apart.
The foreign presence weakened the Qing state by reducing its autonomy, but it also helped preserve it by favoring it against its enemies in the late nineteenth century. To many observers it seemed the perfect exploitative relationship: The Western powers made use of the Qing’s weakness to extract privileges from it, but supported it so that it did not collapse entirely, only then to exploit it a little bit more. The reality was quite a bit more complex. The Qing became quite adept at maneuvering between foreign powers for advantage and never consciously became a tool of foreign interests. The leaders at Court were hoping and waiting for a day when China would be strong enough to confront the outsiders. At the same time, elite Chinese themselves became good at exploiting the Qing state for their own purposes, presenting private gain as public business. It was a climate of intense political and economic competition, in which foreigners had most of the advantages, but by no means all of them.
Meanwhile foreign concepts and ideas washed in over China, buoying those minds that were looking for a way out for their country and for themselves. As happened in the West, revolutionary thought oftencentered on the relationship between science and society, feeding on the belief that Charles Darwin’s theories of development also had a significance for human affairs. Mai Menghua, born in 1875, echoed the views of European and American social Darwinists:
Consider the development of all civilizations on earth. There is not one of these that is not based on struggle. China has never existed in a time of struggle and its people have never had a mind to struggle. Therefore, it is no wonder that China has not been able to develop. Today, however, [the Chinese people] are struggling with others. The twentieth century is unquestionably the Chinese age of opportunity for development and the time when this ancient civilization may be restored. 22
CHAPTER 3
JAPAN
N O OTHER ISSUE DEFINED China’s foreign relations in the early twentieth century as much as the relationship to Japan. Japan is a small country in comparison to China, which has twenty-five times its land area. It is roughly the same ratio, in fact, as that of the earth and the moon. And the two countries have analogies to earth and moon in their interactions. Japan has always had to deal with the gravitational pull of its giant neighbor. Although its islands never belonged to China’s direct sphere of control, Chinese culture, ideas, script, and religion have influenced Japan for more than a thousand years. The seventeenth-century Japanese neo-Confucian Kumazawa Banzan called China “the realm of the central fluorescence” and “the parent to the children, who were the eastern, southern, western, and northern barbarians, as the mountain was parent to the river’s children.” 1 But China has also been affected by its cultural satellite.
Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, China saw Japan as an inspiration and a possible ally in the encounter with the West. From the mid-1880s on, however, the Qing leadership began to consider its eastern island neighbor a rival and a threat. In 1894–1895 the two countries fought a bloody and destructive war over influence in East Asia, resulting in Qing China’s first-ever military loss to another regional power. Korea and Taiwan became Japanese protectorates (and eventual colonies), andChina stood humiliated in the region. With the collapse of the Qing, many Japanese viewed China as chaotic and unstable. They thought of their giant neighbor as a magnet for more Western influence, and therefore tried to expand Japan’s power for reasons of trade, security, and ideology. Japan, in the eyes of its elite, had a civilizing mission in China, just as the European great powers thought they had in Africa and South Asia.
D URING THE TOKUGAWA PERIOD IN JAPAN , from 1603 to 1868, the country limited its contacts with the outside world,
The foreign presence weakened the Qing state by reducing its autonomy, but it also helped preserve it by favoring it against its enemies in the late nineteenth century. To many observers it seemed the perfect exploitative relationship: The Western powers made use of the Qing’s weakness to extract privileges from it, but supported it so that it did not collapse entirely, only then to exploit it a little bit more. The reality was quite a bit more complex. The Qing became quite adept at maneuvering between foreign powers for advantage and never consciously became a tool of foreign interests. The leaders at Court were hoping and waiting for a day when China would be strong enough to confront the outsiders. At the same time, elite Chinese themselves became good at exploiting the Qing state for their own purposes, presenting private gain as public business. It was a climate of intense political and economic competition, in which foreigners had most of the advantages, but by no means all of them.
Meanwhile foreign concepts and ideas washed in over China, buoying those minds that were looking for a way out for their country and for themselves. As happened in the West, revolutionary thought oftencentered on the relationship between science and society, feeding on the belief that Charles Darwin’s theories of development also had a significance for human affairs. Mai Menghua, born in 1875, echoed the views of European and American social Darwinists:
Consider the development of all civilizations on earth. There is not one of these that is not based on struggle. China has never existed in a time of struggle and its people have never had a mind to struggle. Therefore, it is no wonder that China has not been able to develop. Today, however, [the Chinese people] are struggling with others. The twentieth century is unquestionably the Chinese age of opportunity for development and the time when this ancient civilization may be restored. 22
CHAPTER 3
JAPAN
N O OTHER ISSUE DEFINED China’s foreign relations in the early twentieth century as much as the relationship to Japan. Japan is a small country in comparison to China, which has twenty-five times its land area. It is roughly the same ratio, in fact, as that of the earth and the moon. And the two countries have analogies to earth and moon in their interactions. Japan has always had to deal with the gravitational pull of its giant neighbor. Although its islands never belonged to China’s direct sphere of control, Chinese culture, ideas, script, and religion have influenced Japan for more than a thousand years. The seventeenth-century Japanese neo-Confucian Kumazawa Banzan called China “the realm of the central fluorescence” and “the parent to the children, who were the eastern, southern, western, and northern barbarians, as the mountain was parent to the river’s children.” 1 But China has also been affected by its cultural satellite.
Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, China saw Japan as an inspiration and a possible ally in the encounter with the West. From the mid-1880s on, however, the Qing leadership began to consider its eastern island neighbor a rival and a threat. In 1894–1895 the two countries fought a bloody and destructive war over influence in East Asia, resulting in Qing China’s first-ever military loss to another regional power. Korea and Taiwan became Japanese protectorates (and eventual colonies), andChina stood humiliated in the region. With the collapse of the Qing, many Japanese viewed China as chaotic and unstable. They thought of their giant neighbor as a magnet for more Western influence, and therefore tried to expand Japan’s power for reasons of trade, security, and ideology. Japan, in the eyes of its elite, had a civilizing mission in China, just as the European great powers thought they had in Africa and South Asia.
D URING THE TOKUGAWA PERIOD IN JAPAN , from 1603 to 1868, the country limited its contacts with the outside world,
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