Abstract
ON December 2 a telegram was received from Reuter's agent at Shanghai, announcing that the telegraph line between that town and Tientsin was finished. In a few weeks we may expect to hear of the completion of the line to Peking. The capital of the Chinese empire, the chief seat of bigotry and hostility to foreign innovation, will then be in direct communication with Europe and America. There is, we believe, no doubt in the minds of those acquainted with the origin of this undertaking, that political motives alone dictated it. Hitherto, during the winter, when the mouth of the Peiho was closed by ice, couriers taking from twenty to thirty days on the journey travelled down the Grand Canal to the Yang-tsze conveying letters to Shanghai; or they were sent across Manchuria, in from fifteen to twenty days to Kiachta, where they reached the Great Northern Telegraph Company's Siberian lines. These slow and uncertain modes of communication with the outer world were severely felt by the Chinese Government during the winters of 1879 and 1880, when its relations were almost broken off with Russia, when the land and sea forces of the latter were hanging like a thundercloud on the frontiers of China, and a peaceable solution of the Kuldja question seemed impossible. It was then brought home to the Peking authorities that their coasts might be invaded, their principal cities captured, and the foe be almost at their gates weeks before they heard the news. The bitter experience of these years taught the Chinese a hard lesson, but one which they speedily took to heart. Long before the Marquis Tsêng brought the question to a peaceable conclusion the Chinese Government had ordered large quantities of telegraph material from England, and within a few months of the ratification of the treaty with Russia, we find the port of Peking connected by telegraph with the rest of the world. The Chinese may occasionally be slow in their mental processes, but the present instance shows that when once the utility of an innovation is clearly presented to their minds, they seize and assimilate it with a rapidity worthy of their more mercurial neighbours, the Japanese; and this, it will be observed, is as true of the Government as of individuals.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Telegraphs in China . Nature 25, 178–179 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/025178a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/025178a0