The 4th of May, is an important date in modern China's history. It marks the last straw in which the Chinese could no longer tolerate Western betrayals of Chinese interests and the trading of Chinese lands by the European powers, Russia, America and Japan to settle the interests of foreign invaders of China at the expense of China and the Chinese people.
May 4th, 1919 was the day when Chinese throughout all China rose up with fire and indignity at the betrayal of China by the Western countries in the Treaty of Versailles in Paris in which they conveniently handed over the Chinese province of Shangtung to Japan just to settle their own political interests at the expense of China. Indeed the Western countries and Japan were using Chinese lands for horse trading among themselves without even an iota of concern to China's territorial integrity, self-respect and dignity.
When the Chinese people got wind of the verdict of this outrageous Versailles Peace Conference on Shangtung thousands of students held a huge demonstration in Peking. Soon millions of students and workers all over China from Shanghai to Chunking, Chengtu, Kunming, Xiamen, Canton, Hong Kong and Haikow -Hainan rose up in explosive public anger and spontaneous outburst of pride in Chinese nationalism and patriotism. The national objection to this insult of the outrageous Versailles Conference was so powerful and far reaching that it evoked an immediate national response and pressured the Chinese delegation at Versailles to reject the peace treaty.
It is important to recall that in 1898 the weak decadent Ch'ing government was forced under duress to lease the Kiaochow naval base in Shangtung province to Germany for a duration of 99 years. When World War 1 broke out Japan joined the British - French - American allies against the Germany-Austria-Hungary Alliance while China was in the meanwhile neutral. However, China was later in 1917 forced by the British to help their allies by sending over to Europe more than 500,000 Chinese workers to help in the war industries and to help digging trenches in the front line of the war theatre.
Being a member of the Allies Japan ousted the Germans from Kiaochow and proceeded to occupy the whole of the Shangtung province. To legalize its occupation of Shangtung Japan presented to China its Twenty-One Demands provisions which recognized its occupation of Shangtung. Further to bolster its claim Japan entered into a series of treaties with the great powers - England, France, Russia and America.
By the Russo-Japanese agreement of February 20, 1917 , Russia recognized the Twenty-one Demands, while Japan agreed to recognize the Russian gains in Outer Mongolia during 1912 - 1915. ( NB: Russia evil plots and intrigues against China in Outer Mongolia will be discussed in the next article later ). The Anglo-Japanese agreement of the day obligated England to support the Japanese occupation of Shangtung at the forthcoming peace conference in Versailles and to second its claims to German possessions in the Pacific Ocean north of the Equator. In return Japan agreed to support the British claims to German islands in the Pacific Ocean south of the Equator.
Similar secret agreements were made with France and Italy. And then in the Lansing - Ishii Agreement in November 1917, the United States recognized Japan's position in Shangtung in exchange for Japanese recognition of the "Open Door Policy" with regard to international trade in China.
In September, 1918 Japan signed a secret pact with the decrepit Chinese warlord government in Peking. It granted Yuan Shi-kai the warlord with a loan of 20 million yen and allowed Japan to build two railways in Shangtung and to station Japanese troops at various key points or towns in the province.
Armed with these secret treaties, the Japanese came to Versailles confident of winning their case on Shangtung. There was no doubt the retention of Shangtung would indirectly acknowledge the validity of the Twenty-one Demands and the viability of the secret treaties with the warlord regime in Peking, in which such agreements gave Japan far greater concessions in Manchuria and other parts of China rather than just in Shangtung.
At the end of the First World War, 1914 - 1918 the Chinese thought they could rely on the Western powers to adjudicate justly the principles of democracy, self-determination and protection of the weak. It was with these high expectations that the Chinese delegation went to Versailles hoping to recover Shangtung and the complete abolition of all the unequal treties and the restoration to China of all the Chinese territories that the Western powers had taken from China under duress and coercion through the Unequal Treaties.
But in Versailles the Chinese delegation were greatly disappointed and flabbergasted when they were coldly told that the peace conference had not been called to adjust all the international grievances of the past, but to settle problems arising from the conclusion of the war. Thus for their own selfish interests only Shangtung was presented in the agenda so that the Western powers and Japan could horse trade for their own political interests at the expense of China's territorial integrity.
The Chinese delegation pleaded that Shangtung, the birthplace of Confucius and Mencius was the Holy Land of China, and that the German rights which the Japanese had claimed to inherit had ceased to excist when China entered the war in 1917 on the side of the Allies and abrogated all treaties with Germany. Moreover, Article 5 of the 1898 agreement on Kiaochow stipulated that "Germany engages at no time to sublet the territory leased from China to another power." Similarly the Twenty-on Demands were invalid because the Chinese parliament had never ratified them. Moreover, China's entry into the war in1917 had so changed its status - from a neutral to a belligerent - that it was qualified to invoke the international law principle of 'rebus sic stantibus' to nullify the Twenty-one Demands.
But no amount of Chinese argument could alter the great powers self-interests decision and the fate of Shangtung and the Japanese Twenty-one Demands were sealed.
The Chinese can never forget that the Allies were bound by the secret treaties to support the Japanese position vis-a-vis China.
China and the Chinese people must remember never to trust or rely on other people and other countries. The Chinese people must continuously build up its strength both politically, economically and militarily and make sure they are second to none. Only in this way China can thrive forever in happy living and survive in milleniums in the world full of evil and wicked Western white supremacist powers.
Southernglory1
Wednesday, 4th May, 2022
