Japanese Expansion in China:
A Japanese View in 1919.

[Excerpted from Kiyoshi Kari Kawakami, Japan and World Peace (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1919), pp. 160-179]

THE JAPANESE ADVANCE IN CHINA

In entering into various economic agreements with China, which we have discussed in the preceding chapter, Japan was undoubtedly encouraged by the Ishii-Lansing understanding of November, 1917. In the memorable notes exchanged between Viscount Ishii and Mr. Lansing, we find the following recognition of principle:

"The government of the United States and Japan recognize that territorial propinquity creates special relations between countries, and, consequently, the Government of the United States recognizes that Japan has special interests in China, particularly in the part in which her possessions are contiguous."

The understanding was couched in flexible terms permitting of various interpretations. But if we may rage the official sentiment at Washington through the press dispatches from the capital at the time the understanding was consummated, the American Government was prepared to go a long way towards the establishment of the principle that Japan was entitled to secure a paramount influence in certain sections in China, as long as she does not encroach upon the "open door" principle. Japan has special interests of a semi-political nature in Shantung, it was said in such dispatches, which she wrested from Germany, by reason of its vicinity to Port Arthur, to Korea, and to the Japanese islands. It was further recognized that the prosperity of the island of Formosa and its successful administration by Japan is largely dependent upon conditions in the Chinese province of Fukien, separated only by a narrow strait. Japanese railway concessions in Manchuria were likewise regarded as proper objects of special Japanese interests, not to detail large private-owned Japanese business enterprises in China proper.

It must be frankly admitted that ever since China opened her doors to western nations, her territory has been regarded as a "happy hunting ground" by concession-seekers of all, but especially of European, countries. Her inefficiency, her impotency, and the general disorganization and corruption of her administrative system have been such as to invite a veritable universal scramble for concessions. This regrettable state of things had been Prevailing for several decades before little Japan awakened and entered the Chinese field at the eleventh hour-before she became a political and economic factor to be reckoned with in the adjustment of Far Eastern affairs. To the Japanese, it is certain that, unless they take the necessary measures of precaution, the whole province of China will sooner or later be held in the grip of Western interests. Of course she could not, even if she would, undertake to safeguard all the vast dominion of China, but she must by all means forestall the establishment of preponderating western influence in such sections of that dominion as are contiguous or adjacent to her own territories.

It is, therefore, mainly dictates of self-preservation which impelled Japan to enter into the Ishii-Lansing agreement, and which urges her to secure her position in Manchuria, Shan-tung, and Fukien. Had China had a well organized government, capable of developing her own resources, and fully prepared to protect her own interests against Western onslaught, Japan's policy in those sections would have taken a totally different course.

There is another factor which must be recognized in discussing Japanese activities in China. The teeming millions of Nippon, confined within their own narrow precincts, and forbidden, by the mandate of western nations, to emigrate to any of the territories occupied or controlled by the white races, must perforce find a field of activity within their own sphere. With this in view Japan is eager to convert herself into a great industrial and commercial nation. If she fails in this attempt, she must eventually perish from congestion, stagnation and inanition. And in order to become a foremost industrial nation, she must have the essential materials of modern industry such as iron and coal.

To her great disadvantage, Japan has little of such materials in her own country. The volume of iron ores produced at home is but a fraction of what Japan actually consumes. Of coal she has a considerable output, but none that is available for coking purposes. Without coke the steel industry is impossible. China is the country to which Japan must logically and naturally look for the supply of iron ores and coking coal. That is why Japan is anxious to secure mining concessions in China, before China's mines and collieries, unutilized by herself, will be all but mortgaged to Western nations- nations which have already secured vast colonies in different parts of the world, and which have plenty of raw materials and mineral supplies in their own territories.

Japan's output of ores, including that of Korea, amounts only to some 324,000 tons, equivalent to 160,000 tons in pig iron. As against this small output, Japan consumed in 1917,1,300,000 tons of steel and pig iron.

Before the war this deficiency was partly supplied by steel imported from England and Belgium. When he war cut off this source of supply Japan turned to the United States for relief. For three years-from the fall of 1914 and to the summer of 1917-Japan's shipyards and iron works were enabled to work almost entirely with material furnished by steel mills in America. But in July, 1917, the United States, too, declared an embargo upon steel, and the activities of Japanese shipyards and iron works came suddenly to a halt. At that moment Japan had 300,000 tons of ships in course of construction at various yards. The American embargo virtually stopped work on all such ships. Never before did Japan realize so keenly as on that occasion the precarious nature of her industrial structure, depending upon foreign countries for the supply of steel.

The American embargo intensified Japan's national desire, long uppermost in the minds of her industrial leaders, for the independence of her steel industry from foreign mills. That desire soon became a national slogan. And yet how is Japan to translate that slogan into a reality? She has but scant supply of ores at home. What she is at present getting from China and Manchuria is far from commensurate with her demand. Unless Japan succeeds in entering into a satisfactory agreement with China for the further development of China's iron resources, her industrial structure will never be placed upon a secure foundation.

What iron Japan has been getting from China comes almost exclusively from the Tayeh mines on the Yang-tsu river. These mines are owned and operated by a Chinese corporation called the Han Yeh Ping Company, which also operates the Han q Yang Iron Works and the Ping Shang coal mines. 2 Ever since its establishment, in 1898, its finances have been in such an unhappy condition that it has contracted with the Yokohama Specie Bank of Japan various loans totalling $40,000,000. In spite of the huge loan it has advanced, the Japanese bank has no voice in the management of the business of the Han Yeh Ping Company. All it is permitted to do is to oversee the expenditures of the company.

The loan contract now in force stipulates that the Chinese company shall supply the Japanese Government Iron Works at. Wakamatsu with 8,000,000 tons of pig iron and 15,000,000 tons of ore in forty yearly installments beginning with 1914. The volume to be supplied in one year is not fixed, as it will have to vary according to the output at the Tayeh mines and at the Han Yang Iron Works. In 1915 the company delivered to Japan 110,000 tons of pig iron and 250,000 tons of ore. This supply, considerable as it may seem, falls far short of Japan's actual demand, which will soon reach 2,000,000 tons per annum.

In these conditions can we not find a factor impelling Japan to seek greater sources of iron and coal supply in China, untrammeled by the obstacles of China's domestic and foreign politics? Whether Japan succeeds in this attempt is not a question of aggrandizement, but a question of life or death.

With her growing population forbidden to seek opportunities in countries where profitable employment awaits their toil, with her food product inadequate to supply her own need, Japan must perforce become an industrial country. Surely the Western nations, which have agreed among themselves to exclude the Japanese from their own territories, will not conspire to block Japan's way in that part of Eastern Asia where she seeks nothing more than the means of self-preservation.

........economic advantages secured by the Japanese in China, especially in Manchuria and Shang-tung, are nothing extraordinary-nothing different from, or more than, those obtained by other nations in other sections of China. As such there is nothing menacing or dangerous about them. Why is it, then, that the Chinese envoys should make so much ado about them? Why is it that the outside world should also view them with alarm?

In the previous chapter I have given some of the chief reasons for this peculiar attitude on the part of China and the outside world. Here I must note that Japan's diplomatic blunders in pressing the celebrated "twenty-one demands" upon China in the spring of 1915 have been a factor, which has, to no small extent, been responsible for provoking anti-Japanese feeling in China and in the West. Had Japan acted more diplomatically and with greater discretion and saner judgment, in the spring of 1915, her later move with regard to Manchuria and Shantung would have been permitted to pass unchallenged. The present hostility towards Japan is mainly the aftermath of the bitter controversy created by the twenty-one demands, for which the Okuma Cabinet at Tokyo was responsible. The Chinese opposition, which Japan is facing to-day in the matter of economic agreements she has recently secured in Manchuria and Shantung, is largely the harvest from the seeds she had sown in the twenty-one demands.

Nothing shows more clearly than the attitude assumed by Japan in presenting those demands to China that the Sunrise Empire has adopted Western vices as much as it has emulated Western virtues. Tokyo's diplomacy in the case of the twenty-one demands was exactly the diplomacy that has for more than half a century been practiced in China by London, by Paris, by Vienna, by Berlin, by St. Petersburg.

Not that those demands were in principle wrong and unjustifiable, but because they were pressed upon China in utter disregard of the susceptibilities of the nation whose friendship she had been professing to value. The details of the negotiations that followed are too well known to require reiteration here, but there are a few points which might still be emphasized.

In the first place, Japan ought to have published the contents of the demands simultaneously with their presentation to China, and transmitted them at least to the British Foreign Office. There was no reason why the Japanese diplomat should avoid publicity, if he had, as he undoubtedly did, sincere confidence in the reasonableness of the demands. Instead of taking this sensible course, he urged upon President Yuan Shi-kai the observance of strict secrecy. Could any one with common sense imagine that Yuan would keep silence, when he knew he could, through publicity, arouse the sympathy of the world in his favor and thus succeed in warding off at least some of the demands?

Even more reprehensible was the overbearing manner in which the demands were submitted to the Chinese President. With no previous warning, with no previous exchange of views with the Chinese Foreign Department, Japan abruptly brought forward an apparently formidable set of demands, and placed them directly in President Yuan's hands, thus ignoring the usual channel and the established etiquette of diplomatic presentation.

When we look at the twenty-one demands in cold blood, compare them with concessions and special privileges wrested from China by other Powers, and consider them in the light of China's decaying condition, creating an international "battle for concessions and loans"-when we look at the question in this light, we can realize that the twenty-one demands had cogent reasons behind them, and that they were of no nature to justify the great excitement created at the time.

The ways of the diplomacy of the old school, no matter of what power, are always devious. The world would be better off if there were no such thing as diplomacy. Had there been no Wilhelmstrasse, no Quai d' Orsay, no Downing Street, there would have been no Kasumi-ga-seki at Tokyo. In submitting the twenty-one demands to China in January, 1915, Japan resorted to the usual methods of dickering. The so-called group five was included in the demands unquestionably for the purpose of driving the best bargain. The evidence of this is found in the following instruction which Foreign Minister Baron Kato handed to Mr. Eki Hioki, the Japanese Minister at Peking, on December 3, 1914, i. e., forty-six days before the submission of the demands to the Chinese Government:

"As regards the proposals contained in the fifth group, they are presented as the wishes of the Imperial Government. The matters which are dealt with under this category are entirely different in character from those which are included in the first four groups. An adjustment, at this time, of these matters, some of which have been pending between the two countries, being nevertheless highly desirable for the advancement of the friendly relations between Japan and China as well as for safeguarding their common interests, you are also requested to exercise your best efforts to have our wishes carried out."

Even if group five were not "wishes" hut real "demands" I see no cause for excitement, provided they were presented in an unoffensive manner. Take for instance, the proposition concerning the supply of arms. China's urgent need to-day is not only an efficient civil administration but a well organized system of defense. In the organization of an effective military power the unification of arms is as essential as the training of officers and men. Can we not understand why Japan expressed her wish for the establishment of Chino-Japanese arsenals or the purchase of Japanese arms? Japan believes that China's military organization, if not guided and rehabilitated by her, will eventually be controlled by some European nation by no means congenial to her. Signs of this unhappy tendency were clearly discernible before the outbreak of the European war.

Again, the employment of foreign advisers is unmistakably one of China's sovereign rights, which under normal conditions does not permit of foreign interference. But when a nation proves so wayward in the management of its own affairs as to jeopardize the welfare and safety of its neighbors, it becomes the right and duty of the neighbors to urge upon that nation such measures as will remove the cause of such embarrassment. Did not the United States play an important part in the secession of Panama from Columbia? Has she not assumed the control of the finances and police power of Haiti when Haiti has become troublesome to her? And are not Americans urging their Government to deal rigorously with Mexico? With the Monroe Doctrine firmly established, and endowed with enormous potential power to back that doctrine, the United States may remain calm with regard to Mexico, while Japan, enjoying no such advantage, is extremely restive with regard to China.

To many Japanese it appears obvious that China, left to her own resources, will eventually become the Turkey of the Far East, if it has not already become such. Students of Near Eastern affairs all know what a hotbed of plots and intrigues the Turkish capital has been in the past half century. Russia, Germany, England, France, Austria and Italy all played more or less important parts in the great tragi-comedy staged for the alien control of the Ottoman Empire. In their zeal to push their selfish interests, they disregarded all decency in their diplomacy. They employed women of dubious character, bribed eunuchs, corrupted officials, and spread over the whole country a network of espionage. In this rivalry for the control of the Sublime Porte Germany, just before the war, proved a winner. What is the result? Not only did the Turkish Government become a tool in the hands of Germany, but the Turkish army and navy were dominated by the Kaiser's officers. The fate of Constantinople is a vivid lesson to China and Japan.

To Americans, unable to understand Japan's singular position in the Far East, it perhaps makes but little difference whether China is dominated by England, Germany, France, Russia or Japan. From the Japanese point of view it is different. With the history of European diplomacy in the Near and Far East before them, the Japanese cannot but shudder at thought of the day when China shall be held fast in the grip of Western Powers.

The substance of the Chino-Japanese agreements, which were entered into as the result of the twenty-one demands, is briefly told. Japan agreed to return Kiau-chow to China, provided the Powers would, after the war, permit Japan to dispose of it in this manner. It was with this end in view that in February, 1917, Foreign Minister Motono secured from England, France and Italy a promise to allow Japan to acquire German possessions in Shantung. She considered this step necessary in order to secure the right to restore Kiau-chow to China in conformity with the agreement she made with Peking in the spring of 1915.

In eastern Inner Mongolia, Japan, in order to offset the Russian domination of Outer Mongolia, proposed to establish a foothold. In South Manchuria, Japan secured the extension of the lease of Port Arthur and of the concession of the South Manchuria railway. She also obtained for Japanese subjects the privilege to travel, reside and engage in agricultural and commercial pursuits in any part of South Manchuria. This will greatly facilitate the industrial development of Manchuria. With all the limitations they had to contend with in the past, the Japanese have already created in Manchuria a vast new industry, the bean industry, benefiting not only the natives of Manchuria but tens of thousands of coolies of Shantung province. Where ten years ago Manchurian farmers barely eked out a living, they are to-day exporting $40,000,000 worth of beans and bean-cake. This is entirely due to Japanese enterprise. Observing this transformation of Manchuria, even Mr. Frederick Moore, at times openly unfriendly to Japan, had to make the following admission:

"The Chinese are a backward race, wasting their opportunities because of ignorance and the intense selfishness which centuries of most wretched individual struggling for sustenance has engendered. That China would be materially better off under their (Japanese) organization cannot be disputed. Before the Japanese came to Manchuria the people used to raise enough soy beans to support life. If they raised more there was no means of shipping them, and if they made money brigands or officials robbed them of the surplus. To-day tens of thousands of coolies cross the Gulf of Chihli annually from Shantung Province to help harvest the great bean crops which go by Japanese railroad and steamship lines to Europe and compete there with the products of American cotton seed. It would be so, I have no doubt, with all China, were the Japanese to assume control. The Japanese would profit most, but the Chinese would also greatly benefit. The majority of the people (we have Manchuria as an example) would be glad of the opportunity to make a living where they are on the constant verge of starvation to-day. A coolie is lucky in China to draw a regular wage of three dollars a month; he will even raise a family on that income."

But to return to the Chino-Japanese agreements under consideration. With regard to Fukien Province, close to the Japanese island of Formosa, China engages not to grant any foreign Power the right to build any shipyard, military or naval station. China also promises to safeguard the Japanese investment, amounting to more than $40,000,000, in the Hanyeh-ping Company, and not to contract for it any foreign loan other than Japanese. Japan's interests in this company have been more fully described in an earlier passage in this chapter.

Finally, one may find an objectionable feature in the provision that the Chinese police regulations and Chinese taxation measures in Manchuria, to be applied to the Japanese, must be approved by the Japanese consul. This is, however, an inevitable consequence of permitting the Japanese to travel and reside in the interior districts of South Manchuria, where there is no administrative system to which people from civilized countries can entrust the security of life and property. I shall let the late Dr. W. A. P. Martin, one of the most sympathetic critics of China, speak on this question. Says this friend of China:

"Such exemption is customary in Turkey and other Moslem countries, not to say among the Negroes of Africa. It was recognized by treaty in Japan; and the Japanese, in proportion as they advanced in the path of reform, felt galled by an exception which fixed on them the stigma of barbarism. When they had proved their right to a place in the comity of nations, with good laws administered, foreign powers cheerfully consented to allow them the exercise of all the prerogatives of sovereignty.

"How does her period of probation compare with that of her neighbor? Japan resolved on national renovation on Western lines in 1868. China came to no such resolution until the collapse of her attempt to exterminate the foreigner in 1900. With her the age of reform dates from the return of the Court in 1902-as compared with Japan four years to thirty! Then what a contrast in the animus of the two countries! The one characterized by law and order, the other by mob violence, unrestrained, if not instigated, by the authorities!

"When the north wind tried to compel a traveller to take off his cloak, the cloak was wrapped the closer and held the tighter. When the sun came out with his warm beams, the traveller stripped it off of his own accord.

"The sunrise empire has exemplified the latter method; China prefers the former. Is it not to be feared that the apparent success of the boycott will the people encourage her to persist in the policy of the traveler in the north wind. She ought to be notified that she is on probation, and that the only way to recover the exercise of her sovereign rights is to show herself worthy of confidence. The Boxer outbreak postponed by many years the withdrawal of the cloak of ex-territoriality, and every fresh exhibition of mob violence defers that event to a more distant date."

We have noted the substance of the Chino-Japanese agreements concluded in May, 1915, as the consequence of the twenty-one demands. Had the Japanese diplomats at the helm been more sagacious and far-sighted, they could in time have accomplished more than was attained by those demands, without, at the same time, provoking such a great furore as was witnessed in the spring of 1915. The fall of the Okuma Cabinet in October, 1916, was mainly due to the failure of its Chinese policy. The Terauchi Cabinet, which succeeded the Okuma Cabinet, came into power with a promise to create a better understanding with China. Terauchi's Chinese policy was indicated in the following statement made before the House of Representatives by Foreign Minister Viscount Motono, in January, 1917:

"Why is it that China at times cherishes towards us misgivings and a certain animosity? The chief cause seems to be the tendency in certain circles of our country to interfere in the internal quarrels of China. Since the overthrow of the Tsing Dynasty and the establishment of the republic, various political parties have been formed in China, and we have in Japan people who are in sympathy with one or another of these parties. These people have a marked propensity to assist the particular party which is in sympathy with their own political or personal views. I believe that all these persons are prompted by perfect good-will, but the consequences are deplorable. We have gained nothing but the animosity of our neighbors as well as misunderstanding of our real intentions by other nations

"The present Cabinet absolutely repudiates these courses. We desire to maintain very cordial relations with China. We desire only the gradual accomplishment of all the reforms which China proposes to make for her future development. We shall spare no pains to come to her assistance, if she desires it. We shall try to let her understand our sincere sentiments, and it is for her to decide whether to trust us or not. We have no intention of favoring one or another of the political parties in China. We desire to keep up relations of cordial amity with China herself, but not with this or that political party. It is essential for us that China should be able to develop in a normal manner in the path of progress. What we fear most is her disintegration as the result of continued internal troubles and disorder. We shall make every effort to the end that China may never find herself in such a position, for it is essential to us that she should maintain her independence and territorial integrity."

During its tenure of a year and a half, the Terauchi ministry made honest efforts to befriend China. And indeed it reasonably succeeded in making friends with the Cabinet at Peking which was headed by Tuan Chi-jui. But the Tuan Chi-jui Cabinet, recognized by all foreign Governments as it was, represented only one faction against which many other factions were pitted. While the Terauchi Cabinet was dealing with the Cabinet at Peking on friendly terms, the southern faction or factions, which set up a semblance of government at Canton, sent many emissaries to Tokyo and appealed to Terauchi for help. However sympathetic as Terauchi might have been, he could not deal with the South, knowing that the Cabinet at Peking was the only de facto government of China. Whatever may be Terauchi's shortcomings, he is a sincere man and has never resorted to double-dealing.

In order to maintain friendly relations with the de facto Government at Peking, the Terauchi Cabinet entered, or induced private interests to enter, into agreements advancing loans to Peking which was hard pressed for money, and which appealed to Terauchi for relief. This was not agreeable to the factions opposed to the Chinese Cabinet then in power. As long as the same Cabinet held its own, with Tuan Chi-jui as its head, Japan's official relations with China was apparently amicable. But the Tuan Chi-jui Cabinet had to fall in October, 1918, and the succeeding Cabinet has been organized by men not friendly to Tuan Chi-jui. In this Cabinet, or more properly factional, change lies one of the main reasons for the refractory attitude assumed by the Chinese peace envoys towards Japan.

Almost simultaneously with the fall of the Tuan Chi-jui Cabinet at Peking, the Terauchi Cabinet at Tokyo was succeeded by a more democratic cabinet headed by Takashi Hara, whom the Western press calls the "Great Commoner" of Japan. The Hara Cabinet, recognizing the failures of its predecessor, put an injunction upon the advancement of further loans to China, and launched, at the same time, a movement to effect a reconciliation between the northern and southern factions in China. That was the main feature of Japanese policy in China, when the curtain rose upon the historic scene of the Peace Congress....