How
the West’s betrayal of China in Versailles after World War I led to the
long Chinese Revolution that shaped today's Chinese perception of the
West
99 years ago, on May 4th 1919, the
original Tiananmen student protest broke out. The students protested the
Allied Powers' betrayal at Versailles: The German Shangdong colony was
given to Japan instead of returning it to China. This despite China's
sending of 140,000 men to work on the Western front.
The story begins with the first Sino-Japanese War 1894-95. Japan, after going through a full westernization program, decisively defeated China which had a half-hearted 'Self-Strengthening' modernization program that tried to preserve Confucian traditions while adopting Western technology.
Japan defeating China triggered a new
round of Imperial Powers scramble to carve up China. Germany was
particularly eager to not be left out.
Germany took the port city of Qingdao
(Tsingtao) on the Shangdong Peninsula where they brought over beer tech
giving birth to Tsingtao Beer.
Qingdao(Tsingtao) became the major German base for its newly acquired Pacific colonies until the eve of World War I.
In 1890 Germany played a leading role in attacking the Chinese capital Beijing to suppress the Boxer Rebellion together with the 8 Nation Alliance of Britain, France, United States, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and Austria-Hungary.
Britain viewed German presence as threat to its colonies in China. After World War I broke out, Britain allied with Japan to besiege Qingdao. 23,000 Japanese and 1,500 British troops attacked 3,650 Germans and 324 Austro-Hungarians. Woodblock print and the Japanese flagship Suwo.
Britain promised the German Pacific colonies to Japan including Qingdao. Students explore a scale model of the Qingdao area depicting the city during the siege of the city by British and Japanese forces in October and November 1914.
As World War I wore on longer than anybody expected, the Allied Powers faced acute labor shortages. Britain came up with a scheme to recruit Chinese labors. But China was neutral so she had to be persuaded to join the war
China wanted to have the German Shangdong
colony returned. Entered U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson asked
China to join the war and promised support for China to gain Shangdong
back after Germany’s defeat.
While the young republican China sees Britain and France as ruthless Imperial Powers, it has an enormous regard for the U.S. which it hopes to model itself after. Top Chinese diplomat was the American educated Wellington Koo. Madam Koo, an international style icon, popularized Cheongsam/Qipao dresses.
China did as Wilson asked, entered the war against Germany and send 340,000 men to help with the Allied war effort. 140,000 went to the Western Front, 200,000 went to Russia. Chinese comprised the largest non-European labor force on the Allied side during World War I.
On the Western front, the 140,000 Chinese labor were know as the Chinese Labour Corp. They dug trenches, worked in timber yards, build steamers, repair railroads. 6,000 were even sent to Iraq to work in Basra.
Chinese Labour Corp men load 9.2-inch shells onto a railway wagon at Boulogne for transport to the front line, August 1917.
Chinese Labour Corps men and a British soldier cannibalize a wrecked Mark IV tank for spare parts at the central stores of the Tank Corps, Teneur, spring 1918.
Chinese Labour Corps workers washing a Mark V tank at the Tank Corps Central Workshops, Erin, France, February 1918.
In other cases, Chinese workers staffed munitions factory during World War I.
Chinese Labour Corp men practice martial arts with swords in Crecy Forest, 27 January 1918.
200,000 Chinese men toiled in Russia. 10,000 Chinese build the Murmansk railway in the Arctic Circle. After the October revolution, 40,000+ Chinese would join the Red Army in the Russian Civil War.
The bulk of the 340,000 Chinese men sent to work in the World War I frontlines were recruited from Shangdong province, where Germany's colony of Qingdao was located. The map shows British and French transport routes for Chinese workers to Europe. Little is known about routes to the Middle East and Russia.
Unbeknownst to China, while China joined the war on the allied side at the U.S. urging, hoping to gain back Shangdong province, the U.S. and Japan signed the secret Lansing-Ishii Agreement in 1917 where they recognized each other’s special 'interests' in China. Japan’s interest is the German colony Qingdao.
Fully believing Woodrow Wilson’s promise of self-determination, the top Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo, who won the Columbia-Cornell Debating Medal in his American school days, argued passionately for the return of the Shangdong Peninsula at the Paris Peace Conference.
Opposite of Wellington Koo is the Japanese diplomat Baron Makino, a skilled go player. Makino played his hand tactically. He knew Wilson’s baby is the League of Nations. He proposed a racial equality clause knowing full well that the U.S., with its Jim Crow Laws, would oppose it.
Japan then threaten to veto the League of Nations, which would not work without Japan, unless ... the U.S. agreed to give Germany’s former Shangdong colony to Japan. Wilson dutifully complied and decide to honor the Lansing-Ishii agreement, selling the Chinese down the river.
Wellington Koo is not the only Chinese diplomat in Paris. There is Trinidad born Eugene Chen who does not speak Chinese but represent another Chinese government because China was divided between a Beijing government in the north and a Canton(Guangzhou) government in the south.
Eugene Chen was a Hakka Chinese born in Trinidad to a former Taiping rebel who fled to the Caribbean. Eugene became a lawyer and married the French creole girl Agatha Alphosin Ganteaume. But he 'returned' to China after the 1911 Revolution overthrew the Qing Imperial government.
Growing disappointed with the Beijing government, Eugene Chen went to join Sun Yatsen’s Canton (Guangzhou) government in the south. Here is Sun Yatsen with a very young Chiang Kai-shek.
The October Revolution broke out towards the end of World War I. Suddenly an alternative political model appeared to the Chinese.
40,000 Chinese labor trapped in Russia joined the Red Army in the Russian Civil War. A White Army propaganda poster depicts Trotsky as Satan wearing a Pentagram, and portrays the Bolsheviks' Chinese supporters as mass murderers. The caption reads "Peace and Liberty in Sovdepiya".
The Soviets saw a chance to draw China away from the West and into their camp. They leaked details of the secret U.S.-Japan Lansing-Ishii agreement to Eugene Chen in Paris, who then leaked it to the Chinese press. Furious Chinese students took to street to protest at this betrayal especially by the U.S.
Previously young Chinese had looked up to the U.S. as a beacon of democracy. The Versailles Treaty made them realize that the U.S. only pays lip service to freedom and democracy while ruthlessly pursuing its self-interests.The May 4th movement is born to protest the weakness of the Chinese government and calls for reform.
Young people wanted to make China strong so it would not be bullied. They demand fundamental cultural and political changes to make it happen. There is a sense that Confucian traditions had failed China. China must welcome democracy and science and embrace modernity to move forward.
The seminal May 4th movement witnesses an upsurge of Chinese nationalism. New Chinese nationalists call for a rejection of traditional values and the selective adoption of the Western ideals of "Mr. Science" (賽先生) and "Mr. Democracy" (德先生) in order to strengthen the new nation.
Disillusioned with the West and seeking for an alternative political model leads some to look to the newly found Soviet Union. Two leading intellectuals of the May 4th movement, Li Dazhao (left) and Chen Duxiu(right), co-founded the Chinese Communist Party.
While heading the Peking University library, Chinese Communist Party co-founder Li Dazhao would influence a young student working there. His name was Mao Zedong.
The other leading intellectual of the May 4th Movement is Hu Shih, a classical liberal, who parted ways with the Communists. But the bourgeois soil upon which liberalism thrives is scarce in China, limiting their impact to the small number of educated urban elites.
The anti-traditionalism of the May 4th movement eventually reached its logical conclusion during the campaign to eradicate Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas in the Cultural Revolution starting in 1966 which aimed to destroy all aspects of traditional Chinese culture.
The 1989 Tiananmen Square students protest was the last echo of the May 4th movement, and of the century long Chinese revolution. Students demanded political change to make the nation strong and prosper. Afterwards pragmatism would replace idealism.
China has come full circle. New found confidence enables the people to embrace tradition again. In 2011, a Confucius statue even appeared in Tiananmen Square. But the controversy remained. It was removed after 100 days without explanation.
After the Cultural Revolution, China experience a brief honeymoon with the West in the 1980s. Chinese youth hungered to learn about the outside world. There was a lot of goodwill towards the U.S. This period lasted beyond the Tiananmen protest of 1989.
A big turning point in Chinese public opinion was the 1999 U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade where three Chinese journalists were killed. No one in China believed the U.S. claim of an accidental bombing due to faulty maps.
Adding fuel to the fire was the collision of a U.S. spy plane near Hainan Island with a Chinese PLA J-8 fighter plane which caused the J8 to crash and an emergency landing of U.S. spy plane on Hainan Island. Previous pro-American sentiment of Chinese youth decidedly turned.
After the Arab Spring, many Chinese viewed the U.S. just as their elders in the May 4th movement did: paying lip service to freedom and democracy while ruthlessly pursuing naked self-interests. Many sympathized when the Geneva conference on Syria had no Syrians (except the waiter) because that was China’s lot 99 years ago.
May 4th is now the official Youth Day in China. A relief on the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square depicting the May 4th movement.
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