The China Mirage

by James Bradley

  That evening Prince Ito barged into Emperor Gojong’s palace and demanded an audience. The Korean leader refused to see him. Ito forced his way into Gojong’s presence and insisted the emperor summon his prime minister. Ito then shoved a Japanese-drafted agreement in front of the prime minister and ordered him to sign. The prime minister started crying. “Try to imagine what is in my heart!” he pleaded with Ito.73 The prime minister, along with Emperor Gojong, the minister of finance, and the justice minister, refused to sign. But the next day, Ito was able to get the signatures of six lesser Korean cabinet members, the ministers of education, the army, the interior, foreign affairs, agriculture, and commerce and industry. Witnesses recalled Japanese soldiers with drawn bayonets threatening the men and the cries of the Koreans who signed. As Homer Hulbert later wrote, “At the point of the sword, Korea was forced to acquiesce ‘voluntarily’ in the virtual destruction of her independence once for all.”74

  The Japan-Korea Protectorate Treaty began: “The government of Japan, through the Department of Foreign Affairs at Tokyo, will hereafter have control and direction of the external relations and affairs at Korea, and diplomatic and consular representatives of Japan will have the charge of the subjects and interests of Korea in foreign countries.”75

  Korean newspapers courageously published editorials denouncing the treaty. Protesters filled some streets, and shops and schools closed. Japanese firing squads soon quieted things down.

  A week after Japan took control of Korea, Secretary of State Elihu Root finally faced Homer Hulbert. As Hulbert remembered,

  President Roosevelt had hurriedly acknowledged that seizure without a word of warning to the Korean government nor a word to the Korean legation in Washington, and had cabled to our legation to get out of Korea. The State Department then offered to see the written message from Korea, and the writer has in his possession a note from the secretary of state saying that the message is “too late.” It was there 48 hours before President Roosevelt took action and he knew its contents, for one of his secretaries at the White House told me so with his own lips.

  When that written message was handed to the secretary of state he leaned over the table and said to the envoy of the emperor: “Do you want us to get into trouble with Japan?” This he said as Roosevelt’s secretary of state, and it shows the cowardly state of mind to which the administration was reduced by the distant possibility of a clash with Japan. We did not dare to assert our treaty rights nor live up to our treaty obligations.76

  After his friend Prince Ito forced Korea’s hand, Roosevelt finally got around to addressing Emperor Gojong’s plea, and he penned this finely reasoned response to Secretary of State Root:

  I have carefully read through the letter of the Korean Emperor handed to you by Mr. Hulbert, an American long resident in Korea, to whose hand this letter had been entrusted. I understand from you that the Korean representatives here, so far as you know, are unacquainted with the existence of such a letter and that Mr. Hulbert understands that it is the wish of the Emperor that the existence of the letter should be kept secret and nothing said to anyone about it, and particularly not to the Japanese. Of course, these facts render it impossible for us to treat the letter as an official communication, for there is no way in which we could officially act without violating what Mr. Hulbert says is the Emperor’s wish. Moreover, since the letter was written we have been officially notified that the Korean Government has made the very arrangement with Japan which in the letter the Emperor says he does not desire to make. All things considered I do not see that any practical action on the letter is open to us.77

  Korea found few advocates. John Ford, the secretary of the American Asiatic Association, a major trade group, defended Japan’s takeover of Korea because “the true peril of Asia and of the world is the Muscovite, and not the yellow peril.” (The American Asiatic Association’s annual dinner the next year featured this toast: “The United States and Japan—Guardian of the Portal and the Defender of the Open Door.”78) So it went.

  On November 28, 1905, President Roosevelt turned over the U.S. legation building in Seoul to Japan. Roosevelt later wrote a British official that the closing of the U.S. legation was a signal that he, along with England, supported Japan’s control of Korea. A State Department official in Seoul wrote in his diary that his fellow Americans fled Seoul “like the stampede of rats from a sinking ship.”79

  Emperor Meiji appointed Prince Ito to the colonial post of resident-general of Korea, the new boss of Emperor Gojong and Korea, a job that came with a custom-made uniform on which Ito proudly displayed a chestful of shiny medals.

  Resident General Hirobumi Ito (Korea’s new Japanese dictator) and the Korean crown prince (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Roosevelt later claimed he had not betrayed the U.S.-Korea treaty: “The treaty rested on the false assumption that Korea could govern herself well.”80 In his autobiography, Roosevelt wrote, “[Korea was] utterly impotent either for self-government or self-defense.”81 Homer Hulbert concluded, “It was our duty to protest against Japan’s encroachment in Korea… Roosevelt failed to protest the rapacity of Japan in 1905.”82

  Theodore Roosevelt was the first world leader to endorse Japan’s military advancement onto the Asian continent. Roosevelt’s Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Asia assumed the Japanese would push back the Russians, respect the Anglo-American Open Door policy, help Christianize and Americanize China, and maintain the Anglo-Americans’ naval channel. But an American businessman who watched his fellow countrymen abandon Korea observed, “The Japs have got what they have been planning for these many moons and it is clear that Roosevelt played into their hands when he posed as the great peacemaker of the 20th century.”83

  A few years later, an American missionary visited Resident-General Ito in his headquarters nestled on the slope of Mount Namsan, overlooking the city of Seoul. Ito was dressed formally in his resplendent uniform and seated behind an enormous polished desk. On the walls of his cavernous command post, Ito had hung only two pictures. One was a portrait of Meiji. The other, slightly lower than the emperor’s, was a photo of President Theodore Roosevelt. The missionary asked why Ito had so honored the American president. Ito responded, with a smile, “President Roosevelt is a man I admire for he is an honest man. He always means just what he says. He is frank and straightforward and never leaves you in doubt. He gives every man a square deal.”84

  Chapter 4

  THE NOBLE CHINESE PEASANT

  When the Christian prayer first came to China the humblest farmer instantly understood it, so like it was to his: “Our father who are in heaven”… China has embarked upon a vast reformation—inspired by the Christian gospel.… In their great crisis they found the man they needed… the greatest soldier in Asia, the greatest statesman in Asia, America’s friend: Chiang Kai-shek.

  —Henry Luce1

  Days after Secretary Taft and Prime Minister Katsura agreed on Japan’s Monroe Doctrine for Asia, another secret meeting occurred blocks away in hot and humid downtown Tokyo. The participants were Chinese revolutionaries in pursuit of the Mandate of Heaven to rule. (After Japan bested China in the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War, a number of Chinese intellectuals and nationalists traveled to Japan to study its seemingly successful westernizing ways.)

  Dr. Sun Yat-sen was a revolutionary firebrand from Canton, the southern Chinese city that had endured so much at the hands of the sea barbarians. Sun had studied in Hawaii and Hong Kong and had been baptized a Christian by a Congregationalist missionary. Sun, a charismatic dreamer, had led two failed uprisings by the summer of 1905, and Manchu officials sought his head.

  Sun Yat-sen. Sun’s “Three Principles of the People” were Nationalism, Democracy, and People’s Livelihood. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

  Sun’s goal for China was what he called the Three Principles of the People: Nationalism, Democracy, and People’s Livelihood. Nationalism meant the reassertion of the ethnic Han population over Chinese
affairs. In 1638, the Manchu—the ethnic majority in Manchuria—had taken Beijing from the Han and had ruled since then as the Qing dynasty. Sun’s nationalistic calls to kick out the interloping Manchu and the Western foreign devils resonated with the broader Han majority. Democracy promised eventual rule by the people after an interval of political tutelage. Sun believed that China’s masses were not yet ready for democracy and needed a training period during which he would teach them, and then, at some undefined future date, Sun would transition China to full democracy. People’s Livelihood was that happy time that would result from following Sun’s principles.

  Charlie Soong (CPA Media / Pictures From History)

  Sun’s continual headache, apart from simply staying alive, was raising money to support his revolution, which was the subject of this gathering on Sunday, July 30, 1905. As talk turned to fund-raising, eyes turned to Charlie Soong, the richest man in the room.

  Charlie Soong was a wealthy Shanghai publisher and mill owner and one of Sun’s key moneymen. He had been born Han Jiaozhun on Hainan island, south of Canton. At about the age of fifteen, Charlie had made his way to the United States as a laborer. The West Coast of the U.S. was aflame at that time with the “Chinese must go!” pogroms. Soong wisely chose the East Coast, where few Americans had ever seen a Chinese person.

  Southern Methodists in North Carolina took Soong under their wing, introducing him to the word of God and baptizing him in 1880. No longer a poor, faceless Chinese laborer, Charlie became a hot topic of discussion in Southern Methodist parlors. A Chinese person in North Carolina was a rarity—indeed, Soong was the first and only Chinese Christian in the state at that time.2 Southern Methodists realized that they could mold this young Chinese man and then return him to his homeland to help build a Southern Methodist New China.

  Charlie Soong, Duke University, 1881: “The only Chinese Christian in North Carolina.” (CPA Media / Pictures From History)

  Church leaders reached out to thirty-six-year-old Julian Carr of Durham, North Carolina, to assist in that effort. Carr was one of America’s outsized characters, a devout Southern Methodist and a partner in the manufacturing company that produced the Bull Durham brand of tobacco, which he had helped make famous with creative and attractive advertising across America and around the world.

  In April of 1881, Carr met eighteen-year-old Charlie Soong at the Durham train station. They rode in Carr’s horse-drawn carriage to Somerset Villa, one of the South’s grand homes. Soong was suddenly living in a mansion and learning from one of America’s leading Southern Methodists—who also happened to be a marketing genius—about Jesus, business, and life.

  Carr gave Soong a beautiful leather-bound Bible. Durham was a religious town, and Soong observed that every family in Durham had not just one but often a number of Bibles. Indeed, Charlie saw people walking to church on Sundays clutching their personal Bibles like jewels. Furthermore, every classroom in Durham displayed Bibles, as did doctors’ waiting rooms and restaurants. Charlie was amazed; everywhere he turned, it seemed, he saw a Bible.

  In church, Charlie heard Southern Methodist missionaries’ letters read from the pulpit, describing a New China in the process of being Christianized and Americanized. After the letters were read, Soong saw the plate passed for the missions in China and watched in amazement as pew after pew of parishioners put nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars into collection plates. The ushers then heaped the take from the collection plates into one glittering pile, every cent bound for China.

  Trinity College—later renamed Duke University—was North Carolina’s finest Southern Methodist institution of higher learning. Julian Carr was one of the school’s biggest benefactors, and though Charlie lacked academic qualifications, Trinity accepted Soong into its theology department, where he would study Christianity.

  While Trinity carried plenty of prestige as a local institution, the premier Southern Methodist college in the United States was Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee. Bishop Holland McTyeire, who had helped found Vanderbilt, learned of Soong’s progress at Trinity and successfully recruited North Carolina’s only Chinese Christian. Vanderbilt awarded Charlie a degree in theology in 1885.

  Charlie Soong offered hope for a Southern Methodist New China. Soong was an object of fascination not for who he was (a Chinese) but for what he had become (an Americanized Chinese Christian). Perhaps this young man would help the Southern Methodists win China.

  Charlie Soong returned home to China in 1886, assigned to preach to Shanghai’s pagans. He quickly realized what American missionaries had missed: very few of his countrymen wished to be either Christianized or Americanized. As a Chinese who had lived in the United States, Soong understood the difference between the reality in China and America’s New China mirage. Soong had been duly impressed by all the funds flowing to China from the pews of American churches, and he made a practical and, some might say, cynical calculation: while in reality, few Chinese would submit to being Christianized, there was a lot of money to be earned from American Christians who believed that mirage.

  American missionaries were spending a small fortune to print Bibles in the United States and ship those heavy piles of paper across the Pacific. Charlie approached the American Bible Society and secured permission to print much cheaper Bibles in Shanghai. He founded the company that would make him a wealthy man, the Sino-American Press. Soong was soon China’s biggest publisher of Christian books, selling Bibles by the box to Americans chasing the dream.

  Charlie Soong and Sun Yat-sen met for the first time at the Shanghai Methodist church in 1894. Charlie and Sun—a rare pair of English-speaking Chinese Christians—were delighted to learn how much they had in common. They were about the same age, came from the same area—southern China, near Canton—and spoke similar dialects, and both had studied American ways and craved change in China. The men soon became best friends and revolutionary partners. Sun supplied the ideas, and Charlie risked his own life by secretly printing them. And with his own personal fortune and contacts with wealthy Americans, Soong became one of Sun’s behind-the-scenes financiers.

  Soong needed to go to the U.S. to raise funds, but Chinese who entered the United States during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration risked detention. To avoid being held in a Bureau of Immigration pen, in 1905, Soong purchased a Portuguese passport in Macao and came through U.S. customs at San Francisco as a Portuguese citizen. Charlie raised money from patrons in San Francisco, New York, and other cities, but the largest contributor to Sun’s cause lived in Durham, North Carolina.

  Julian Carr—now sixty years old—again rode in his horse-drawn carriage to the Durham train station to welcome Charlie Soong, now forty-two years old. The two friends had done a lot of business together over the past nineteen years, as Carr had helped Charlie diversify his Bible empire and move into wheat and cotton milling. Back in Somerset Villa again, Soong told Carr the exciting news: the American New China dream was about to come true.

  Carr gathered friends to hear Soong make his case, and at Durham’s Old Club, a group of North Carolinians witnessed what no other Americans had ever seen: a nattily dressed, Vanderbilt-educated, North Carolina–baptized Southern Methodist Chinese man describing, in Southern-accented English, the coming of a Christianized New China. To his devout listeners, Charlie was the China mirage made flesh, a living, breathing incarnation of the missionary dream.

  Soong told his audience that Dr. Sun would become China’s George Washington and that Sun’s Three Principles of the People were modeled after Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people.” His sales pitch was believable only because Carr and his friends knew so little. If a revolutionary had come from Germany or England seeking support, the Old Club men could have evaluated his assertions critically, having the benefit of a wealth of prior cultural experiences in Europe. But China to them was a great blank canvas, now skillfully colored in by Soong.

  Soong was especially convincing as he explaine
d Sun’s platform of Nationalism, Democracy, and People’s Livelihood. The gathered men were hearing Sun’s concepts translated from Chinese into English by a Vanderbilt University theology major smart enough to filter and slant. What Charlie termed nationalism meant to most Chinese an intense hatred of all foreigners, especially white barbarians like the men listening to Soong in Durham. Indeed, it was the Manchu leaders’ failure to stop the sea barbarians from slicing New Chinas from Middle Kingdom territory that had convinced most Chinese that the Manchu were losing the Mandate of Heaven. (That was not how Soong explained it to his North Carolina audience.) And while democracy sounded just fine to the Old Club bunch, there was a catch that Charlie did not elaborate on: during the tutelage period, Sun would become a Christian dictator with one-man rule.

  Julian Carr and those like him dug deep into their pockets. Charlie returned to Shanghai with over two million U.S. dollars for Dr. Sun’s revolutionary cause.

  Charlie Soong married well, and by 1897, he had sired three daughters (Ailing, Chingling, and Mayling) and a son (Tse-ven, called T.V.).3 Raised in a world between two cultures, his children were influenced by their father’s Christian faith, his American education and business success, his support for Sun’s revolution, and his ability to leverage the China mirage for financial gain. The Soong family lived in a Western-style house in a New China area of Shanghai carved out by the sea barbarians. They were Chinese and connected to the hundreds of millions who sought the expulsion of foreign devils, but they ate with knives and forks and went to Christian schools.