A joint note was then presented to the Tokio Government by Russia, France and Germany, under which Japan was recommended not to occupy any of the Chinese mainland permanently.
The Japanese, finding this force arrayed against them, stated that they "yielded to the dictates of magnanimity, and accepted the advice of the three Powers."
Japan gave up the whole of her continental acquisitions under the war, and retained only Formosa; so the "integrity of China" seemed to be preserved for the time.
The Japanese people were shocked at this incident. The attitude of Russia and France they could understand, but Germany, who had been worming her way into Japan's good graces by professions of friendship and who was wholly uninterested in the ownership of Manchuria, seemed to have joined in robbing Japan of the fruits of her victorious war merely to establish a title to Russia's goodwill, and to renew the good relations with Russia which had been broken by the Franco-Russian entente of the years 1891-1895.
In pursuit of her aim of an outlet to Siberia, Russia assisted China in the payment of the Japanese war indemnity, and obtained the right to carry the Siberian railway to Vladivostock, this giving her a grasp on Northern Manchuria. By a secret arrangement with Germany, Russia subsequently obtained a "lease" of the Liao-tung Peninsula, giving the assurance that Port Arthur would be an "open port" for the trade of all nations; but as it transpired that Port Arthur was unsuited to mercantile trade, it became solely a naval base and the "open port" was established at Dalny.
On the 20th June, 1895, France entered into a convention with China under which she obtained certain railway and mining rights in Kiang-si and Yun-nan, and the signing of this convention brought China into conflict with Great Britain.
Great Britain could hardly regard with equanimity the growth of Russian influence in the north; she therefore demanded and obtained a lease of Wei-hai-wei on the Shantung Peninsula, occupied Wei-hai-wei immediately upon its evacuation by the Japanese, and threw the port open to outside trade.
In the meantime Germany considered that she had received no reward for her share in supporting France and Russia in compelling the retrocession of Liao-tung; in fact China could not be brought to see that Germany's place in "world politics" entitled her to annex any portion of the Chinese Empire.
On 1st November, 1897, however, two Roman Catholic missionaries, who were German subjects, were most conveniently murdered near Kiau-Chau, and, ostensibly to get compensation for this outrage on German kultur, Germany proceeded to seize Kiau-Chau.