CHAPTER XXII

China and Korea—War with China—Naval Reform—Defeat of China—Treaty of Shimonoséki—Peace Terms.

Those who are at all familiar with Chinese history will scarcely have failed to notice one persistent feature of it—the suzerainty that China has either exercised, or claimed to exercise, over neighbouring States which at one time or another have fallen under her domination. This has been the common experience of nearly all countries whose situation on the frontiers of the Chinese Empire has exposed them to invasion by their restless and powerful neighbour. At the time of which we are speaking some of these States had already recovered their independence, which was not, however, always recognized formally by China; in others Chinese suzerainty had been replaced by that of another Power; while in a few instances China, in the wish to evade the responsibilities of a protectorate, had of late years allowed her suzerainty to become almost nominal. This last-mentioned position was that of Korea, when Japan in 1876 concluded the Treaty with that country, to which reference has already been made. For many years previously Chinese suzerainty had ceased to be effective, but it was still asserted by China, and acknowledged by Korea. The despatch from time to time of missions to Peking bearing presents, which the Chinese were justified in regarding as tribute, the form given to correspondence between the two countries, and the ceremonies observed on official occasions, constituted an admission of the status of vassalage. With this acknowledged status the Treaty of 1876 was inconsistent, since its first Article contained the declaration that Korea was an independent State; and in 1882—when Great Britain and America followed Japan’s example by negotiating treaties with that country—China, with an inconsistency equal to that displayed by Korea, weakened her own position as suzerain by making a Treaty with her nominal vassal on the lines of those already concluded between Korea and the three Powers above mentioned. This false step on the part of China strengthened the attitude adopted by Japan in declining to recognize Chinese suzerainty. At the outset, therefore, of Japan’s new relations with Korea the situation as between herself, Korea, and the latter’s nominal suzerain, China, was anomalous and contradictory. In this fact alone lay the seeds of future trouble. Nor was the aspect of affairs in Korea itself such as to offer any assurance that the difficulties which there was every reason to anticipate would not shortly occur.

Its condition was that of an Oriental State in complete decay. Long years of misrule had broken the spirit of the people; the occupant of the Throne was a nonentity in the hands of unscrupulous and incompetent Ministers, who were supported by rival factions struggling with each other for power; there were no regular forces, nor police, worthy of the name; intrigue and corruption prevailed everywhere unchecked; and the resources of the country were wasted by swarms of rapacious officials intent only on enriching themselves.

In these circumstances the appearance on the scene of two neighbouring Powers, each bent on obtaining a predominant influence in the peninsula, could only result in making matters worse than they were before. The introduction of foreign elements into the intrigues of contending factions gave fresh force to domestic quarrels, until increasing disorder in the country culminated in anti-foreign disturbances, in the course of which the Japanese, against whom popular feeling was chiefly directed, were driven out of Seoul, and their Legation destroyed. The puppet King, accused of favouring Japan, was also compelled to abdicate, his father, the Tai-wön-kun, one of the few Koreans who possessed both character and ability, assuming charge of the administration. Thereupon China intervened. Exercising her acknowledged authority as suzerain, she sent a military force, supported by some men-of-war, to Korea to restore order. The Korean capital (Seoul) was occupied, and the Tai-wön-kun arrested and taken to China. This was in 1883. It was then that Yuan Shih-kai, afterwards President of the Chinese Republic, first came into public notice on his appointment as Chinese Resident in Seoul. For a short time after the reassertion of her authority by China, and the restoration of order in the Korean capital, affairs remained quiet, both the Chinese and Japanese Governments maintaining garrisons in Seoul; but in the following year a conspiracy fomented by the pro-Japanese party led to the outbreak of further disturbances, in the course of which a collision occurred between the Chinese and Japanese garrisons, the latter, which was greatly outnumbered, withdrawing to the port of Chemulpo.

The critical situation produced by this collision between the troops of the two Powers in the Korean capital impressed on both Governments the necessity, if further and more serious trouble were to be avoided, of arriving at some understanding in regard to action in Korea. With this object negotiations were opened early in 1885, and in the spring of that year a convention was signed at Tientsin between China and Japan, by which the independence of Korea was recognized. Both Governments agreed to withdraw their forces from Korea, leaving only small detachments as guards for their Legations, and to give each other previous notice “in writing,” should the despatch of troops by either to that country become necessary at any time in the future. A further stipulation provided that the King of Korea should be asked to organize an armed force for the preservation of order and public security, and to engage the services of foreign military experts for this purpose from a foreign country other than China and Japan.

This was still the position of affairs in 1894 under the _modus vivendi_ established by the Tientsin Convention. Though by that agreement China had abandoned her pretensions to suzerainty, the rivalry between the two Powers continued unabated. The interval since 1885 had been marked by constant strife among Korean factions, and the prosecution of busy intrigues between the latter and the Chinese and Japanese, to which the growing interest now taken by Russia in the affairs of the peninsula gave fresh impetus. The Chinese representative in Korea retained the title of Resident, which conveyed, as was intended, the impression of the superiority of his position to those of other foreign representatives; and the influence of China at the Capital—exercised through the masterful Queen, who did not conceal her pro-Chinese sympathies—was predominant. Nevertheless, what advantage China enjoyed in these respects over her rival was more than counterbalanced by the political and commercial activity displayed by Japan. Proof of this had already been given by the prompt action of the Japanese Government in obtaining redress for the results of the disturbances of 1882 and 1884, and by the steadily increasing volume of Japanese trade.

In the spring of 1894 the value of the arrangement under which the two Powers had agreed to conduct their relations with Korea was put to the test by the outbreak of an insurrection in the south of Korea. The Korean troops sent from the Capital to quell the revolt having been worsted in several encounters with the insurgents, the Min party, to which the Queen belonged, appealed to China for assistance. The Chinese Government responded to the appeal by sending troops to Asan, the scene of the revolt, informing Japan at the same time, in accordance with the terms of the Tientsin Convention, of its intention to do so. The Japanese Government replied by taking similar action. The tenour of the correspondence that ensued between the two Governments gave little hope of an amicable settlement of the difficulty, China reasserting the suzerainty she had previously waived, and seeking to impose limits upon Japanese action; while Japan insisted on her right to interfere, and supported it by reinforcing the troops she had already despatched. China at once took similar measures, but the reinforcements sent never reached their destination. The British vessel conveying them, under convoy of Chinese men-of-war, was met and sunk at sea by a Japanese squadron commanded by Admiral (then Captain) Tōgō. A day or two later the Chinese and Japanese forces at Asan came into conflict, with the result that the Chinese troops were defeated and were withdrawn to China. Hostilities had, therefore, already commenced on land and sea when simultaneous declarations of war were made by both Governments on the 1st August.

These first encounters were a true presage of what was to follow. The war thus begun was disastrous for China. By the wide extent of her territories, her vast population, her seemingly inexhaustible resources and her traditions of conquest, not to mention her industrial and commercial activities, she had for centuries filled a big place in the world. Japan, on the other hand, was a comparatively small country, little known, that had just emerged from a long era of seclusion, and was regarded abroad with feelings which at the best, apart from the interest her art inspired, did not extend beyond sympathetic curiosity.

It was quite natural, therefore, that foreigners outside Japan who knew little of the silent progress made since the Restoration should have wondered at her audacity in challenging a neighbour who in all respects appeared to be so much more powerful than herself. In reality, however, the prospects of success for China were hopeless from the first. She was in an advanced stage of decadence. Her foremost statesman, Li Hung Chang, and the whole official hierarchy were notoriously corrupt, the arrogant policy the Government still pursued serving as a cloak to hide the real weakness that lay behind. Her ill-paid army, led by incompetent officers, was without training of a modern kind, or discipline; while her navy was a house divided against itself, the southern squadron refusing to fight on the ground that the war was not a national war, but one into which the country had been drawn through the self-seeking policy of Li Hung Chang. To the Japanese there was nothing that savoured of audacity in confronting an adversary of whose weakness they were well assured. Into the policy of reform which the Government had steadily pursued since the Restoration many considerations had entered. The course of recent events in China had been an object-lesson by which it had profited. Having realized that a chief cause of China’s troubled relations with Western Powers lay in her military inefficiency, it set to work to reorganize the army. This work was entrusted to Marshal Prince Yamagata (then a young officer), who had distinguished himself in the fighting which took place at the time of the Restoration. He and the younger Saigō (afterwards created a Marquis) were the chief members of a mission appointed to enquire into military matters which visited Europe in 1870. The results of this mission were the engagement of foreign military instructors and the establishment of conscription, which came into operation for the first time in 1873. A few years later the discipline and fighting qualities of the new conscript troops were tested to the satisfaction of the Government in the Satsuma rebellion. In 1884 a second military mission, at the head of which was the late Marshal Prince Ōyama, visited Europe. It was then that the services of a Prussian officer, the late General Meckel, were secured. The improvement in the Japanese army which showed itself from that time is generally ascribed to the ability and energy which that officer brought to the performance of his duties as military adviser. In consequence of the sedulous attention thus paid for several years to military organization, Japan, when military operations against China commenced, had at her disposal a conscript army of over 200,000 men, with a corresponding strength of artillery and a supply of efficient officers. Against an army of this quality, and of these dimensions, China, who was content to rely on troops recruited on the voluntary system, could do little, even had she not laboured under other disadvantages already mentioned.

For obvious reasons the development of the Japanese navy had lagged behind that of the army. The finances of the country did not permit of any large expenditure on both services. While the feudal system had kept alive the warlike spirit of the nation in spite of a prolonged period of peace, the closing of the country to foreign intercourse, accompanied as it was by the rigid limitations imposed on the size of vessels, had stifled maritime enterprise. Japanese naval training, therefore, had to begin with the rudiments of a sailor’s education. Service at sea did not at first appeal to a people whose military class, before it disappeared with the abolition of feudalism, had been brought up mainly in traditions of land fighting. There was another reason. Partly by design, partly, also, as the result of circumstances, the military control exercised by the two clans which virtually governed the country soon after the Restoration had from the first been arranged so as to give Chōshiū clansmen the larger share of army administration, the direction of the navy, on the other hand, being left chiefly to Satsuma clansmen, whose intelligence and energy fell short of the standard of their colleagues in the Government.

The same year (1872) in which the reorganization of the army began saw the first steps taken in the direction of naval reform. In that year the single department which had hitherto been responsible for the administration of both army and navy was replaced by separate departments for each of the two services. It was, as already noted, to Great Britain that Japan turned for assistance in the measures subsequently taken for the building up of a navy. British naval advisers and instructors, amongst whom were the late Admiral Sir Archibald Douglas and Admiral Ingles were engaged, and the first vessels of the new Japanese navy were constructed in England. In 1892 the determination of the Government to persevere in the task of creating a navy was shown by the Emperor’s decision to contribute £30,000 annually for eight years towards naval construction, the funds required for this purpose being obtained by proportionate reductions in the expenditure of the Court. When war was declared, it was the Japanese navy that struck the first blow. It then consisted of twenty-eight ships, aggregating roughly some 57,000 tons, besides twenty-four torpedo-boats. The day of destroyers had not yet come. The Chinese fleet at this time was stronger numerically than that of Japan, and had also an advantage in the fact that it included one or two ships of a more powerful class than any Japanese vessel. But this superiority was counterbalanced by the refusal of the Chinese Southern Squadron, for the reason already given, to take any part in hostilities; and early in the war the portion of the Chinese fleet which came into action showed that it had little stomach for fighting.

Though the war lasted for eight months—from August 1st, 1894, till the conclusion of an armistice on the 30th March in the following year—its result was never in doubt. The Chinese troops in the south of Korea had, as we have seen, been withdrawn to China after their defeat at Asan. Further north the Japanese at once made the port of Chemulpo the base of preliminary operations, and having, on the strength of a treaty of alliance, concluded at the outset of hostilities with the Korean Government, occupied the Korean capital, compelled the Chinese forces remaining in Korea to retire towards the frontier. The only engagement of any consequence in this early stage of the campaign occurred at Ping-yang, a town occupying a position of some strategic value in the north-west of the peninsula sixty miles from the Yalu river, which formed for some distance the boundary between China and Korea. This place was held in strength by the Chinese forces, and its capture by the Japanese on the 17th September involved some severe fighting, in the course of which a Chinese Mohammedan regiment distinguished itself by a stubborn resistance, which was in marked contrast to the behaviour of other Chinese troops. On the same day the Chinese northern fleet was beaten in the only important naval action of the war. In this engagement the two Chinese battleships, each more than a match for any Japanese vessel, suffered little damage, but the Chinese lost several smaller vessels, while no Japanese ships were damaged beyond repair. The beaten Chinese fleet made its way to Ta-lien-Wan, which lies at the neck of the Kwantung peninsula. There it stayed for some weeks until the landing of a Japanese army close to that port, which the Chinese made no attempt to defend, obliged it to take refuge in Weihaiwei. Thence it never again emerged, thus leaving to the Japanese until the end of the war the undisputed command of the sea.

The further course of the war is well known, the general control of operations remaining, as before, in the hands of Marshal Prince Yamagata. Nowhere were the Chinese forces able to offer any effective resistance to the Japanese advance, their experience, whenever they tried to make a stand, being a repetition of what occurred at Ping-yang, where their losses, as compared with those of the enemy (6000 to 200), told their own tale. Towards the end of October the two Japanese divisions operating on parallel lines in Korea crossed the Chinese frontier, driving before them the Chinese forces, which made but a feeble resistance. The Japanese divisions (some 40,000 strong), which had early in November driven the Chinese from Ta-lien-wan and occupied the isthmus of Chinchou, thus severing communications between the Kwantung peninsula and the northern portion of the Fêng-t’ien province, proceeded to invest Port Arthur. Later on in the month a Chinese army moving from the north was completely defeated in an attempt to relieve the fortress. On the 21st November, Port Arthur was stormed with small loss to the Japanese, considering the natural strength of the position, and its powerful fortifications. Early in December the Japanese forces operating from Korea, assisted by a third division detached for the purpose, continued their advance, occupying successively the towns of Kaiping and Haicheng. In the course of February and March, 1895, this army, now under the command of General (afterwards Prince) Katsura, pushed still further west, defeated the Chinese in three successive engagements in the neighbourhood of Newchwang and occupied that port, the Chinese retreating northwards along the course of the Liao river. Meanwhile an expeditionary force despatched from Ta-lien-wan in January had landed in Yung-chêng bay to the east of Weihaiwei, and, acting in co-operation with the Japanese fleet, had laid siege to that place. Its gallant defence by Admiral Ting was for China the only redeeming feature of the war. On 16th March it surrendered, after a siege of three months, its gallant defender dying by his own hand. The fall of Weihaiwei, and the uninterrupted success of the Japanese armies on the Liao river, convinced China of the hopelessness of further resistance, though she had still large military reserves in the vicinity of the Capital. An armistice was accordingly concluded on the 30th March. The Chinese Government had previously made informal overtures for peace through a foreign adviser in the Chinese Customs service, but these had come to nothing owing to Japan’s insistence upon treating directly with the responsible Chinese authorities. The peace negotiations which followed the armistice resulted in the signature of the Treaty of Shimonoséki on the 17th April. In the course of these negotiations a slight modification in its demands was granted by the Japanese Government as reparation for a fanatical attack made on the Chinese Plenipotentiary, Li Hung Chang, who fortunately escaped without serious injury.

The main provisions of this Treaty, some of which were altered by the subsequent intervention of Russia, France and Germany, were the recognition by China of Korea’s independence; the cession to Japan of the southern portion of the province of Fêng-t’ien, Formosa and the Pescadores; the payment by China of an indemnity of 200,000,000 Kuping taels—equivalent, roughly, at the then rate of exchange, to £40,000,000; and the opening to foreign trade of four new towns in China. These were Shasi, Chungking, Soochow and Hangchow. The Treaty also established the right of foreigners to engage in manufacturing enterprises in China, and provided for the subsequent conclusion of a Commercial Convention, and of arrangements regarding frontier intercourse and trade. And it was agreed that Weihaiwei should be occupied by Japan until the indemnity had been paid. Under the Commercial Convention, duly concluded three months later, Japan secured for her subjects extra-territorial rights in China, but these were withheld from Chinese subjects in Japan. In the following October a supplementary Protocol of four articles was added to this Commercial Convention.

It will be seen that Japan in making with China this one-sided arrangement regarding extra-territorial rights, which limited their enjoyment expressly to the subjects of one of the contracting parties, followed the example of Western Powers in their early treaties with Japan, which were still in existence, the revised Treaty with Great Britain not coming into operation until 1899. Apart from the question whether this caution on her part was justified or not by the conditions of Chinese jurisdiction, it is not easy to reconcile her action in this respect with her repeated protests against the extra-territorial stipulations of her own treaties with Western Powers and with the national agitation for their revision which resulted therefrom.