Twenty-One Demands

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Twenty-One Demands

The Twenty-One Demands (

Japan was in a strong position, as the Western powers were in a stalemate world war with Germany. Britain and Japan had a military alliance since 1902, and in 1914 London had asked Tokyo to enter the war. Beijing published the secret demands and appealed to Washington and London. They were sympathetic and forced Tokyo to drop section 5 in the final 1916 settlement. Japan gained a little in China, but lost a great deal of prestige and trust in Britain and the U.S.^[1]

The Chinese public responded with a spontaneous nationwide boycott of Japanese goods; Japan's exports to China fell drastically. Britain was affronted and no longer trusted Japan as an ally. With the First World War underway, Japan's position was strong and Britain's was weak; nevertheless, Britain (and the United States) forced Japan to drop the fifth set of demands that would have given Japan a large measure of control over the entire Chinese economy and ended the Open Door Policy.^[2] Japan and China reached a series of agreements which ratified the first four sets of goals on 25 May 1915.

Background

Japan had gained a large

Japan, under

The Twenty One Demands were divided into five groups:[8]

• Group 1 (four demands) confirmed Japan's recent seizure of German ports and operations in
  Shandong Province
  , and expanded Japan's sphere of influence over the railways, coasts and major cities of the province.
• Group 2 (seven demands) pertained to Japan's South Manchuria Railway Zone, extending the leasehold over the territory for 99 years, and expanding Japan's sphere of influence in southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia, to include rights of settlement and extraterritoriality, appointment of financial and administrative officials to the government and priority for Japanese investments in those areas. Japan demanded access to Inner Mongolia for raw materials, as a manufacturing site, and as a strategic buffer against Russian encroachment in Korea.^[9]
• Group 3 (two demands) gave Japan control of the Han-Ye-Ping (
  Hanyang, Daye, and Pingxiang
  ) mining and metallurgical complex in central China; it was deep in debt to Japan.
• Group 4 (one demand) barred China from giving any further coastal or island concessions to foreign powers.
• Group 5 (seven demands) was the most aggressive. China was to hire Japanese advisors who could take effective control of China's finance and police. Japan would be empowered to build three major railways, and also Buddhist temples and schools. Japan would gain effective control of
  Taiwan
  , which had been ceded to Japan in 1895.

After China rejected Japan's revised proposal on 26 April 1915, the genrō intervened and deleted ‘Group 5’ from the document, as these had proved to be the most objectionable to the Chinese government. A reduced set of "Thirteen Demands" was transmitted on May 7 in the form of an ultimatum, with a two-day deadline for response. Yuan Shikai was not in a position to risk war with Japan, and accepted appeasement, a tactic followed by his successors. The final form of the treaty was signed by both parties on May 25, 1915.^[10]

Katō Takaaki publicly admitted that the ultimatum was invited by Yuan to save face with the Chinese people in conceding to the Demands. American Minister Paul Reinsch reported to the US State Department that the Chinese were surprised at the leniency of the ultimatum, as it demanded much less than they had already committed themselves to concede.^{[citation needed]}

Consequences

The results of the revised final (Thirteen Demands) version of the Twenty-One Demands were far more negative for Japan than positive. Without "Group 5", the new treaty gave Japan little more than it already had in China.^{[citation needed]}

On the other hand, the United States expressed strongly negative reactions to Japan's rejection of the Open Door Policy. In the Bryan Note issued by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan on 13 March 1915, the U.S., while affirming Japan's "special interests" in Manchuria, Mongolia and Shandong, expressed concern over further encroachments to Chinese sovereignty.^[11]

Great Britain, Japan's closest ally, expressed concern over what was perceived as Japan's overbearing, bullying approach to diplomacy, and the British Foreign Office in particular was unhappy with Japanese attempts to establish what would effectively be a Japanese protectorate over all of China.^[12]

Afterwards, Japan and the United States looked for a compromise; as a result, the

In China, the overall political impact of Japan's actions was highly negative, creating a considerable amount of public ill-will towards Japan, contributing to the May Fourth Movement, and a significant upsurge in nationalism.^[13]

Japan continued to push for outright control over Shandong Province and won European diplomatic recognition for their claim at the Treaty of Versailles (despite the refusal of the Chinese delegation to sign the treaty). This, in turn, provoked ill-will from the United States government, as well as widespread hostility within China; a large-scale boycott against Japanese goods was just one effect. In 1922, the U.S. brokered a solution: China was awarded nominal sovereignty over all of Shandong, while in practice Japan's economic dominance continued.^[14]

See also

• China–Japan relations
• History of the Republic of China
• Warlord Era
• Unequal treaties
• Japanese imperialism

References

Bibliography

• Akagi, Roy Hidemichi. Japan Foreign Relations 1542–1936 (1936) pp 332–364.online
• Bix, Herbert P. "Japanese Imperialism and the Manchurian Economy, 1900–31." China Quarterly (1972): 425–443 online
• Clubb, O. Edmund. 20th century China (1965) online pp 52–55, 86
• Davis, Clarence B. "Limits of Effacement: Britain and the Problem of American Cooperation and Competition in China, 1915–1917." Pacific Historical Review (1979): 47–63.
• Dickinson, Frederick R. War and national reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914–1919 (Harvard U. Asia Center, Vol. 177. 1999)
• Dull, Paul S. “Count Kato Komei and the Twenty-One Demands.” Pacific Historical Review 19#2 (1950), pp. 151–161. online
• Duus, Peter et al. eds. The Japanese informal empire in China, 1895–1937 (1989) online
• Gowen, Robert Joseph. "Great Britain and the Twenty-One Demands of 1915: Cooperation versus Effacement," Journal of Modern History (1971) 43#1 pp. 76–106 in JSTOR
• Griswold, A. Whitney. The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (1938)
• Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. (1970). The Rise of Modern China. Oxford UP. pp. 494, 502.
• Hinsley, F. H. ed. British Foreign Policy under Sir Edward Grey (1977) pp 452–465.
• Jansen, Marius B. "Yawata, Hanyehping, and the twenty-one demands," Pacific Historical Review (1954) 23#1 pp 31–48.
• LaFeber, Walter. The Clash: US-Japanese Relations Throughout History (1998) pp 106–16.
• Link, Arthur S. Wilson, Volume III: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915 (1960) pp 267–308, on the American role.
• Luo, Zhitian. "National humiliation and national assertion – The Chinese response to the twenty-one demands" Modern Asian Studies (1993) 27#2 pp 297–319 online.
• Narangoa, Li. "Japanese Geopolitics and the Mongol Lands, 1915–1945," European Journal of East Asian Studies (2004) 3#1 pp 45–67
• Nish, Ian Hill. Japanese foreign policy, 1869–1942: Kasumigaseki to Miyakezaka (1977).
• Wood, G. Zay. The twenty-one demands, Japan versus China (1921) online