation period was 1.902 to1. Among them, Russia sent troops to Manchuria, which cost the most, so the income was the largest, which was 654.38+30.37 million. At that time, the population of China was about 450 million, and each China in boxer indemnity was estimated to be about one or two pieces of silver.
According to the Xin Chou Treaty, the Qing government paid 450 million taels of silver to eight western countries, of which the United States deserved more than 32 million taels, equivalent to more than 24 million dollars.
At the beginning of February, China's ambassador to the United States, Liang Cheng, argued with US Secretary of State John Hayward about whether China's reparations should be in gold or silver. During the conversation, John Hay revealed: "There are too many cases of boxer indemnity-"This information was immediately caught. This shows that the U.S. government found that its relevant departments concealed the loss of the Boxer Rebellion, and there was a phenomenon of "overstating the report and concealing it". Liang Cheng wisely gave up the negotiation strategy, no longer pestering John Hay for reparations or using silver, but "taking advantage of it, returning to China has lost its benefits", so he never missed any opportunity to lobby the US Congress and members to return false reparations.
1906 At the beginning of this year, Edmund James, president of the University of Illinois in the United States, submitted a memorandum to President theodore roosevelt, asking the US government to accelerate the attraction of China students to the United States. On March 6 of the same year, American missionary Ming Enpu visited President Roosevelt at the White House. He suggested that the President should return a part of boxer indemnity of the Qing government in China to set up and fund schools in China. 1907, Ming Enpu published China and America Today, in which he pointed out that more China intellectuals should be allowed to study in the United States.
Under the promotion and advocacy of Ming Enpu and others, Roosevelt submitted a consultation document to Congress, pointing out: "China should help China to educate with its strength, so that this huge population can gradually get along with modern times. Funding methods should attract students to the United States, join universities and other institutions of higher learning in China, and let William. It worked. I believe that the education sector in China will be able to reflect this good will and work together to provide sponsorship for the success of the country. "
1908 On May 25th, the US Congress passed Roosevelt's consultation document. On July 1 1 of the same year, William W. Rockhill, the American ambassador to China, officially declared to the China government that he would return half of the boxer indemnity obtained by the United States to China as a subsidy for students studying in the United States. The rest of the "actual compensation" includes the compensation for American military expenses in China and the compensation for the losses of American Chinese businessmen and missionaries.
Why did Americans use G-sum refund to run schools at that time? James, the president of the University of Illinois in the United States, declared in the memorandum to Roosevelt 1906: "Which country can educate the young people of China generation well, which country can get the greatest harvest from the spiritual and commercial influence because of its own efforts." "For business, it is more reliable to follow the spiritual rule than to follow the military flag." Therefore, he urged the US government to take measures to train a group of new leaders for the United States to dominate China intellectually and spiritually by attracting overseas students from China.
1908, 10 year128 October, the two governments drafted the rules for sending students to study in the United States: from the first year of refund, the Qing government should send at least 100 students to study in the United States every year for the first four years. If 400 people are sent in the fourth year, at least 50 people will be sent to the United States every year from the fifth year until the refund is used up. The dispatched students must be "physically strong, pure in temperament, complete in appearance, clean in family background and appropriate in age", have knowledge of Chinese writing and literature and history, and be able to attend lectures in American universities and specialized schools directly in English. It is stipulated that 80% of them should study agriculture, mechanical engineering, mining, physics, chemistry, railway engineering, banking and so on. The remaining 20% should study law and politics.
At the same time, China and the United States also agreed that the foreign affairs department of the Qing government was responsible for establishing an American training school in Beijing. Thus, in June of 1909, the office of tourism aesthetics was established in Beijing, which was the embryonic form of Tsinghua University. 1In August, 909, the Ministry of Interior gave the royal garden of Tsinghua Campus to the Academic Affairs Office, which took the first batch of students from Shi Jia Hutong, recruited 47 students from 630 candidates, and went to the United States in June, 5438+00. This is the origin of students studying in the United States later.
In August, 19 10, the second recruitment. More than 400 people took the exam, and finally 70 people were admitted. Among the second batch of students studying in the United States, a famous Hu Shi came out later. He won the 55th place that year. In the same list, there are later linguist Zhao Yuanren and meteorologist Zhu Kezhen.
19 1 1 At the beginning of the year, Tsinghua Preparatory School for Studying in the United States was formally established, which was specially used to train international students studying in the United States. In the following ten years, according to statistics, Tsinghua sent more than 1 000 students to study in the United States. 1928 17 In August, Tsinghua University was renamed Tsinghua University, and Luo Jialun became the principal. That year, we began to openly recruit public students studying in the United States. 1933 The first batch of G-type students studying in Britain began to openly recruit.
The refund in the United States has had a great influence in the world. After the outbreak of World War I, the Beijing government declared war on Germany and Austria in August 19 17, and stopped paying the G-sum. After the war subsided, China also set foot as a victorious country. All countries expressed their willingness to be "friendly" with China and safeguard and expand their interests in China by peaceful means, so they followed the footsteps of the United States and gave up or returned the balance of boxer indemnity. Refund is widely used in education, culture, industry and other fields in China. Only Japan didn't give a penny, and used this money to develop armaments and establish education, thus quickly becoming a powerful empire in the 20th century.
1924, the U.S congress passed a resolution to use the remaining boxer indemnity for China, and set up the "China Cultural and Educational Promotion Foundation" (or "China Foundation"), with the management amount of12,545,000 dollars. Beiyang government appointed a board of directors composed of 10 China people and 5 Americans. A considerable part of this money is provided to Tsinghua University in the form of scholarships. Because of such a special source of funds and operation mode, Tsinghua has its own special advantages and conditions in many aspects since its establishment, which also makes it different from other universities in China. Such an environment objectively laid a certain material foundation and provided necessary conditions for Mei Yiqi to run a school. Foreign historians commented: "One of the secrets of Tsinghua's success is that when other universities turn to the charity of warlords with unstable political power, Tsinghua's annual budget is guaranteed." (4) Although this view implicitly exaggerates the role played by the United States, it is basically fair.
Among the academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, "Tsinghua people" accounts for nearly one third. Mei Yiqi, an outstanding educator, was in charge of "Tsinghua Fund" from 65438 to 0949, and he went to Taiwan Province Province to use the money to establish the Hsinchu Tsinghua University.
Because Tsinghua is rich in funds, it also has considerable autonomy in running schools. These conditions naturally have a certain impact on running a school, which promotes Tsinghua to gradually form a set of independent things with Tsinghua's own characteristics in the school management system and operation mechanism, and thus produces some special systems and styles, and even the gradual formation of school spirit and study style in Tsinghua is inextricably linked with this. An obvious example of this feature is several large-scale school agitation in Tsinghua University in the early 1920s and 1930s. Among them, President Tsinghua changed owners many times and appointed as many as a dozen. There is even an embarrassing situation that Tsinghua has no principal for several years and relies on the meeting of the school board to maintain it.
The well-intentioned education plan in the United States has achieved remarkable results. China students who passed through boxer indemnity (Hu Shi was the second batch) and stayed in the United States became the brightest stars in China academic circles in the following decades, and their words and deeds deeply influenced the latecomers.
By 1930s, the United States had surpassed Japanese to become the country with the largest number of international students in China. At the same time, Americans established 12 missionary universities in China, including the famous yenching university. Concord Hospital appeared in Christian Hospital, and Rockefeller Foundation funded the rural investigation and archaeological action of China scholars.
At the beginning of 1926, the British Parliament passed the bill of returning China boxer indemnity (the refund will be used for sending overseas students to Britain and other educational projects), that is, sending Skrtel to China to work out the detailed rules for the use of this paragraph. At that time, Hu Shi was the Chinese consultant of the Sino-British Geng Kuan Advisory Committee 1965438+2007. After the success of the October socialist revolution in Russia, the Soviet government announced that it would give up all the privileges of the Russian empire in China, including the unpaid part of boxer indemnity. The privileges of the Russians in China will also be abolished, and the exchange condition of all this is that the Beiyang government recognizes the new Soviet regime. 1924 in may, the two countries signed a sino-Russian agreement, which stipulated the purpose of refund. In addition to using Russian money as collateral to repay the debts of the Russian government, the rest is used for education in China, which is handled by the Fund Committee (Russian Return to boxer indemnity Committee) composed of representatives from China and the Soviet Union.
The total refund balance of Fageng Fund is 39 1.58 million francs, equivalent to 75.55 million US dollars. According to the agreement, the total amount of this balance starts from 1924 and ends at 1947. Continue to borrow money from China-France Industrial Bank year by year as a guarantee for the bank to issue 5% US dollars. China-France Industrial Bank spent four expenses with this US dollar debt: 1. In exchange for unprofitable bonds held by creditors in the Far East; 2. Dealing with education and charity between China and France; 3. Remittance of the balance of capital stock issued by the China government; 4. Repay the loan owed by China Government to China-France Industrial Bank.
1920 At the beginning of this year, Li Shizeng, Cai Yuanpei and Wu Jingheng used boxer indemnity to establish the Sino-French University in Beijing. Mr. Wang is the chairman and Cai Yuanpei is the principal. In the winter of the same year, Cai Yuanpei and his wife went to France again, cooperated with Helio, Mayor of Lyon, France, and Dean of Lyon Medical College, Lei Bin, and established the Association of Sino-French Universities in Lyon, and decided to establish the Sino-French University in Lyon.