CHINA AND THE POWERS, 1897–99—‘SPHERES OF INFLUENCE,’ AND THE ‘OPEN
DOOR’
Political calm in the Far East during the summer of 1897—Provisionary
regulation of the questions that divided the Powers, and the
maintenance of old Chinese methods—Landing of the Germans at
Kiao-Chau in Shan-tung in 1897—England’s anger at this act, and
her efforts to avert the probable action of Russia in
Pe-chi-li—Anglo-Chinese Convention of February, 1898—Opening of
all the waterways to European navigation—The policy of the ‘open
door’—China recognises in March, 1898, the occupation of Kiao-chau
and concession of the railway granted to Germany in
Shan-tung—Session to Russia on lease of Port Arthur, and the
immediate occupation of this port—Franco-Chinese Convention,
April, 1898—Divers conventions granted in the Southern Provinces
and session of the Bay of Kwang-chau-wan—Irritation of Great
Britain, who obtains new and important advantages in June,
1898—Session of Wei-hai-wei at the entrance of the province of
Pe-chi-li, and of Kowloon, opposite Hong-Kong—Fresh Anglo-Russian
difficulties in November, 1898—Railway and other concessions
granted to foreigners throughout the Celestial Empire.
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.
Far more important were the cessions of territory soon afterwards made
to Great Britain in compensation for the occupation of the ports of
Liao-tung by the Russians. Their value did not consist in their extent,
which was not considerable, being merely Wei-hai-wei and a little town
in Shan-tung, and 400 square miles of territory in the peninsula of
Kowloon, and immediately opposite Hong-Kong. Both were leased for
ninety-nine years. The strategical value is, however, of the highest
importance. In the peninsula of Kowloon, where the English had up to
this time only a small piece of land, they now came into possession of
all the heights and bays necessary to shelter the port of Hong-Kong from
attack and to insure its extension. Wei-hai-wei, on the other hand, gave
them precisely what they had long coveted—a naval station in the North
of China, so that when their squadron was in these latitudes it would no
longer be obliged to make a voyage of from four to five days in order to
take in provisions or seek shelter at Hong-Kong. Wei-hai-wei, the
fortifications of which were immediately undertaken, in a measure
weakens Port Arthur, the two being exactly opposite each other, with a
stretch of sea of only sixty miles between them, and the former is not
much more distant from the mouth of the Pei-ho. Needless to say, being
in possession of so excellent a station, England with her superior fleet
will necessarily during many years to come be in a position to prevent
the Russian squadron interfering with her projects, and also,
notwithstanding the shortness of the journey, to impede any assistance
by sea being afforded to Russian troops who might be operating in the
north of China. The English, moreover, can from this position, by a
dexterous movement, cut the line of railway between Tien-tsin and the
Great Wall.
Notwithstanding these advantages, the insatiable British public was not
satisfied, and complained that the Government had allowed Germany to
occupy a privileged position in Shan-tung, and had, moreover, promised
not to interfere with her rights in that province, nor to construct a
railway starting from Wei-hai-wei, and, moreover, to consider this place
as a sort of Far Eastern Gibraltar without any commercial pretensions,
thereby consenting to the creation of a German sphere of interest in
opposition to the policy of the ‘open door.’ When Parliament was
prorogued in August, the Chinese Question had been discussed no fewer
than eight times, and the Salisbury Ministry had been frequently and
very bitterly attacked by its own supporters. The intemperate oratory of
certain Ministers, and notably of Mr. Chamberlain, who unhesitatingly
accused Russia of bad faith, and even went so far as to say one must
remember when dealing with Russia the old proverb, ‘He who sups with the
devil must have a long spoon,’ had not a little contributed to excite
public opinion in Great Britain. In order to soothe matters a little,
the Cabinet declared to Parliament that its Minister at Peking had been
authorized to inform the Chinese Government that Great Britain would
lend its support in order to resist an attempt on the part of any Power
to commit an act of aggression against China under the pretext that she
had granted to a British subject the concession of a railway or other
public work.
This was a return to the policy of the ‘open door’ to which England
attaches so much importance. She refused to admit that commercial
privileges should be given to any one Power, or any preference for
public works to be executed; in a word, she would hear of no ‘spheres of
interest.’ Such stipulations are, indeed, diametrically opposed to the
wording of the treaties, but in these times hardly, except by force or
the threat to use it, can one expect even the most solemn engagements to
be observed. England herself was obliged to concur in the German ‘sphere
of interest’ in Shan-tung. In the months of August and September, 1898,
it was once more feared that there might be trouble between England and
Russia over the matter of the railway from Shan-hai-Kwan to Niu-chwang,
a prolongation beyond the Great Wall of the line between Peking,
Tien-tsin, and Shan-hai-Kwan. The principal bank in the Far East, the
Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, was to build it for the
Chinese Government and exploit it, reserving as security a first
mortgage on the line. Russia intervened, and objected that any railway
concession should be given to any other Power than herself north of the
Great Wall. After considerable discussion, the Powers arrived at an
agreement, and the English company kept the concession, but only
retained a lien on the already constructed Peking-Shan-hai-Kwan line to
the south of the Wall.
In the midst of all the intrigues and unpleasantness which we have just
narrated, Europe has, nevertheless, accomplished at Peking a noteworthy
and unprecedented work. She has not only obtained very advantageous
concessions for her commerce, such, for instance, as the opening to
navigation of all the watercourses on which Treaty Ports are situated,
but also the allotment to the European Customs Administration of the
collecting of _likin_ in the valley of the Yang-tsze, as a security for
the third great loan of £16,000,000. She has also obtained the right to
introduce into China the best machinery for the exploitation of her
natural resources. The English are about to work the coal and iron mines
of Shan-si and Ho-nan, the Germans those of Shan-tung, and the English
and French together the mines of Yunnan. Six thousand miles of railway
are to be constructed, not only at the extremities of the Empire in the
Steppes of Manchuria and on the plateaux bordering Indo-China, but also
in the thickly-peopled central and eastern provinces, from Peking to
Han-kau and Canton, from Tien-tsin to the lower Yang-tsze, in Shan-tung
and around Shanghai, connecting towns of several hundred thousand, and
even over a million inhabitants, through countries at least twice as
densely peopled as France.