The Awakening of the East: Siberia—Japan—China

by Pierre Leroy-Beaulieu

After the diplomatic wrangling which followed the war, a lull occurred in the summer of 1897 in the Far East. Each of the European Powers interested in China—Russia, France, and England—had obtained her share of the spoil. That of Germany was generally deemed modest, but it was believed she had no political interest in the Celestial Empire, and was quite content to develop her commerce. Meanwhile Russia and Japan had patched up their quarrel in Korea. Doubtless their arrangements were not of a definite character, and their mutual ambitions rather dormant than satisfied; but the advantages already obtained, and the preparations which both nations would have to make in order to be ready when they wished to return to the game, seemed to promise a respite for some years to come. Russia was constructing her railway, which, notwithstanding all the diligence brought to bear upon its completion, was not expected to reach the river Amur until the end of 1899, and the Pacific until 1903 or 1904. Japan, whilst preparing for the arduous task of reorganizing Formosa, was arming to the teeth, so as to be ready in case of trouble with Russia, which she feared inevitable. She doubled her army, and ordered a first-class fleet to be built in Europe and America, which was to insure her maritime supremacy on the coasts of China, but which could not be ready until 1904 or 1905. France, having definitely pacified Tongking, was occupied in studying the route of the various railway lines which had been conceded to her. England was hastening the construction of her railways in Burmah, and sending her steamers into the West River, while her capital, amalgamated with that of Germany and America, had the larger share in the industrial movement which had been created in Shanghai, and seemed likely to extend to other ports, especially after the treaty of Shimonosaki.

China herself, profiting by this lull, returned to her old sleepy habits: she had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing. When her chief statesman, Li Hung-chang, was sent to Europe and America in 1896, it was not only because he was better equipped than anyone else, by his long intercourse with foreigners, to treat with them, but principally because he was in disgrace. This mission had been offered to Prince Kung, and even to Prince Ching, the Emperor’s uncles. ‘What have we done,’ these illustrious personages probably exclaimed, ‘that we should be subjected to this humiliation, and sent on a mission to the barbarians?’ The tour of Li Hung-chang was, therefore, intended as a severe punishment, supplemented by the loss of his peacock’s feather and his yellow jacket. If the observations which are attributed to him with respect to progress are true, his influence must incontestably have diminished, possibly owing to the vicissitudes to which he has been subjected since his return to China. Be this as it may, one thing is clear: he has not hitherto been able to overcome either the Court prejudices or those of the overwhelming majority of the literati.

The only progress made has been permission for the construction, under the direction of English and American engineers, of a line from Tien-tsin to Peking, to slightly prolong beyond the Great Wall the one which starts from Tien-tsin and the mouth of the Pei-ho, and ascends northwards along the coast of Pe-chi-li, and to authorize the reconstruction of the little line from Shanghai to its deep-water port, Woosung. These works organized in those parts of the Empire most frequented by Europeans, in the great open port of Shanghai, where half the foreign population of China lives, and in the capital, the residence of the diplomatic corps, were calculated to create an illusory effect. The English may also have wished to unite Peking to the sea, which they dominated in the Far East as elsewhere, to spite Russia for having installed herself in Manchuria. A longer railway from Peking to Hankow, traversing over 650 miles of the heart of China, had been projected since 1889, and a Chinese railway director named Sheng had been commanded to collaborate in the matter of its construction with Li Hung-chang and his rival, the celebrated Chang-Chih-Tung, Viceroy of Hankow. Much more progressive in all probability than Li Hung-chang, Sheng seemed really desirous of building this line; but he insisted that the material should be manufactured in China, and to this effect he had erected at Hanyang, near Hankow, and his capital Wu-chang, three towns which in reality form one vast city, an immense foundry, which was not likely, at any rate for many years to come, to supply the necessary material. After the War the united efforts of the Ministers of France and Belgium had obtained permission for a Franco-Belgian financial syndicate to construct the line for the Chinese Government, and then to exploit it. Obstacles, however, were thrown in the way, and although the Chinese had commenced the works on the Peking side, they were stopped in the autumn of 1897, owing to difficulties which had arisen concerning the interpretation of several clauses in the contract. It was the old story of Chinese shifty dilatoriness, and nothing came of any one of the reforms proposed, civil or military.

Momentarily satisfied by their newly-acquired privileges, the foreigners ceased, for the time being, clamouring for fresh favours. Everything was calm at Peking, and no one seemed to see any grave event likely to occur in the Far East, at any rate, before the termination of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which would give Russia the chance of making an advance step, when all of a sudden, in the month of November, 1897, Europe learnt with surprise that Germany had landed sailors in the Bay of Kiao-chau, in the Shan-tung Peninsula. The motive for this unexpected movement, we were assured, was to put pressure on the Government at Peking to conclude certain long-standing negotiations connected with the assassination of two German missionaries, and which, as usual in China, dragged unconcernedly along. At first the importance of this matter did not seem to create the impression that might have been expected. Many even believed that it was but an ingenious artifice on the part of the German Emperor to display the uses of a navy, and to force the Reichstag to vote the necessary credit for the increase of the fleet. But when William II. sent into the Far East his brother Prince Henry, in command of a squadron, requesting him at the time of his departure to make the weight of his ‘mailed fist’ felt, if need arose, there was now no possible doubt that the occupation of Kiao-chau was definitive, and that Germany was paying herself, tardily, it is true, but with less ceremony than her allies, for the services she had rendered to China in 1895. She had taken, no doubt, a long time about it, for she was hesitating as to which place she should choose for the naval station she was anxious to establish in the Far East.

If the landing at Kiao-chau had been thoroughly matured, it, nevertheless, appeared that the Berlin Cabinet had not taken the precaution to insure the consent of the other Powers. It was asked if Russia herself, who had her eye on this bay, in which her Far Eastern squadron had passed the winter of 1896–97, had not been caught napping. When the occupation of the bay became known in England, public opinion became violently excited. Although Germany seemed to have gradually detached herself from the Franco-Russian group, and to have approached Great Britain, and although English and German banks combined had agreed in 1897 to float a second Chinese loan of £16,000,000 on the European market, and notwithstanding that the finances of the two countries had often co-operated in China, the cordiality which exists between the subjects of Queen Victoria and those of her grandson were even now strained in the Far East. As soon as the occupation of Kiao-chau became known, there was a positive explosion of invective throughout the English press, soon followed by an avalanche of jokes when William II. toasted his brother, on the eve of his departure for the Chinese Seas, in an amusingly melodramatic speech. The misadventures of Prince Henry, who was delayed by divers accidents, and constantly obliged to coal at English naval stations, added not a little to the general and very ironical merriment.

It was not so much the action of Germany that gave rise to genuine anxiety in England as the fear that the Government of the Tsar might take advantage of it to make another advance in North China. If it mattered little to the English that Russia should occupy a harbour free of ice throughout the year, they were greatly exercised at the prospect of her approaching the capital of the Celestial Empire close enough to obtain direct influence in Chinese affairs. England insisted that a port of this sort should be open to the commerce of all nations, precisely like her own Hong-Kong or the Treaty Ports. Thus, while Mr. Balfour, in the early days of 1898, almost invited the Russians to secure for themselves an issue to the open sea, a few days later another of Her Majesty’s Ministers—Sir Michael Hicks-Beach—declared, amid the applause of the entire press, ‘that the British Government was absolutely determined, at any cost, even at the risk of war, that the “open door” in China should not be closed.’ In order to oppose the quiet advance of Russia, Great Britain anticipated her by appropriating her hitherto successful financial policy, and offered to lend the “Son of Heaven” £16,000,000, which he particularly wanted. This last of the three great Chinese loans was the least guaranteed. The Customs receipts no longer sufficed to assure the interest, and it therefore gave the lender a greater excuse for meddling in the internal administration, and to exercise the stronger pressure on the politics of Peking. The conditions for this loan included the addition to the list of open ports of Talien-wan, in the peninsula of Liao-tung, which Russia had long coveted. By throwing it open to the commerce of all the Powers, its appropriation by any one of them would be rendered very difficult, if not impossible.

The game was certainly very well played, but in order to carry it to an issue, it was necessary to have a sufficient force on the spot to impose upon China the acceptation of its conditions. Now, the season was not propitious; in winter, when the Pei-ho is frozen over, Russia must remain more powerful at Peking than England. Scared by the threats of M. Pavloff, the Russian Chargé d’Affaires, the Tsung-li-Yamen dared not accept the demands of Sir Claude Macdonald, the English Minister, notwithstanding the energetic manner in which they were presented.

The direct loan was consequently not concluded, Talien-wan was not opened, and Great Britain had to content herself with an agreement signed at the end of February, 1898, in virtue of which she obtained, however, some very important concessions. European steamers were, after June, 1898, to be allowed to navigate in all the waters of the Empire. No part of the basin of the Yang-tsze-Kiang was ever to be ceded or rented to any foreign Power; a port was to be opened in the province of Yunnan, and the position of Inspector-General of Customs was to be reserved exclusively to a British subject, so long as British commerce should hold the first rank in the foreign commerce of China. The value of these concessions is apparent when we consider that the basin of the Yang-tsze is the richest and most thickly-peopled part of the Middle Kingdom. As a commentary upon this agreement, the House of Commons in March included in the Address to the Throne: ‘That it was of vital importance for the commerce and influence of Great Britain that the independence of China should be respected.’ In the course of the discussion Mr. Curzon, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, declared in the first place that England was opposed to any attack upon the independence or integrity of China, and that in the second she would resist any attempt to close any Chinese port to her commerce, so long as it was open, or to be opened, to the commerce of any other nation, and that, moreover, she was determined to maintain in their integrity all the privileges which she had obtained by the treaty of Tien-tsin in 1858. This was the enunciation of the famous policy known as the ‘open door.’

Meanwhile, Germany, in the same month of March, made China ratify the occupation of Kiao-chau, which had been leased to her for ninety-nine years, and which she hastened, it is true, to declare a free port. An extensive radius of railways was at the same time conceded to her in Shan-tung, which she had constituted a ‘sphere of interest,’ and the right of pre-emption on all the railway and mining concessions which the Chinese Government might grant in that province.

Russia, on her side, alarmed at the Anglo-Chinese negotiations, came to the conclusion that if she delayed her occupation of the peninsula of Liao-tung any longer, she would risk, if not being forestalled by a rival, at least witnessing the creation of international interests calculated to render the execution of her projects more difficult. She hesitated no longer, and on March 27th, 1898, obliged China to sign the Convention ceding to her the lease of Port Arthur and Talien-wan, and the authorization to construct a branch line, uniting these ports to the East Chinese Railway. Thus she obtained her object The Trans-Siberian had now a terminus on the open sea, and could threaten Peking from the entrance of the Gulf of Pe-chi-li. It looked for a moment as though the long deferred struggle between the Whale and the Elephant were really about to take place. Two English cruisers were stationed at Port Arthur when this point was ceded to Russia. They put to sea, but on March 29th the formidable British Far East fleet, which had been immensely increased during the winter, was mobilized, one part steaming towards the north, while the other remained at the mouth of the Yang-tsze, ready to occupy, so it was said, the Chusan Islands, which command the entrance to the river. Russia was exceedingly prudent, and, in order not to add the powerful support of Japan to that of England, on March 18th she renounced all active intervention in Korea, and left that country open, if not precisely to the political action, at least to the economic interest of the Land of the Rising Sun. A conflict was averted, but the inevitable opposition of Russian and English interests, added to an accumulation in China Seas of warships of every nationality, hastily sent there after the affair of Kiao-chau, kept up a well-founded feeling of anxiety and irritation in the minds of the British public, further increased by a Franco-Chinese agreement signed in April. France remained, according to her habitual policy, confined in the poor regions of the south, but obtained from China the promise not to alienate on any account the territory comprised in the three frontier provinces of Tongking, and never to cede to any other Power than France the island of Hainan. To these clauses were added the renewal of the concession of the Yunnan Railway, and finally the cession on a long lease of the Bay of Kwang-chau-Wang, situated on the eastern coast of the Lei-chau Peninsula opposite Hainan, and, moreover, the Chinese engaged to appoint a French Director-General of Posts. This, of course, was an answer to the promise obtained by Great Britain respecting the Director-General of Customs, and it might have been of great importance to the French by placing in their hands the telegraph lines of the Celestial Empire which joined, independently of the British cable, the lines in Indo-China which stretched to the Russian lines in Siberia and thence on to Paris. Notwithstanding the great political interest at stake, this advantage was unhappily allowed to lapse, no Director-General of Posts has been nominated, this post still remaining united to that of the Customs, under the direction of Sir Robert Hart. With respect to the other concessions obtained by France, it does not appear that England or any other Power need be much concerned about them. Hainan may have some importance to France, who could never permit any other Power to establish itself at the entrance to the Gulf of Tongking. As to the harbour of Kwang-chau, which is not of the first rank, the mouth being narrow, it does not extend the French sphere of action, but leaves her mewed up where she was in the far south. It has only brought her annoyances, and is certainly not a strategical point of primary importance, whence she might menace the position of her rivals in the China Seas.