Shao You-lian: The Conservator in Liu Ming-chuan's Shadow, and the True Anchoring of Taipei as Provincial Capital

30-second overview: In 1891, Taiwan’s first governor, Liu Ming-chuan, left office because of illness, leaving behind a Taiwan filled with dreams of modernization but burdened by fiscal deficits. His successor, Shao You-lian, is often described as the conservative who “abolished all the New Policies,” but in the extreme circumstances created by the cutoff of fiscal transfers from Fujian, he in fact completed and opened the Taipei-Hsinchu section of railway, and in 1894 formally moved the provincial capital to Taipei. This diplomat, who had participated in the negotiations for the Treaty of Ili and was connected by marriage to Li Hongzhang, used pragmatic bureaucratic methods to set the tone for Taiwan’s political and economic center of gravity over the next century.

In June 1891, when Liu Ming-chuan left Keelung Harbor with his unfinished dream of an “islandwide railway,” the official who took over Taiwan was Shao You-lian, a former Taiwan provincial treasurer then serving as governor of Hunan.¹ What he faced was not a flourishing experimental field, but a fiscal quagmire with annual deficits as high as 400,000 taels and the imminent loss of subsidy support from Fujian.²

Eminent Origins and Diplomatic Edge

Shao You-lian was not the dull, old-fashioned bureaucrat of conventional impression. He was born into an official family in Yuyao, Zhejiang. His father, Shao Can, had served as governor-general of grain transport, and his elder brother, Shao Yuelian, was also an important late-Qing official.³ The Shao family had deep ties with the family of Li Hongzhang, the most powerful figure of the time: Shao You-lian’s eldest son, Shao Yi, married the daughter of Li Hongzhang’s youngest brother, Li Zhaoqing, joining the two families by marriage.⁴ This substantial political background inclined him toward Li Hongzhang-style “pragmatic diplomacy” and “fiscal prudence.” In later generations, this family inheritance also blossomed into a brilliant literary legacy: the renowned poet and writer Shao Xunmei was Shao You-lian’s grandson.⁵

Before coming to Taiwan, Shao You-lian’s most celebrated achievements were in diplomacy. In 1880, he accompanied Zeng Jize to Russia to revise the Treaty of Livadia. In that difficult negotiation, often described as “snatching food from a tiger’s mouth,” Shao You-lian served as deputy and helped Zeng Jize ultimately conclude the Sino-Russian Revised Treaty, namely the Treaty of Ili, successfully recovering Ili.⁶ This experience taught him the close relationship, under the pressure of surrounding great powers, between national strength and fiscal stability. Before his mission abroad, Zeng Jize had even written a poem for Shao You-lian, expressing their shared resolve to defend territory.⁷

The “Pruner” Under Fiscal Winter

After taking office, Shao You-lian immediately faced the crisis created by the expiration of Fujian Province’s five-year subsidy period. Taiwan now had to be self-sufficient, but the revenue from Liu Ming-chuan’s land-tax reassessment still could not support the enormous cost of construction.⁸ To “let the people rest” while maintaining government operations, Shao You-lian adopted a highly controversial austerity policy.

He successively abolished the Western Learning School, Telegraph School, and Indigenous School.⁹ These institutions, seen as pioneers of modern education in Taiwan, were in Shao You-lian’s eyes burdens that “cost considerable funds and had not yet shown results.” At the same time, he also reduced the scale of the Pacification and Reclamation Bureau, shifting the previously active policy of “opening the mountains and pacifying Indigenous peoples” toward a passive strategy of military containment.¹⁰ Lien Heng was extremely dissatisfied with this in The General History of Taiwan, commenting: “All the New Policies were abolished, and Taiwan’s vitality was set back.”¹

📝 Curator’s note: We are accustomed to celebrating the heroism of founders, yet often overlook the pain of conservators who cut away branches in times of drought. Shao You-lian did not dislike the New Policies; rather, he understood more clearly that a bankrupt government could not sustain any dream.

The Formal Anchoring and Construction of Taipei as Provincial Capital

Although Shao You-lian retreated sharply in education and military affairs, he made the most important administrative decision affecting Taiwan over the next century: he formally established the capital in Taipei.

During Liu Ming-chuan’s tenure, there had been plans to build a provincial capital in Taichung (Qiaozitu), but the project was enormous, funds were insufficient, and Taipei had already become the de facto political and economic center because of the tea trade. In 1894, Shao You-lian formally submitted a memorial requesting that the provincial capital be moved to Taipei Prefecture.¹¹ To complete the functions of the provincial capital, he actively pursued construction within Taipei City, including the completion of important government offices and the expansion of the examination shed and provincial examination compound, laying the spatial foundations for Taipei’s later role as the administrative and educational center of all Taiwan.¹² This decision ended the awkward situation in which Taiwan’s provincial capital was “nominally in Taichung, but actually in Taipei,” and established Taipei’s status as the capital of the whole island.¹³

Official Governance, Justice, and the Realities of the Machinery Bureau

Under the label of “abolishing the New Policies,” Shao You-lian’s efforts to improve administrative efficiency are often overlooked. During his tenure, he actively clarified official governance, rectified bureaucratic culture, and promoted preliminary judicial reforms.⁸

Especially worth noting is his attitude toward the “Taipei Machinery Bureau.” Although he was criticized for reducing military industry, in reality he added minting machinery in 1892, attempting to resolve fiscal problems through financial measures.¹⁴ Yet because of poor management during manufacturing, the Machinery Bureau suffered three serious explosions, causing severe casualties and property losses.⁸ These accidents became a key trigger for his later decision to adopt austerity policies and avoid excessive expansion of industrial scale.

Railway to Hsinchu: A Pragmatic Terminus

Public memory of Taiwan’s first railway mostly remains focused on Liu Ming-chuan. Yet the person who actually brought the Taipei-Hsinchu section into service and operation was Shao You-lian.

In February 1892, the railway from Taipei to Hsinchu was formally completed, with 16 ticket offices, or stations, along the full line.¹⁵ After inspection, Shao You-lian believed that although the railway was convenient, the later southward extension to Changhua would require crossing the deep Dajia River, and both the technical difficulty and cost exceeded what Taiwan could bear at the time.² He therefore decisively chose to “temporarily halt” the railway and first operate the existing section in hopes of generating surplus revenue.¹⁶ According to records from the time, this section sold more than 50,000 tickets per day on average, proving that his pragmatic decision did indeed produce transport benefits.¹⁷

The First Sino-Japanese War and the Humiliation at Hiroshima

After the First Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1894, Shao You-lian recruited additional troops in a very short period, expanding them to more than 90 battalions and deploying defenses at key points across Taiwan.¹⁸ He even paid heavily to hire Liu Yongfu to lead the Black Flag Army to Taiwan for joint defense.²

At the end of 1894, however, he was transferred back to Hunan and was soon entrusted by the Qing court with an important mission: to travel to Japan with Zhang Yinhuan as plenipotentiary ministers to negotiate peace. In February 1895, Shao You-lian arrived in Hiroshima, Japan, only to be coldly rejected by Ito Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu. The Japanese side used the excuse that Zhang and Shao had “insufficient plenipotentiary authority” to refuse substantive negotiations, but in reality it was waiting for Japanese forces to capture Weihaiwei in order to obtain greater bargaining leverage.¹⁹ This humiliation, known as the “Hiroshima rejection of the envoys,” became the final and heaviest mark in his political career.²⁰

📝 Curator’s note: Shao You-lian’s active defensive preparations on the eve of war, and the humiliation he then suffered in Hiroshima, show that he was not simply passive. He was a typical Qing diplomatic bureaucrat: seeking stability in times of peace and preservation in times of crisis, but ultimately unable to withstand the torrent of the age.

Reversing Historical Judgment: Conservative or Pragmatic?

For a long time, Shao You-lian has played the foil to Liu Ming-chuan in Taiwan history. But viewed from the perspectives of finance and geopolitics, he looks more like the “pruner” who, in a time of drought, had no choice but to cut away some branches in order to preserve the roots. The provincial capital in Taipei and the railway operations he confirmed remain part of Taiwan’s operating backbone to this day.

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