After the battle of Pingyang, the Japanese army halted, and it was not until after they received re-enforcements under Marshal Yamagata that they resumed their forward movement. On October 10 their advance guard reached the Yalu, a river broad and difficult of passage, behind which was stationed a considerable Chinese army, which, however, after a nominal resistance, soon retreated. In the abandoned positions on the northern bank of the Yalu, the Japanese captured a vast quantity of material of war, including 74 cannons, over 4,000 rifles, and more than 4,000,000 rounds of ammunition. It was supposed that the retreating Chinese force would make a stand at Feng Hwang, but, on reaching that town, October 30, the Japanese found it evacuated, and were informed that the Chinese soldiers had dispersed.
While Marshal Yamagata was beginning the invasion of China from the direction of Corea, another Japanese army, under Marshal Oyama, had landed on the Liau-Tung, or Regent's Sword Peninsula, with the aim of capturing the Chinese naval station of Port Arthur. Even in Chinese hands, this was a redoubtable stronghold. It had 300 guns in position, and the garrison numbered some 10,000 men, while the attacking force did not exceed 13,000, although we should bear in mind that it was aided by the Japanese fleet. After landing at the mouth of the Huhua-Yuan River, about 100 miles north of Port Arthur, the Japanese advanced south, and took the fortified city of Chinchow, without incurring any loss. The next day they reached Talienwan, where the Chinese had five heavily armed batteries, and a considerable garrison, which, however, on the approach of the enemy, abandoned the post without firing a shot. In the forts at this point were found over 120 cannons, two and a half million rounds of ammunition for the artillery and nearly 34,000,000 rifle cartridges. On November 20, 1894, the Japanese army was drawn up in front of Port Arthur, and the fleet prepared to co-operate in the action. The attack began in the morning of November 22, and, although, in one quarter, the Chinese offered sturdy resistance, yet, by the end of the day, with the loss of no more than 18 men killed and 250 wounded, the Japanese were in possession of the strongest position in China, a naval fortress and arsenal on which $30,000,000 had been spent.
Throughout December the force under Marshal Yamagata pushed forward into Manchuria, but met there with more vigorous opposition than it had hitherto encountered. In the fight at Kangwasai, the Japanese lost 400, and, in the capture of the town of Kaiting, 300 killed and wounded. About the middle of January, 1895, the Japanese began operations against Wei- hai-Wei, the naval stronghold on the northern coast of Shangtung, in which the remnant of China's fleet had taken refuge. Although not so strong as Port Arthur, this harbor is considered one of the keys to the Gulf of Pechihli. On January 20 the Japanese troops began to land at Yungchang, a little west of the point to be attacked, and, on the 26th, they appeared at the gates of Wei-hai-Wei. About half of the beleaguered garrison consisted of 4,000 sailors from the fleet, under Admiral Ting, who was to show himself a leader of courage and energy. The assault on the land side of Wei-hai-Wei began on January 29, and continued throughout that and the following day. At certain points, where Admiral Ting's squadron was able to act with effect, the Japanese were repulsed, but, eventually, the whole of the land garrison fled panic-stricken to Chefoo. Even then Ting's squadron and the island force continued to resist, and it was not until February 9, when almost all the vessels had been taken or sunk, that he consented to capitulate, after receiving a telegram from Li Hung Chang to the effect that no help could be given him. No sooner were the terms of capitulation agreed upon than Admiral Ting retired to his cabin and took a fatal dose of opium. He had held out for three weeks, whereas Port Arthur had been lost in a day. The war continued for a few weeks longer, the Japanese pursuing their advance in Manchuria, and capturing the two places which are collectively called Newchang, thus threatening Pekin. They now possessed an army of 100,000 men ready to advance upon the Chinese capital. As there was no reason to suppose that Pekin could be successfully defended, the necessity of concluding peace as promptly as possible was recognized. To that end it was needful to appoint a plenipotentiary whose name would convince the Japanese government that the Chinese were in earnest in their overtures. The only two men who possessed the requisite qualifications were Prince Kung and Li Hung Chang. The former, however, being a prince of the imperial family, and the uncle of the reigning emperor, Kwangsu, could not be induced to submit to the humiliation of proceeding to Japan and suing for peace. The only possible selection, therefore, was Li Hung Chang, who was, accordingly, appointed plenipotentiary. He reached Shimonoseki on March 20, 1895, and, four days after his arrival, the success of his mission was greatly promoted by the attempt of a fanatic to assassinate him during his conference with Count Ito, the Japanese representative. The wound was not very serious, but the outrage caused a unanimous expression of sympathy and regret on the part of the Japanese people, and the Mikado sent his own physician to attend the wounded minister. To attest their sorrow for this incident, the Japanese at once granted an armistice, and the terms of peace which they at first proposed were materially mitigated. On April 17 the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, and, on May 8, the ratifications were exchanged at Chefoo. The terms of the original treaty were these: First, China was to surrender Formosa and the Pescadores Islands and the southern part of the Shingking province, including the Liau-Tung, or Regent's Sword Peninsula, and of course, also, the naval fortress of Port Arthur. China was likewise to pay in eight installments a money indemnity of 200,000,000 Kuping taels, or, say, $160,000,000. She was also to grant certain commercial concessions, including the admission of ships under the Japanese flag to the Chinese lakes and rivers, and the appointment of consuls. In view of the completeness of Japan's triumph, these conditions could not be considered onerous, but they, undoubtedly, disturbed the balance of power in the Far East, and, had they been permitted to stand, would have effectually thwarted Russia's plan of advancing southward, and of obtaining an ice-free port. The Czar's government, accordingly, determined to interpose, and, having secured the co-operation of its French ally, and also of Germany, it presented to the Mikado, in the name of the three powers, a request that he should waive that part of the Shimonoseki Treaty which provided for the surrender of the Liau-Tung Peninsula. It was proposed that, in return for the renunciation of this territory on the Chinese mainland, the pecuniary indemnity should be increased by $30,000,000, and that Wei-hai-Wei should be retained until the whole sum should have been paid. The demand was, obviously, one that could not be rejected without war against the three interposing powers, and the odds were too great for Japan to face without the assistance of Great Britain, which Lord Rosebery, then prime minister, did not see fit to offer. The Mikado, accordingly, submitted to the loss of the best part of the fruits of victory, retaining only Formosa and the Pescadores, the value of which is, as yet, undetermined; with the money indemnity, however, Japan has been enabled so greatly to strengthen her fleet that, when all the vessels building for her are completed, she will take rank as a naval power of the first class in the Pacific.
For some time after the revision of the Shimonoseki Treaty, the Chinese seem to have imagined that the Czar had intervened from disinterested motives, but Count Cassini, the Russian minister at Pekin, eventually made it clear that the interposition would not be gratuitous. In what form the payment for Russia's services should be made was, for some time, the subject of debate, but, before Li Hung Chang left China in the spring of 1896, as a special embassador to attend the coronation of Nicholas II. at Moscow, the heads of a convention had been drawn up, and, on Li's arrival in Russia, he signed an agreement which embodied the concessions to be made to the Czar in return for his services. This secret treaty gave Russia the control of the Liau-Tung Peninsula, which she had ostensibly saved, at the cost to China of $30,000,000, and the St. Petersburg government was also to be allowed to build a branch of the Trans-Siberian Railway through Manchuria to Talienwan and Port Arthur. A period of eighteen months elapsed before the details of this momentous agreement became known. On the return of Li Hung Chang to Pekin, he not only failed to recover the viceroyship of Chihli, but he found his relations with the Emperor Kwangsu quite as unsatisfactory as they had been after his return from Shimonoseki. He was restored, indeed, to a seat on the Tsungli Yamen, or Board of Foreign Affairs, but, for twelve months, it seemed as if, despite the support of the Empress-dowager Tsi An, his influence would never revive.
The two years that followed the Shimonoseki Treaty gave a breathing spell to China, and should have been devoted to energetic reforms in the military and naval administration. As a matter of fact, nothing had been accomplished, when, in 1897, a blow fell which brought the Middle Kingdom face to face with the prospect of immediate partition. In November of that year, without any preliminary notice or warning to the Pekin government, two German men-of-war entered the harbor of Kiao Chou, and ordered the commandant to give up the place in reparation for the murder of two German missionaries in the province of Shantung. Germany refused to evacuate Kiao Chou unless due reparation should be made for the outrage on the missionaries, and unless, further, China would cede to her the exclusive right to construct railways and work mines throughout the extensive and populous province of Shantung. This, of course, was equivalent to the demarcation of a sphere of influence. For a time, the Pekin government showed itself recalcitrant, but, in January, 1898, it consented to lease Kiao Chou to Germany for ninety-nine years, and to make the required additional concession of exclusive rights in Shantung. Russia, on her part, did not wait long after the German seizure of Kiao Chou, to put forward her claim for compensation on account of the services rendered in the matter of the revision of the Shimonoseki Treaty. The terms of the Cassini agreement were now gradually revealed. In December, 1897, the St. Petersburg government announced that the Chinese had given permission to the Russian fleet to winter at Port Arthur; in February, 1898, Russia added Talienwan to Port Arthur, but essayed to disarm criticism by declaring that the first-named port would be opened to the ships of all the great powers like other ports on the Chinese mainland. This promise was subsequently qualified, and on March 27 a convention was signed at Pekin giving the Russians the "usufruct" of Port Arthur and Talienwan, which, practically, meant that Russia had obtained those harbors unconditionally, and for an indefinite period. France, on her part, obtained possession of the port of Kwangchowfoo, which is the best outlet to the sea for the trade of the southern province of Kwangsi; she also secured a promise that the island of Hainan should not be ceded to any other power; and, finally, she gained a recognition of her claim, first advanced in 1895, to a prior right to control the commercial development of the province of Yunnan. This claim is as reasonable as that put forward by Germany with reference to the province of Shantung, but it is incompatible with the northeastward development of British Burmah. While these acts, which, virtually, amounted to mutilations of the Middle Kingdom, were being committed by Germany, Russia and France, England undertook to assert the principle of the "open door," the principle, namely, that, whatever territorial concessions might be made by the Pekin government, no nation could be deprived of its treaty rights in the ports ceded. That is to say, American citizens, British subjects, or the subjects of any other power which has a treaty with China containing "the most favored nation" clause, must be allowed to enjoy precisely the same rights in Talienwan, Kiao Chou and Kwangchowfoo as they would have enjoyed had not those places been surrendered to Russia, Germany and France respectively. This principle could only have been enforced by war, in which England would have needed the assistance of Japan; but Japan was not yet ready to engage in a contest, for the reason that she still had to receive $60,000,000 of the war indemnity due from China, and because the war vessels which she had ordered to be constructed in foreign shipyards were not yet sufficiently near completion. Being thus constrained to abandon the hope of maintaining its treaty rights in the ceded parts of China, the British Foreign Office changed its ground and fell back on the policy of exacting an equivalent for the advantages gained by Russia, Germany and France. In the pursuance of this policy it obtained Wei-hai- Wei, which, as we have said, is one of the two keys to the Gulf of Pechihli. It is, however, very inferior to Port Arthur; only by the expenditure of a large sum of money could it be made a naval fortress of high rank, and, even then, it would require a large garrison for its protection. This was not all that England gained, however; she secured a promise from the Pekin government that the valley of the Yangstekiang should never be alienated to any foreign power except Great Britain. The limits of the valley, nevertheless, were not defined, and the Pekin authorities have acted on the hypothesis that the covenant against alienation did not debar them from giving commercial and industrial privileges within the basin to the subjects of European powers other than England. The right to build, for instance, a railway from Pekin to Hangchow has been conferred upon a syndicate nominally Belgian, in which, however, it is understood that Russia is deeply interested. On the other hand, in spite of protests from St. Petersburg, the privilege of extending to Newchwang in Manchuria the railway which already extends some distance in a northeasterly direction from Tientsin, has been secured by a British corporation.
In September, 1898, a palace revolution occurred at Pekin. For some time, the Emperor Kwangsu had been known to be under the influence of a highly intelligent and progressive Cantonese named Kang Yu Wei. At the latter's suggestion, edicts were put forth decreeing important administrative reforms which would have deprived the mandarins of their opportunities of embezzlement, and also indicating an intention to reorganize the educational system of China upon European models. The necessity of such changes is obvious enough if China is to follow Japan in the path of progress, but it is equally plain that the advocacy of them would render the emperor obnoxious to the whole body of mandarins and of the literati. The unpopularity caused by his proposed innovations proved fatal to Kwangsu; for the party at court, headed by the Empress-dowager Tsi An, took advantage of it to arrest and imprison him. Kang Yu Wei, having received warning of the conspiracy, had fled, and succeeded in gaining an asylum under the British flag, but many of the emperor's personal followers were put to death. On September 22, appeared an edict ostensibly signed by Kwangsu announcing that he had requested the empress-dowager to resume authority over the affairs of State. It has been since reported that he has been killed. The immediate effect of the coup d'etat was to place all power at Pekin in the hands of Manchus least friendly to the adoption of European ideas, and more willing to lean upon Russia than upon any other foreign power. The early restoration to high office of Li Hung Chang, who has, for some time, been a useful tool of the St. Petersburg government, and who is a favorite of the empress-dowager, may be looked upon as probable.
THE FUTURE OF CHINA
It is obvious that arterial communication is the first organic need of all civilized States, and pre-eminently of a country so vast and various in its terrestrial conditions as is China. This need has been recognized by the ablest of its rulers, who, from time to time, have made serious efforts to connect the most distant parts of the empire by both land and water routes. The Grand Canal, or Yunho ("River of Transports"), is pronounced as memorable a monument of human industry in its way as is the Great Wall. It is not, however, a canal in the Western sense of the word, but merely, as Richthofen has explained, "a series of abandoned river beds, lakes and marshes, connected one with another by cuttings of no importance, fed by the Wanho in Shantung, which divides into two currents at its summit, and by other streams and rivers along its course. A part of the water of the Wanho descends toward the Hoangho and Gulf of Pechihli; the larger part runs south in the direction of the Yangtse." The Grand Canal links Hangchow, a port on the East China Sea, south of the Yangtse, with Tientsin in Chihli, where it unites with the Peiho, and thus may be said to extend to Tungchow in the neighborhood of Pekin. When the canal was in order, before the inflow of the Yellow River failed, there was uninterrupted water communication from Pekin to Canton, and to the many cities and towns met with on the way. For many years past, however, and especially since the carriage of tribute-rice by steamers along the coast began, repairs of the Grand Canal have been practically abandoned. The roads in China, confined generally to the northern and western sections of the country, are described as the very worst in the world. The paving, according to Baber, "is of the usual Chinese pattern, rough bowlders and blocks of stone being laid somewhat loosely together on the surface of the ground; 'good for ten years and bad for ten thousand,' as the Chinese proverb admits. On the level plains of China, where the population is sufficiently affluent to subscribe for occasional repairs, the system has much practical value. But, in the Yunnari mountains, the roads are never repaired; so far from it, the indigent natives extract the most convenient blocks to stop the holes in their hovel walls, or to build a fence on the windward side of their poppy patches. The rains soon undermine the pavement, especially where it is laid on a steep incline; sections of it topple down the slope, leaving chasms a yard or more in depth." Where traveling by water is impossible, sedan chairs are used to carry passengers, and coolies with poles and slings transport the luggage and goods. The distances covered by the sedan chair porters are remarkable, being sometimes as much as thirty-five miles a day, even on a journey extending over a month. The transport animals—ponies, mules, oxen and donkeys—are strong and hardy, and manage to drag carts along the execrable roads. The ponies are said to be admirable, and the mules unequaled in any other country. The distances which these animals will cover on the very poorest of forage are surprising.
The rapid adoption of steamers along the coast and on the Yangtse has paved the way for railways. Shallow steamers have yet to traverse the Poyang and the Tungting Lakes, which lie near the Yangtse, and Peiho and Canton Rivers, as well as many minor streams. It is the railway, however, that is the supreme necessity. Mr. Colquhoun has pointed out that, except along the Yangtse for the thousand-odd miles now covered by steamers, there is not a single trade route of importance in China where a railway would not pay. Especially would a line from Pekin carried through the heart of China to the extreme south, along the existing trade routes, be advantageous and remunerative. The enormous traffic carried on throughout the Celestial Empire in the face of appalling difficulties, on men's backs, or by caravans of mules or ponies, or by the rudest of carts and wheelbarrows, must be, some day, undertaken by railways. In the judgment of careful observers, too much stress should not be laid on the introduction of the locomotive for strategic purposes. The capital aim of railway construction should be, they think, the development of the interprovincial trade of China, the interchange of the varied products of a country which boasts so many climates and soils. This would bring prosperity to the people, render administrative reforms possible, and open China for the Chinese quite as much as for the European merchant or manufacturer. From the viewpoint of Chinese interests, the most useful lines would be two that should connect Pekin, Tientsin and all the northern part of the country with central and southern China. Trunk lines could be constructed for this purpose without any difficulty. They would pass along the old trade tracks, and would encounter populous cities the whole way. Through eastern Shansi and Honan, for example, to Hangchow on the Yangtse; thence to the Si Kiang and Canton; such lines would be shafts driven through the heart of the Middle Kingdom, connecting the North and the South. For the entire distance, some 1,300 or 1,400 miles, the extent, fertility and variety of the soil are described as remarkable. From the North, abounding in cotton and varieties of grain and pulse, to the South, where many vegetable products of the Orient are met, the redundancy of the population is a striking feature. A constant succession of villages, towns and cities would be transformed into a picture of bustle and business.
The internal economical conditions of China to-day are very much the same as were those of India when railways were introduced. The only difference is that the Chinese people are better off per man, and that the Chinese and Indo-Chinese, unlike the natives of India, are born travelers and traders. Yet, even in India, contrary to expectation, the passenger traffic on the railways has, from the first, exceeded the goods traffic. In 1857, the number of passengers carried by railway in India was 2,000,000; in 1896, it had risen to 160,000,000. In the first named year, the quantity of goods transported was 253,000 tons; in 1896, it was 32,500,000 tons. There has been witnessed in India during those forty years an expansion of commerce which, at the outset of the period, would have been deemed incredible. The imports and exports rose in that time from 400,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 rupees. Forty years ago, India was merely a dealer in drugs, dyes and luxuries; now she is one of the largest purveyors of food grains, fibers, and many other staples. Few persons are aware how favorably the earnings of Indian railways compare with those of other countries. The average earnings of railways in the United States are 3 per cent; in Great Britain, 3.60 per cent; in India, 5.46 per cent. This in spite of the fact that, in India, a man can travel 400 miles within twenty-four hours for the sum of $2.08. The policy of low charges has answered well, the people, on its adoption, at once having begun to travel and to send their produce by rail. In China, also, low rates will be a necessity. Another fact of importance to China is that, out of the 260,000 people employed on Indian railways, 95.66 per cent are natives. Only the higher posts are held by Europeans. In China, the proportions would probably be even more in favor of the native element.