Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (30 page)

16 War with Japan (1894)

JAPAN SET ABOUT
its miraculous transformation into a modern power during the reign of Emperor Meiji, who ascended the throne in 1867. With a population of forty million, it aspired to build a global empire. In the 1870s, it seized one of the China’s vassal states, the Liuqiu Islands, and attempted to invade Taiwan, part of the Chinese Empire. Cixi’s general policy was to keep the empire intact at all costs, while releasing the vassal states if she had to. She washed her hands of Liuqiu, by deeds if not by words, but made a determined effort to defend Taiwan, linking the island more closely to the mainland.

Japan also cast its eyes on Korea, another vassal state of China. In this case Cixi tried to prevent the Japanese from annexing the country as it shared a border with Manchuria, which was close to Beijing. As China was not strong enough to stop Japan by itself, Cixi sought to involve the West as a deterrent. She instructed Earl Li to persuade Korea to open up trade with the Western powers, so that they would have a stake in the country.
In 1882, an internal strife broke out in Korea and the Japanese Legation was assaulted. Tokyo sent a gunboat to Korea to protect its nationals. As soon as she heard the news, Cixi told Earl Li her anxiety that Japan ‘might exploit the situation to pursue its designs’. She immediately dispatched troops by both land and sea to the capital of Korea, today’s Seoul, with Earl Li in overall command based in Tianjin. While the Chinese army helped end the riot, the Japanese refrained from getting involved in the fighting; they obtained some compensations – but, most importantly, their soldiers stayed on. In response, Cixi ordered some of her troops to be stationed in Korea for as long as there was a Japanese military presence.
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Writing to Earl Li in her own hand in crimson ink, to stress the importance of her words, she said: ‘Though a small country, Japan harbours big ambitions. It has already swallowed Liuqiu, and is now eyeing Korea. We have to prepare ourselves quietly. You must be extremely cautious about Japan, and do not lower your guard for a moment.’ It was principally for this reason that she decided to spend enormous sums to build up the navy.

At the end of 1884, while China was at war with France on its border with Vietnam, a pro-Japanese coup broke out in Korea. From the information she gathered, Cixi was convinced that ‘the Japanese were behind the coup’, ‘taking advantage of China’s preoccupation’ elsewhere. She sent over troops to help suppress the coup, but told them not to give the Japanese any excuse to start a war. As it turned out, when Chinese troops did clash with the Japanese in the Korean king’s palace, the Chinese were victorious. On Cixi’s instructions, Earl Li opened talks with Count Itō Hirobumi, soon to become Japan’s first Prime Minister, and both sides agreed to withdraw troops from Korea. Cixi was pleased with the ‘speedy and satisfactory conclusion’. So was Robert Hart, Inspector General of Customs, who wrote in a letter: ‘The Japs were to sign yesterday at T’tsin [Tianjin]: so we win all round.’

Over the next decade, Japan accelerated the modernisation of its military, especially the navy. In China, Cixi laid down her guideline for naval development just before she retired at the beginning of 1889: ‘Keep expanding and updating, gradually, but never slacken.’

But after Cixi’s retirement, China stopped buying advanced warships. Emperor Guangxu was guided by Grand Tutor Weng, who was also in charge of the country’s finance as the head of the Ministry of Revenue. Weng could not comprehend why huge sums of money should be spent on gunboats when there was no war. He did not see Japan as a threat. All his concerns were domestic. In 1890, natural disasters ravaged the country and millions were made homeless by floods. Hart wrote: ‘We have had lakes in the city – a sea round it – rivers in the streets – swimming baths in the courtyard – shower baths in the rooms – and destruction for roofs, ceilings . . .’ Famine-stricken men and women depended on rice centres, to which Cixi as the empress dowager made donations. The government spent more than eleven million taels to buy rice from overseas that year.

When the disaster was over and
rice imports halved, naval updating did not resume. On the contrary, in 1891, when Cixi moved into the Summer Palace and severed her ties with the government altogether, Emperor Guangxu decreed that
all naval and army be discontinued, on the advice of Grand Tutor Weng (‘there is no war on the coast’). This decision may have caused the rows at this time between Emperor Guangxu and Cixi, who was deeply concerned that Japan would now outstrip China in military material. Indeed, as Earl Li observed, Japan
‘is concentrating the resources of the entire country to build its navy,’ and ‘is buying a gunboat every year . . . including first-class, latest ironclads from Britain’. As a result, in the ensuing years, the Japanese navy overtook the Chinese in its overall capacity, especially in faster and more up-to-date warships.
The Japanese army also became better equipped.

At this time Earl Li was in charge of coastal defence. Emperor Guangxu had inherited and retained Cixi’s old team after his takeover. Whatever resentment he felt for his Papa Dearest, he was not engaged in a power struggle with her. The emperor also had no interest in defence matters – in fact he preferred not to have to think about them and left everything in this field to Earl Li. But although the earl had this enormous responsibility, he had lost the unreserved trust that he had enjoyed with Cixi. At the emperor’s side was his bitter foe, Grand Tutor Weng. The animosity of the arch-conservative royal tutor towards the major reformer went back a long way. The tutor had always suspected that some of the money allocated to the earl for building the navy had ended up in the earl’s own pockets and those of his associates. This sneaking suspicion was behind his advice to the emperor to stop all purchases of gunboats. As soon as Cixi retired,
the Grand Tutor started to check the earl’s accounts, year by year, going back to 1884, when a major update of the navy began. The earl was required to present the financial records in detail, to answer endless queries and to justify himself – and to beg for such essentials as maintenance costs for the ships. The Grand Tutor remained suspicious, and the emperor appointed Prince Ching as the overlord of the navy, in a signal of distrust towards the earl.

The earl felt that the throne ‘
chooses to believe in groundless rumours and seems to want to take power away’ from him. Under this pressure, he made it his priority to please the emperor and keep his job. After Emperor Guangxu halted the purchases for the navy, and knowing that His Majesty did not want to spend money on defence, the earl presented him with a
glowing report about an impregnable coast. There was no mention of any problems, although the earl knew there were many. He wrote privately,
‘Our ships are not up to date, and the training is not quite right. It would be hard to succeed in a sea battle.’ Later he even said that he had known all along that the Chinese military was a
‘paper tiger’. But to Emperor Guangxu he only said what His Majesty wanted to hear. Indeed, the emperor was pleased and praised him fulsomely for doing a brilliant job.

Naval chiefs repeatedly asked for new warships, but
the earl did not pass on their requests to the throne. He was fearful that Grand Tutor Weng might accuse him of crying wolf in order to line his own pockets, and that the emperor might fire him.

The earl was in denial about Japan’s ambitions. He did not seem to have any sense of unease, even though he could see that Japan’s naval expansion was aimed at China: Japan was
‘seeking to be one-up on us in everything: if our gunboat speed is 15 knots, they want theirs to be 16 knots . . .’ ‘That country will go far,’ he remarked to a colleague. But he shut his mind to the inevitable fact that Japan could only ‘go far’ at the cost of the Chinese Empire.

If Cixi had been in charge, she would never have allowed Japan to become superior in military hardware. She knew that this was the only way to deter Japan. Before she retired, she had built up a navy that was the most powerful in Asia, far better equipped than that of Japan. And to keep that edge was by no means impossible, given that Japan had less total wealth at the time and could ill afford a gunboat race.

But Cixi in retirement had neither adequate information nor any say in international affairs. And the young emperor was not a strategic thinker. He simply left the whole business of defending the country to Earl Li, whose calculations were based on self-interest.

On 29 May 1894, after inspecting the coast, Earl Li presented the monarch with another optimistic report. This time, traces of apprehension crept in: he mentioned that Japan had been buying gunboats every year and that China was lagging behind. But he stopped short of spelling out the implications, which were consequently lost on Emperor Guangxu. His Majesty asked no questions, and once again praised the earl for doing a good job.

Just at this moment, Japan struck. In spring that year there had been a peasant uprising in Korea. On 3 June, the Korean king asked China to send in troops, and Beijing agreed. In keeping with Earl Li’s agreement with Count Itō, China informed Japan. Tokyo claimed it needed its own soldiers in Korea to protect its diplomats and civilians, and dispatched a force. The uprising ended before the troops of either country could intervene, and the Koreans requested both countries to withdraw. The Chinese were prepared to do so. But the Japanese declined to leave.

The Prime Minister of Japan was now Count Itō, Earl Li’s counterpart in the negotiations ten years earlier. An outstanding statesman, Itō had since that time helped draft the Meiji constitution (1889) and establish a bicameral national Diet (1890), which had laid the foundations of modern Japan. At the very time when he dispatched troops to Korea, his intention was that they should stay there – as a first step towards a very much more ambitious goal: to initiate a military contest with China, beat the massive empire and become the leader and master of East Asia. So, instead of withdrawing, he sent in more troops. His pretext for this act of invasion was that the Korean government must be forced to carry out modernising ‘reforms’. The Chinese were told that they were welcome to join in this ‘reformist’ enterprise but, if they chose not to take part, Japan would carry it out alone. Prime Minister Itō’s scheme put Japan in a win–win situation. If the Chinese troops left, Japan would occupy Korea – and challenge China at a time that suited Japan. If the Chinese stayed on, there would be numerous opportunities to create conflict between the two armies and spark off a war, again at a time of Japan’s choosing. In fact Prime Minister Itō had made up his
mind to take on China now.

No one in the Chinese government grasped Japan’s intentions, not even Earl Li. While the Japanese military build-up in Korea gathered pace, it was business as usual in Beijing. Emperor Guangxu continued his classics lessons and planned banquets to mark his birthday at the end of July. Grand Tutor Weng wrote calligraphy on fans, a common scholarly pastime, and appraised his treasured stone-rubbing collections with visiting connoisseurs. Earl Li delayed reinforcing the Chinese troops in Korea, for fear of triggering a war. It does not seem to have occurred to him that Japan’s goal was not confined to Korea – that it was actually seeking war with China. Thinking peace could be preserved, the earl busily lobbied European powers, especially Russia, which had its own designs on Korea (of which the earl was well aware), hoping that they would intervene and restrain the Japanese – a hope that proved futile. Robert Hart observed that the earl ‘is
calculating with too much confidence on foreign intervention and infers too much from Japan’s willingness to discuss’. ‘The Powers are at work trying to induce Japan to withdraw and discuss, for they don’t want war, but Japan is very bumptious and cock-a-hoop’; Japan ‘thanks them for their kind advice, goes on her way, and would probably rather fight them all than give in!’

At the end of June, it finally dawned on Earl Li that Japan was
‘not just threatening Korea’, but wanted a decisive war ‘with China, using everything it has’. This recognition came from news supplied by Robert Hart. ‘Japan is mobilizing 50,000 troops, has ordered two up-to-date iron-clad gunboats from Britain and bought and hired many English commercial vehicles for transferring troops and arms.’ When he reported this to the emperor, the earl’s emphasis was now on the problems that beset his country’s defence. This time he made clear that China was ‘probably unable to win on the sea’ and, moreover, that there were only 20,000 land troops defending the entire northern coast, from Manchuria to Shandong.

The emperor noticed the discrepancy between this and the earl’s recent upbeat report, but he was not alarmed. He said that war between China and Japan over Korea was
‘within our expectations’, and he was sanguine. Grandly he talked about
‘launching a punitive military action on a massive scale’. His Majesty’s condescension towards Japan was shared by the vast majority of his subjects. Hart observed:
‘999 out of every 1000 Chinese are sure big China can thrash little Japan . . .’

On 15 July, while Japan moved
‘in a really masterful way’ (Hart’s words), the Chinese emperor appointed his classics tutor as his key war adviser. The Grand Council could not have a meeting without Weng’s presence. Teacher and pupil were blithely ignorant about just how bad the condition of their country’s defence was. Hart wrote at the time that China would find that
‘her army and navy are not what she expected them to be’, and that if there was a war, ‘Japan will dash gallantly and perhaps successfully, while China, with her old tactics, will have many a defeat to put up with . . .’ Indeed, the Chinese military had slipped back into their old ill-disciplined and corrupt ways. Gunboats had been used for smuggling, and gun barrels, uncleaned, as laundry hangers. Nepotism had swelled the ranks with incompetent officers. No one was in the mood for war – while the Japanese military had been drilled into a superb war machine, primed for action.

Belatedly Earl Li started to transport troops to Korea by sea, for which three British ships were chartered. While the ferrying was under way, on 23 July, Japanese troops entered Seoul, seized the Korean king and set up a puppet government, which granted the Japanese army the right to expel Chinese troops. On the 25th, the Japanese navy launched a surprise attack on the ferries transporting Chinese soldiers and sank one ship, the
Kow-shing
. More than 1,000 men, including five British naval officers, died. News of the first military clash with Japan was withheld from Emperor Guangxu for two days by Earl Li. The earl was afraid that the poorly informed emperor might declare war at once, which he regarded as unwise. He was trying to use the sinking of a
British
ship to avert the war. ‘
Britain cannot allow this,’ the earl reckoned; it would do something to check Japan. He clutched at his hopes like a handful of straws.