Japa nese government officials, fully aware that the Japa nese public would
regard this new concession as outrageous, withheld any public announce-
ment in Japan until May of the following year. When they announced it,
they did not refer to the pressure of foreign governments but explained that
they were returning the Liaodong Peninsula as a magnanimous Japa nese
gesture to the Chinese. As expected, when the announcement was fi nally
made the Japa nese press exploded. Why did Japan, which had won the war
and was fi nally ending its unequal treaties, still have to bow down to the
demands of the Western powers? Japan, as the Japa nese press announced,
was not yet fully welcomed as a world power. Adding to the affront, three
years later the Rus sians would take over the Liaodong Peninsula and begin
to use Port Arthur as a warm- water port.
Just as the Chinese used Li Hongzhang as a scapegoat after he had
bowed to pressures he could not control, the Japa nese press was full of ac-
counts that scapegoated the Japa nese diplomats who had bowed to foreign
pressures, when in fact they had lacked power to resist. Some Japa nese pa-
triots were already beginning to calculate how Japan could continue to
gain strength and eventually overturn the concessions to the Western
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Rivalry in Korea and the Sino- Japanese War, 1882–1895
powers. A de cade later, when Japan defeated Rus sia in the Russo- Japanese
War, it would be able to do just that and reacquire rights to the Liaodong
Peninsula.
The Impact of the Japa nese Victory
China did not yet have a large public that followed national and interna-
tional events. Some in inner China scarcely knew there had been a war in
China’s Northeast. But the elites, the bureaucrats, and the growing number
of educated youth were devastated by China’s defeat. Not only did China
lose a war, it also lost its instinctive pride in the superiority of the Chinese
civilization that had thrived for more than two millennia. The defeat was a
heart- rending disaster, a humiliation that led many of the educated elites
to question some of their most fundamental beliefs. Although many in
China recognized that, realistically, they had no choice but to submit to
Japan’s dominance, the outcome brought not only economic disaster but
also a spiritual void: they had no clear moral compass for navigating the
new era.
The foreign powers, observing China’s weakness after losing to Japan,
took advantage of new opportunities to encroach on Chinese territory. In
1897 Rus sia forced China to allow it to build the Chinese Eastern Railway,
linking Vladivostok and Manchuria and cutting 350 miles off the route of
the Trans- Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok. In March 1898
Rus sia received a twenty- five- year lease for the use of Port Arthur, the port
that Japan had been denied despite its military victory. Rus sia’s expanding
influence in China created threats not only for China but also for Japan,
threats that would later spark the Russo- Japanese War in 1904.
In 1897 Germany took over Qingdao in Shandong. England took out a
ninety- nine- year lease on the New Territories just north of Hong Kong.
France opened a railway from Hanoi to Kunming in Yunnan and acquired
a ninety- nine- year lease to use the port of Zhanjiang in western Guang-
dong. France, England, and the United States expanded their presence in
the foreign concessions in Shanghai and Tianjin. Throughout China, the
foreign powers used their bases along the coast and inland to expand their
economic and cultural activities.
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china and japan
Even the Japa nese had been surprised by the speed of their victory. Japa-
nese statesmen were convinced that their country had now risen to be-
come one of the handful of modern countries in the world. On the eve of
the Sino- Japanese War, England had already signed a treaty to end extra-
territoriality. In the settlement with China after the war, Japan became a
colonial power like the advanced nations of Eu rope by acquiring Taiwan,
and it was preparing to show the world that the Japa nese could be model
colonialists. The Triple Intervention, however, forcing Japan to withdraw
from the Liaodong Peninsula, was an infuriating sign that Japan was still
not fully accepted by the West. The Japa nese became even more determined
to play a new role, as the leader of East Asia, in standing up to the chal enges
of the West.
Paradoxically, Japan’s military had defeated China’s military because
Japan had focused not only on its military strength but also on overall mod-
ernization. Japan’s victory did not derive from the size of its military or
from its modern ships and weapons. China had highly talented military of-
ficers and officials who had passed difficult examinations on the Confucian
classics, but Japan had more officials trained in science, technology, public
education, industry, commerce, transportation, communication, law, local
administration, public health, and foreign affairs. Through nearly universal
public education and basic military training, Japan had turned its peasants,
warrior- administrators, and town and city dwellers into a relatively unified
body of citizens who took pride in their nation. Nevertheless, Japan was
still a relatively poor developing country. It was experiencing serious do-
mestic difficulties and internal conflicts as a result of the forced march to
modernization. But its 1895 victory strengthened national pride and the de-
termination to continue modernizing. It also strengthened the drive for
continued Japa nese expansion in Asia.
China’s “self- strengthening” policies had concentrated more narrowly
on upgrading its military and technology. China had acquired ships, can-
nons, and rifles. It had built arsenals and established institutes to teach for-
eign languages. It also had many talented individuals who had learned a
great deal about the outside world, but China lacked a governing system
that could make good use of these individuals. It lacked an organ ization of
bureaucrats with both a broad perspective and the specialized knowledge
required to administer a complex and changing society. It lacked citizens
. 130 .
Rivalry in Korea and the Sino- Japanese War, 1882–1895
who had a civic education and a common culture. The shocking defeat by
Japan caused many in China to believe that the Chinese imperial system
and the leadership by the Manchus were obstacles to pro gress, and that
urgent changes were needed. When such opportunities arose several years
later, many ambitious young people would travel abroad to gain the knowl-
edge necessary to help build a system that would make China rich and
power ful and that would restore the glory of its ancient civilization. The
country where most of those Chinese young people would go to study was
China’s recent adversary, Japan.
. 131 .
chapter five
Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing
China, 1895–1937
. with Paula S. Harr
ell .
Japan’s unexpected victory in the Sino- Japanese War rattled the
geopo liti cal landscape in East Asia. With the signing of the Shimonoseki
Treaty in 1895 and a commercial treaty with China the following year, Japan
in effect became a treaty- port power, joining the ranks of the Eu ro pe ans
who had controlled the terms of trade with China— and with Japan until
1894— for the past fifty years. Practices once exclusive to Eu rope’s China
playbook were now Japan’s to employ: most- favored- nation rules, exemp-
tions from local laws, tariff controls, and the threat of force. Long used to
arranging trade- offs among themselves, members of the old club responded
unevenly to the fact that they had a new competitor, forcing Japan to re-
turn Liaodong, for example, yet acquiescing to China’s cession of Taiwan.
Japan also got a thumbs-up for its newly acquired inland navigation and
manufacturing rights in China, benefits extended to all powers under most-
favored- nation status. Apart from Liaodong, the focus of the Eu ro pe ans
was not on curbing Japan but on getting what ever concessions they could
as soon as they could— rights to develop railways, ports, and mines—
breaches of sovereignty that Western cartoonists at the time portrayed as
“carving up the Chinese melon.”
The Japa nese public was treated to similar images of a weak China, fallen
in global rankings below Japan. Widely distributed war time prints showed
Chinese soldiers in plain tunics, poorly armed, surrendering to Japa nese
troops that were as well equipped and outfitted as any Eu ro pean fighting
force. Informed about the war not only visually but also through extensive
press coverage, many Japa nese readers were publicly critical of their govern-
ment for caving in on Liaodong. Tokyo stood fast on this point, but it was
. 132 .
Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
clear that views mediated in an active press had to be considered in making
foreign policy. Politicians calling for a Japan- led “Asia for the Asians” policy
several years later were both leading and following a newly nationalistic
public, confident of Japan’s place in the world.
Public opinion, in the sense of people informed, engaged, and voicing
views in newsprint, barely existed in China before 1895. The vast majority
of China’s 400 million people, rural and illiterate, were totally unaware of
the short but devastating war that had been confined to China’s faraway
Northeast. Urban educated Chinese were eager followers of the news,
but reporting on the conflict was limited to a few limited- circulation news-
papers published in Shanghai. Only the se nior bureaucrats running the war
and a younger cohort just entering government ser vice were fully apprised of
China’s mounting losses at the front and the tough negotiations that fol-
lowed. Announcement of the terms of the treaty drew angry protests from
younger bureaucrats, but this was short lived, effective only in highlighting
the painful real ity that Japan had taken the lead in Asia, leaving China
behind. China’s crushing defeat had exposed the shortcomings of its provin-
cially based military upgrading proj ects that gave priority to self- reliance
over outside assistance, while validating Japan’s central y directed moderniza-
tion program, with its unabashed commitment to cultural borrowing
from the West. Those at the highest levels of government made two prag-
matic calculations: first, that a tilt to Japan could be a useful counter-
weight to the growing demands from the Western powers, and, second,
that taking lessons from a modernizing Japan could be a shortcut to China’s
rejuvenation. Japa nese leaders agreed on both counts.
The early de cades of the twentieth century saw a remarkable turnabout.
For the first time in their shared history there was a reversal in the one-
way flow of culture from China to Japan. The laihua, or come- and- be-
transformed- by- China assumption behind the Tang- Nara encounter
thirteen centuries earlier, was replaced by the notion of Japan as a mediator
of modern global culture. China engaged in a purposeful series of pro-
grams to learn from the Meiji development experience. Not only was there
a reversal in the roles of teacher and student, there was also a vast difference
from earlier centuries in the frequency of contacts and the number of people
involved. For all the critical input from China as a model civilization, Japa-
nese travelers to China from the seventh to the seventeenth centuries were
. 133 .
china and japan
few and far between, and thereafter the numbers dwindled to next to
nothing under Japan’s centuries- long ban on foreign travel. In contrast, as
the twentieth century opened, hundreds of Chinese officials visited Japan,
hundreds of Japa nese teachers and advisers worked in China, and thousands
of Chinese students— a conservative estimate suggests 50,000 up until
1937— studied in Japa nese institutions. The scale of cultural contacts was
unpre ce dented and the impact was far- reaching.
Assessing Japan’s Victory
Li Hongzhang, aging, disgraced after Shimonoseki, was out of the limelight
in the immediate aftermath of the 1895 war, having been dispatched on a
trip around the world. Taking up the baton on questions of domestic
reform and relations with Japan were provincial heavyweights Zhang
Zhidong, Liu Kunyi, and Yuan Shikai. Like Li Hongzhang, they were Han
Chinese loyal to the throne, builders of the private regional forces that had
saved the Manchu- Qing dynasty from certain collapse after the midcentury
rebellions. Although nine months of war had discredited thirty years of self-
strengthening, these were capable, talented leaders who had engaged in a
rational, ambitious strategy of building regional arsenals, dockyards, and
supporting industries, and using Western advisory help for the production
and procurement of advanced weaponry. Yet when it came to the test, Japan’s
fast- track modernization strategy, of which military upgrading was a part,
but only a part, of the total package, had succeeded where China’s single-
sector approach had failed. If the 1895 conflict demonstrated anything,
reported a leading Japa nese politician, it was the essential link between
public education and national strength. The reason China lost, he argued,
was that its illiterate, demoralized troops were no match for Japan’s highly
motivated, well- trained Imperial Army.
The need for a serious course correction was on the minds of China’s
postwar governing class, from se nior officials like Zhang Zhidong to as-
piring bureaucrats like Kang Youwei and local community leaders making
their way in business and other new professions. Within a few years, im-
ages hardened: Zhang was labeled a Han sellout to the Manchu establish-
ment; Kang, an out- of- touch constitutional monarchist; and local leaders,
too self- serving. But in the gloom of the immediate aftermath of China’s
. 134 .
Japa nese Lessons for a Modernizing China, 1895–1937
defeat,
things were more fluid, and what to do about China was the subject
of debate in numerous reform clubs that sprouted up after the war. Should
China simply develop new talent to manage the old bureaucracy or funda-
mentally restructure the basic governing institutions? On such issues, Zhang
and his se nior colleagues, though conservative to the core, were willing to
lend a sympathetic ear to younger politicians such as Kang Youwei. Kang,
who had talked reform with Zhang as early as 1886, regarded Zhang as an
inspiring model of the innovative governor vigorously implementing devel-
opment proj ects in the provinces under his jurisdiction. Zhang also found
Kang in ter est ing. When Kang or ga nized his own reform club several
months after the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in April 1895, Zhang’s
name was on the roster of the forty- three members, along with Liu Kunyi
and Yuan Shikai.
Suddenly Japan, unexpected victor in the recent war, was on the minds
of China’s reform advocates. However, what Japan had to offer in the way
of development lessons was not clear. Japanese expertise was virtually non-
ex is tent. China had posted diplomats in Tokyo beginning in the late 1870s,
but most worked in a cultural bubble, publishing collections of poetry ad-
mired by their Japa nese literary friends, rather than reporting on current
events in Japan’s modernizing society. There were exceptions. In 1887, after
years of effort and references to some 200 Japa nese sources, Huang Zunxian,
legation counselor in Tokyo, completed a multivolume study covering Meiji
Japan from A to Z—from popu lar rights to universal education and the ac-
quisition of advanced technology from abroad. The Chinese were foolish,
he told his readers, to sneer at all foreigners as barbarians, a bit of criticism
that contradicted the prevailing Chinese opinion, somewhere between con-
fidence and condescension, that if a second- rate country like Japan could
achieve success in thirty years, China could do it in three.
Kang Youwei, agreeing with Huang in substance and likely aware of
Huang’s work in pro gress, became more vocal about the need to study the
Meiji experience. His words had carried little weight in the 1880s, in part
because he was an unknown minor official, in part because Japan was just
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