本文指出,从整体看,旧中国经济没有实现近代化,但各个经济部门不同程度地逐步向近代化迈进。晚清电报线的建设,实现了通讯业的近代化。这在研讨旧中国近代化问题上,很值得注意。19世纪70年代至80年代初,中国已被纳入世界电报网络之中,电报线的设立势在必行。清政府创办电报是在外国战争威胁下应付危局而被动地开展的。本文从资金、电线的建设和保护、经营以及对外交涉等四个方面考察,认为当时电报局采取官督商办的形式有其历史的必然性,并由此形成官线和商线并举的局面。电讯器材依赖外国,后期发展滞缓以及主权不完整三者是晚清电报的历史局限性。 This article points out that, overall, the old Chinese economy did not realize modernization, but various economic sectors gradually made progress toward modernization in varying degrees. The construction of the telegraph line in the late Qing Dynasty realized the modernization of the communications industry. This is worth noting in discussing the issue of the modernization of old China. From the 1870s to the early 1980s, China was included in the world telegraph network. The establishment of the telegraph line is imperative. The Qing government founded the telegraph was carried out passively under the threat of foreign war to cope with the crisis. This paper examines the four aspects of capital, wireline construction and protection, management and foreign negotiation. At the time, it was the historical inevitability of the bureau of the telegraph bureau to take the form of government and merchants to do business, and this formed a situation in which both the official line and the commercial line took the form of both. The dependence of telecommunications equipment on foreign countries, the sluggish development in the later period, and the incomplete sovereignty are the historical limitations of the late Qing power cable.