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4. The Betrayal of Democracy

The revolution of 1911-12 was a conservative uprising, despite appearances to the contrary. The provinces, which had really brought about the uprising, were largely in the control of the propertied, educated elite and remained so.1 Out of the revolution emerged three major forces: 1) a diffused and increasingly nonradical revolutionary party pressing for constitutional government; 2) the gentry-landlord-merchant-industrialist elite that ruled the provinces, allied itself with army officers who controlled province-based military forces and sought provincial self-government and 3) Yuan Shikai in Beijing, supported by conservative new army officers and cronies.

The real interest of most people had been simply to oust the Manchus, with only superficial concern for what was to follow.2 Once the Manchus were gone there remained little support among the elite for a true constitutional, democratic republic.

Yuan Shikai violently opposed such a republic, while the provincial elite came increasingly to rely upon military leaders as governors of provinces. These military chiefs, with locally recruited armies under their control, soon became power brokers and thus foreshadowed the coming era of warlords which disrupted China for years. Yuan, aside from his personal lust for power, feared that democratic government could bring on factionalism and demands for social change that would unsettle the state. He also feared that giving autonomy to the provinces would weaken the central government, which alone could give some protection against covetous imperialists.3 The British and Russians proved the weakness of the central government when they grabbed territories immediately after the revolution. Britain set up a protectorate over Tibet and Russia a protectorate over Outer Mongolia. In both cases, China lost control, of Tibet for thirty-eight years, of Outer Mongolia permanently.4

The revolutionary government elected Yuan Shikai as president on March 10, 1912.5 The next day Yuan promulgated China's first constitution.6 It called for a responsible cabinet and parliament on the Western democratic model but Yuan disregarded its provisions and filled posts with cronies. He made peace with the provincial military leaders but bought trouble for the future by investing them with the title of military governor. These leaders built control in provincial or regional bases and as opportunity arose became warlords.7

At this time, Song Jiaoren, a precocious 30-year-old Hunanese member of the Tong Meng Hui who'd drafted the provisional constitution, realized that the revolutionaries had to appeal to a broader group if they were going to capture the new parliament. For the coming election, the provisional parliament had enfranchised only the most elite 5 per cent of the population.8 In August, Song engineered formation of a new party around the old Tong Meng Hui, absorbing four smaller parties. He named the new party the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist party.9

It represented a compromise with the revolutionary past. To appeal to the conservative gentry-merchant elite, Song sloughed off much of Sun Yat-sen's idealism. He dropped Sun's ideas about land reform and equality for women and encouraged provincial autonomy.10 The effect was to transform a nominally revolutionary party into a moderate movement. Song Jiaoren's new Kuomintang was the kind of political compromise any American legislator would have recognized in an instant: a pragmatic coalition of as many interests as possible to win an election. Song struck out of the platform any principle or goal likely to alienate any interest and thereby created an amorphous, meaningless but pleasant-sounding program that nearly everybody could support.

Song's political savvy proved itself. The new Kuomintang won a landslide, commanding more seats than the other three parties combined. Song Jiaoren, who expected to become premier, hoped he now could reduce Yuan Shikai's power by legitimate constitutional means.

Yuan considered the results of the election to be a direct slap. On March 20, 1913, as Song was leaving the Shanghai railway station to go to the new parliament, an assassin shot him down. Song died two days later. Captured documents laid the blame directly on Yuan Shikai.11 The bullets fired at the Shanghai railway station killed more than Song Jiaoren. They also killed the last hopes for a constitutional government in China.

The shooting of Song opened the eyes of Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing, who hunted around for military help to defeat the 80,000 troops that Yuan controlled directly. They ultimately found a supporter in Li Liejun, military governor of Jiangxi, and a few other incipient warlords.12

Meantime, Yuan concluded a 125-million-dollar loan with a banking consortium (Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia), to be secured on the collection of China's salt tax or gabelle and requiring a foreign staff to "reorganize" the administration.13 Yuan completed the loan despite disapproval by the new parliament and the powers went along with his illegal act.14

The so-called "second revolution" under Li Liejun failed miserably. Yuan's forces overran the rebels within two months. The leaders, including Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing, escaped, mostly to Japan.15

Among the refugees was Charlie Soong, the Shanghai Bible printer and pasta manufacturer, who took along his wife and family. His oldest daughter, Ai-ling, was a plain but practical young woman with excellent business sense whom Soong had sent to Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia. Upon her return in 1909, she became Sun Yat-sen's English-language secretary. In Japan, Ai-ling married H.H. Kung, 33 years old, a graduate of Oberlin College and Yale University and scion of a wealthy Shanxi banking family.16 Soong's second daughter, Ching-ling, an introspective beauty, romantically idealistic about China and who had just returned from five years at Wesleyan, took Ai-ling's place. She believed in the revolution and in Sun and soon fell in love with him. He was 26 years her senior and married. Charlie Soong got wind of the romance and returned with his family to the safe French concession of Shanghai. Ching-ling was adament, however, and ran away, taking ship back to Japan, where she married Sun Yat-sen on October 25, 1914. Sun said he no longer considered himself married to his first wife but did not divorce her. To Soong and his wife, both Christians, Ching-ling was only Sun's mistress and Sun, also a Christian, was a bigamist. Months later, Soong revealed his anguish to a friend: "I was never so hurt in my life. My own daughter and my best friend."17

* * * * * * * * * *

On October 6, 1913, when the two houses of parliament convened to elect China's first regular president, Yuan surrounded the building with a "citizens corps" of disguised soldiers and police, who refused to allow members to depart until they had elected Yuan president.18 Yuan's election, however, brought recognition from all the major foreign powers, including the U.S.19 Yuan now had little need to recognize the niceties of republican government. In November, 1913, he outlawed the KMT and revoked credentials of parliamentary members. This dissolved the parliament and Yuan now ruled as a dictator.20

However, behind Yuan's dictatorship, as James Sheridan says, "the reality of provincial militarism existed; Chinese warlordism was about to be born."21 Although Yuan's control of the new army represented enough force to keep most of the provinces obedient to the central government, all over China local military commanders were consolidating their positions and building allies among their officers and gentry-merchant elites. China began to fragment.22

Yuan recognized the need for a legitimate central authority that could command loyalty and counter warlords. Though for the present he kept his counsel, Yuan had a solution: he would bring back the empire and he would become the emperor.23

* * * * * * * * * *

In 1911, Britain and Japan decided to renew their alliance for ten years. It was now aimed at the growing power of Germany and Japan agreed to come to Britain's defense if Germany and Britain went to war.24

On June 12, 1912, the Japanese emperor Meiji died at age 60 and was succeeded by his son, Taisho, who reigned until 1926 but who became mentally ill in his later years and at no time was fitted to rule. Meiji had managed to keep a balance between the military and civilian forces in Japan by means of imperial conferences. With Taisho, this direct participation in state affairs ceased and was not revived for more than thirty years. The government fell upon the emperor's councillors and the civil and military leaders. The genro or council of elder statesmen gained even more influence. However, Japan possessed a dual government in which military matters were separated from other governmental affairs. The two were united only in the person of the emperor. The military and civilian branches of government operated separately and often at cross-purposes.25

The potential of civil-military conflict became clear in 1912 when the cabinet balked at an army demand for two additional divisions to garrison Korea. However, the military chiefs could wreck the civilian government because the emperor in 1898 had ruled that the war minister had to a general and the navy minister an admiral. The war minister resigned and the prime minister could get no other general to fill his post. The government collapsed. Thereafter, military leaders employed this device or the threat of it to get the programs or policies they wanted. As time went on, Japan moved close to a dictatorship of the military leadership.26

* * * * * * * * * *

For a long time the competition and strength of the great imperial powers had inhibited Japan's greed. More than anything, their presence had restrained Japan from making demands in excess of what they themselves were requiring.27 When World War I broke out in Europe on August 1, 1914, however, imperialist power vanished from East Asia.

This presented Japan with a golden opportunity to push the first of what it hoped would be all of the imperial powers out of China. Under terms of its 1911 treaty with Britain, Japan was obligated to go to war against Germany, which held a concession at Jiaozhou bay on Shandong's south coast and islands in the Pacific. Japan gleefully started making preparations to attack.

Britain didn't want Japan either in Shandong or moving against Germany's island possessions of the Marianas, Carolines, Marshalls, eastern Samoa and German New Guinea but Japan would not be restrained. New Zealanders were able to beat the Japanese to Samoa and the Australians reached New Guinea first. But the Japanese got all the rest, islands whose names would ring in history in years ahead: Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Saipan, Tinian and many more.28

Japan also demanded that Germany hand over Jiaozhou bay. When Berlin didn't respond, a Japanese force, fearing German guns protecting the bay, landed on the north shore of the Shandong peninsula and crossed about 75 miles of Chinese territory to attack Jiaozhou from the rear. This was an egregious violation of Chinese neutrality but Tokyo ignored Beijing's protest. Japanese troops occupied the whole railway line to Jinan, over 200 miles west of Jiaozhou, and only then attacked and occupied Jiaozhou. Even after the German surrender the Japanese army kept troops along the rail line.

China was diplomatically isolated and got no help from the Allies, proof that the war had changed the power situation in East Asia fundamentally. The United States offered China sympathy but nothing else. U.S. attention also was focused on Europe and the Woodrow Wilson administration had no interest in confronting Japan.29

In this environment, the Japanese leaders decided to seek a final solution with China.30 On January 18, 1915, the minister to China presented Japan's notorious "twenty-one demands" directly to Yuan Shikai. All of the demands infringed on China's sovereignty but the outrageous "group-five" demands would have reduced China to a Japanese protectorate. They would have required China to use Japanese "advisors" in all fields of government and the military, put Japan in control of China's munitions and place Japanese police in a number of locations. Japan would have held the strings to all sources of power. Other demands would have made over Germany's lease to Shandong, granted Japan special positions in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia and given Japan joint operation of China's iron and steel industry.31

When the Chinese leaked out details of the demands, they aroused worldwide outbursts against the "perfidious villiany" of the Japanese government. Meanwhile, Yuan prolonged negotiations as long as possible.32 U.S. minister Paul Reinsch sent repeated pleas to Washington urging support of China. But President Wilson backed off, cabling that any U.S. intervention "would very likely provoke the jealousy and excite the hostility of Japan." In the great crisis rending Western civilization, the open door and China's territorial integrity and even the threat of Japan to American interests were expendable items.33

Meanwhile, the Chinese negotiators slowly wore down the Japanese, who finally postponed the group-five demands but didn't abandon them. On May 9, 1915, the Chinese capitulated and signed the other demands. China had avoided becoming a Japanese protectorate but it was forced to grant the Japanese domination of the entire province of Shandong with 36 million people, a virtually permanent presence in southern Manchuria and joint Sino-Japanese operation of the major coal and iron complex in the Yangzi valley.34 Yuan's decision incensed most Chinese. Merchants organized a widespread boycott of Japanese goods. But the deed had been done. Protests made little difference.

The only United States response was that it could not recognize any agreement that impaired U.S. treaty rights, the "political and territorial integrity" of China or the open-door policy. Having refused shortly beforehand to protest Japan's group-five demands which would have impaired all of these, the U.S. statement rang hollow.35

China might have won better terms had Yuan Shikai not hoped a more pliable attitude would insure Japan's backing in his planned move to become emperor.36 He also recognized Russia's "special interests" in Outer Mongolia and Britain's in Tibet, apparently to curry support. Yuan orchestrated a "draft" movement for him to become emperor. "Petitions" in great number followed and a "people's representative assembly" approved the idea. On December 12, 1915, Yuan "reluctantly" acceded. The next day he announced he would start his new reign in 1916.37

Despite apparent public acceptance, disillusionment with Yuan was widespread and revolt rippled through the provinces, beginning in Yunnan and spreading to Sichuan and beyond. On March 22, 1916, Yuan announced his return to presidential forms but by now military leaders were convinced Yuan no longer could be tolerated. Yuan himself solved the problem by dying June 6, 1916, of uremia at age 56.38

China had fallen into disarray. Three power blocs had formed. But these were only nuclei around which a number of forces revolved, collided, combined and recombined. The transgressions of Yuan had finally brought about the collapse of Chinese unity. China now entered a gloomy era similar in concept to the Dark Ages of the West, when central authority virtually disappeared and local and regional lords seized power to advance their selfish interests. In China, the warlords' power stemmed from their armies, which became a plague. Soldiers often raped and murdered while on the march and in some armies the soldiers understood their pay was to be mostly loot they could force from peasants and townspeople.39 Another factor which contributed to the chaos was that soldiers owed their allegiance and livelihood to their immediate superiors. These in turn bound themselves to a warlord general. Loyalties, consequently, were fluid.40

One of the three power blocs consisted of warlords in the southern tier of provinces which Yuan had never occupied: Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Guangdong. A second core formed around Feng Guozhang in the lower Yangzi valley. The third center was the central government itself in Beijing, where Duan Qirui had supplanted Yuan as leader and sought to carry on the centralizing dictatorship. Duan was a former army minister who had returned as prime minister in April, 1916. Duan was warlord leader of only one of the power clusters. His greatest strength was that he headed the Beijing government, which, to foreign nations, represented China's sovereignty.41

An incipient fourth power center began to emerge in the three provinces of Manchuria under Zhang Zuolin. But Zhang still had much to do to consolidate his hold on this large area. Although he got help from Japan, his relations with Tokyo were not smooth because he would not accept Japanese control.42

* * * * * * * * * *

By 1916, Japan was beginning to worry about how to retain its gains in the peace treaty that would end World War I. In July, it concluded an agreement with Russia that both would "protect" China. Alas for Japan, St. Petersburg's convenient guarantee soon was to be blown away by the revolutionary wind that swept the Romanov dynasty into oblivion and established a far-different Bolshevik state in its place.43

Japan had better luck with Britain. On January 31, 1917, Germany announced it would resume unrestricted submarine warfare against the Allies. Within months this was to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side. In the meantime Britain, utterly dependent upon sea-delivered supplies, hunted for any warships which could convoy British ships. The British foreign office and Japan quickly struck a secret deal: Japanese destroyers would escort British convoys in the Mediterranean and Britain at the peace conference would support both Japan's retention of the former German concession in Shandong and all of the former German islands in the Pacific north of the equator. Britain consulted neither China nor the United States. Shortly afterward, Japan got Russia, France and Italy also to agree secretly to its possession of Shandong and the north Pacific German islands. All Japan promised to do was to encourage China to sever relations with Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Tokyo gave premier Duan Qirui a large loan and promised more if he would enter the war. Arranged through a Japanese diplomat, Nishihara Kamezo, this and additional "Nishihara loans" were substantial but never paid back. Their purpose was to tie Duan to Tokyo. Duan immediately gave Japan special concessions for a telegraph system, mines, lumbering and railroads.

Duan wanted the Japanese money to strengthen his position, since bribes or "silver bullets" were the easist ways to get opposing warlords to call off their troops. On May 14, 1917, Duan broke off relations with Germany and Austria-Hungary without parliament's approval. Opponents, seeing through Japanese efforts to influence Duan, descended upon Beijing. Rebels included Zhang Xun, monarchist warlord of Anhui, who led his pigtailed soldiers into the capital in June and confounded nearly everybody by placing the last Manchu emperor of China, Puyi, back on the dragon throne! That was too much. Duan and Cao Kun, warlord of Hebei, got together and drove Zhang out of Beijing.

A new Duan-dominated parliament declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary on August 14, 1917, and Duan got a huge "Nishihara loan" for China's "war effort." That action brought Sun Yat-sen back from exile. In late August in Guangzhou (Canton), a rump parliament of 134 anti-Duan national assemblymen elected Sun generalissimo of a new military government. Real power, however, lay with the southern warlords, who were primarily concerned with Duan's potential threat.44

China's only direct contribution to the war was to send 175,000 laborers to work, most of them behind the lines in France. These laborers were accompanied by four-hundred Chinese students and professors as interpreters and writers of letters home. These intellectuals were exposed to the ferment of political discussion and activity in Europe after the Russian revolution in 1917. Some became important members of the Chinese Communist party in later years.45

* * * * * * * * * *

Although Japan had built a solid defense to protect its spoils in Shandong and the north Pacific German islands, there remained one gaping hole: the United States had not agreed. Furthermore, now that the U.S. had entered the war, it would play an enormous role in the peace conference, especially since the U.S. was training millions of troops to go into the trenches while the Japanese part in the war was going to show up as totally self-serving.

The Japanese cabinet sent Ishii Kikujiro to Washington in late summer 1917, hopefully to get the same sort of agreement Japan had obtained from the other Allies. Ishii did better than anyone could have expected. The reason must be attributed to the naiveté or indifference of Robert Lansing, U.S. secretary of state.46 The Ishii-Lansing agreement virtually threw the traditional U.S. policy to the winds. The U.S. recognized that Japan had "special interests" in China, "particularly in the part to which her possessions are contiguous." Recognition of special interests represented a huge retreat from the open door and China's territorial integrity.

* * * * * * * * * *

China now entered into a sordid period of intrigue, deceit, back-stabbing and conspiracies which had no purpose but to advance the personal fortunes and power of one or the other of a group of warlords. Duan's coalition splintered. The Yangzi warlord Feng Guozhang temporarily forced Duan out but by the spring of 1918 Duan was back with the support of the Manchurian warlord, Zhang Zuolin. Meanwhile a southern warlord, Lu Rongting, ejected Sun Yat-sen from his Guangzhou military government and Sun fled to Shanghai. Duan solidified his position by bribing a new parliament.47

* * * * * * * * * *

The Wilson administration at last had become suspicious of Japan. The reason was not aggressions against China but opportunistic moves against Russia. Japan saw a chance to expand into Siberia after the Bolshevik revolution threw Russia into turmoil in November, 1917. Early in 1918 Japan sent 60,000 troops into northern Manchuria and showed intentions of taking over the Russian-owned Chinese Eastern railway.48

Wilson and Lansing were fearful Japan would attempt to annex eastern Siberia and on July 17, 1918, proposed that the U.S., Britain, France and Japan each send 7,000 men to Vladivostok. The real reason was to keep an eye on Japan. The ostensible purpose was to protect Allied war supplies stored there and assist the escape of the Czechoslovak legion. This army of over 40,000 former prisoners of war seeking freedom for their country had been released and armed by Russia and was moving toward Vladivostok. But Soviet troops now opposed them.

Britain and France could send only token forces but Japan and the U.S. agreed on August 3 to a joint occupation of Vladivostok. The United States landed 7,000 men, who remained at the port city. Japan moved in 70,000 and quickly advanced them to Lake Baikal, deep into Siberia. Although the U.S. kept the Chinese Eastern railway out of Japanese hands by setting up an "inter-Allied" board to run it, Japanese aggression in Siberia had not been resolved when the peace conference convened in Paris in January, 1919.

The Chinese delegation was optimistic that the conferees would readily agree to return the former German concession in Shandong. After all, China was an Allied power and Japan's twenty-one demands had been forced under duress. The delegation hoped it could finesse the single defect in its argument: on September 24, 1918, Duan's government, in exchange for another Nishihara loan, had "gladly" given Japan the right to build two railways in Shandong and station troops at key points.49 President Wilson was sympathetic to the Chinese case. Although he was concerned when Japan announced it wouldn't sign the peace treaty unless it got Shandong, Wilson's primary anxiety was Britain. Lloyd George, the British prime minister, told Wilson that he considered the secret treaties with Japan to be binding. Wilson had no problem with giving Japan the north Pacific islands, showing he had little sense of their strategic military value.50 But he was fearful Britain wouldn't sign the peace treaty if Japan were thwarted about Shandong and therefore would not join the League of Nations which Wilson insisted on making part of the treaty. Without Britain, the league would be lost. Consequently, Wilson, in flagrant disregard of his own principles of open diplomacy and self-determination, agreed to Japan's possession of Shandong.51

The response of the people in both the United States and China was remarkable. Americans recognized that sanctimonious Wilson did not practice what he preached. They perceived that he had concluded his ends justified the means necessary to get them. Most American opinion agreed that Wilson had allowed a wrong to be done to a weak and helpless China in order to curry favor with Britain and Japan. The anger about what Wilson visited on China became one obstacle to approval of the Versailles treaty and the League of Nations by the U.S. Senate.52

The Chinese people reacted like a bomb going off. Soon much of China was seething with resentment. For the first time since the revolution, perhaps for the first time in Chinese history, the people of China rose in a unified movement of protest. The wrong done their country by the treacherous men conspiring in Paris brought about a solidarity and resolve in all classes of people. Wilson had done more to awaken China than had any other man or event in the grievous, disreputable exploitation of China since the Opium War.

Chapter 5: A New Ideology Comes to China >>

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