For the West to understand more about Xi Jinping´s “China´s dream” – a national rejuvenation from “the century of humiliation” one must not forget the betrayal in Paris (The Treaty of Versailles, 1919), a still-living history in the hearts and minds of most Chinese. Let see what history tells us.
Chinese role in 1st International War (WWI)
During World War I, China was in the throws of a bloody and complex civil war. The government of the Manchu Emperor had been overthrown by a new Nationalist Government, however the country quickly collapsed into a series of realms and factions controlled by warlords of the former Imperial Army. As a result of the war, China faced hard economic times, and many Chinese looked abroad for opportunities.
Threfore, when the First International War (wrongly named World War I) began, China’s military strength was tiny after almost a century of humiliation and exploitation by the major European powers. Its military infrastructure had nothing to do with the two European sides or the United States, which had entered the war supporting Britain and France. However, China had a resource that the Allies lacked: human potential. Nearly a million dead on the battlefields of the Somme and Ypres meant that the Allied countries constantly needed more men for the front. Ingenious as ever, they realised that they could use Chinese labourers on the docks and construction projects in Western Europe. Thus more Europeans would be free to go to war (something similar happened with women in Britain).
The French and British began negotiating in 1916 to exchange Chinese in exchange for China taking back the territories that both countries had occupied in China. China began to prepare a pawn centre near the British naval base. This selection process, never lacking in fine English humour, was sarcastically called their «sausage factory.» Tens of thousands of volunteers, driven by the poverty and political uncertainties of the country – the various factions and revolts trying to gain the space left by the fall of the Qing dynasty – and the possibility of earning a living wage left their country. Before being accepted, they had to undergo medical examinations and were specifically checked for trachoma (a contagious disease of the eyelids), tuberculosis, and venereal disease.
Around 100,000 men passed the screening, and those Chinese accepted were issued with identification squares of consecutive numbers fastened with metal rivets to their wrist bands. They were then sprayed from head to toe with disinfectant and asked to cut off their pigtails, a relic of the Manchu era and the Qing dynasty.
In 1916, the French government’s first ship carrying Chinese labourers was sunk by German submarines in the Mediterranean after passing through the Suez Canal – and with it nearly 600 Chinese -. After that, the vessel crossed the Pacific to Canada, transferred to trains. After crossing Canada, they were loaded onto fleets escorted by anti-submarine patrols to cross the Atlantic.
In addition to the the Chinese Labor Corps in the Western Front, a similar program was conducted by the Russian Government on the Eastern Front, recruiting around 200,000 – 500,000 workers.
The Chinese workers´ situation on the war front
Although the recruitment of Chinese provoked a revolt among French workers and trade unions, the Chinese began to work unloading military stores on the docks, building barracks and hospitals, digging trenches, and handling ammunition in railway switching yards. They work ten hours a day, seven days a week, with a bit of time off to celebrate their traditional holidays.
While at war, many Chinese were killed in bombing raids or by mines while clearing battlefields; others died from a diet they were not used to and from the humidity and bitter cold of northern Europe. These events led to some mutinies against their French and English employers. At this time, some relief associations turned their attention to the Chinese public education problems.
The Chinese contribution to the war was not without its price. Almost 3000 Chinese died in Flanders and France and were buried in particular cemeteries. Here, the long lines of gravestones, with the characters of their Chinese names and the order numbers given to them by their Western patrons, remain a mute testimony to China’s first involvement in a major world conflict.
The betrayal of Japan, US, France, and Britain to China
The victory of the Allied side – with the armistice of 11 November 1918 – in China raised great expectations of regaining at least the Chinese lands that Germany had occupied for several decades.
Leading the 62-member Chinese delegation to the post-Versailles treaty negotiations were five capable diplomats who had not been told in advance what to expect. They were greeted at Versailles by the appalling statement of the Japanese delegate that in early 1917, in return for Japanese naval aid against the Germans, Britain, France, and Germany had signed a secret treaty guaranteeing support for Japanese claims to the alienation of German rights in Shangdong after the war.
China’s trust in west never recovered after Versailles betrayal (Financial Times). China, which had sent 140,000 workers to serve on the western front, was indeed humiliated. But this was only half of the story. Encouraged by then US President Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” statement, China sent a diplomatic team with high hopes — only to be deserted by the western powers, which sided with Japan. VK Wellington Koo, the brightest diplomat in the Republic of China, said China was “betrayed in the house of our only friend”. China’s diplomats refused to sign the treaty in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. They returned home bitter. Among the casualties were China’s trust in the west, which has never been fully recovered.
Japan, the “good (and imperialist) neighbour”
On top of that, the Japanese also announced that they had reached secret agreements with Duan Qirui, a warlord who dominated China intermittently between 1916 and 1926. He did not represent China but one of the many factions trying to bring order and seize power in a unified China. These agreements gave the Japanese the right to station police and establish military garrisons in Jinan and Qingdao. It also guaranteed Japan, in partial payment of its «loans» to China – the European powers and Japan controlled all the benefits of trade from Chinese ports – the entire revenue from two new railways the Japanese planned to build in Shangdong -. These secret agreements, unknown to Chinese delegates, were another source of humiliation to China.
The American «friend» Woodrow Wilson, who had earlier defended China’s rights to regain Shangdong, now viewed that the Japanese had firmly declared theirs based on international law (the rule of law, international order,…). On 30 April 1919, the US President agreed with Britain’s D.L. George and France’s G. Clemenceau to transfer all Chinese land rights to … Japan. The areas stolen by Germany did not go back to China but to Japan. Logically China never signed or accepted the outcome of the Versailles Repartition.
Japanese forces seized German possessions in China and across the Pacific, as well as pursuing and patrolling for raiders. Japanese warships patrolled these waters, escorting troops and goods to support the war effort in Europe.
China path to dignity, resources, and unity.
Faced with this new humiliation, a new generation of Chinese activists would incisively question the nature of Western moral values, fed up with the bloodshed that Western nations had shown themselves capable of provoking as well as their hypocrisy. On 4 May 1919, when the news of the betrayal of China reached Peking and started public demonstrations, it would give rise to a new movement in China.
The context was not very favourable for China. The fragility of the authority of Chinese leader Yuan Shikai, the failure of the first young republic, the betrayal of Versailles, and the West’s continued domination of China’s principal sources of revenue, the trading ports.
Two lines of thought appeared: on the one hand, those who feared that China was about to be dismembered; on the other, thinkers that sought the roots of the current situation and how to regain China’s territorial integrity.
The context was not very favourable for China. The fragility of the authority of Chinese leader Yuan Shikai, the failure of the first young republic, the betrayal of Versailles, and the West’s continued domination of China’s principal sources of revenue, the trading ports.
Two lines of thought appeared: on the one hand, those who feared that China was about to be dismembered; on the other, thinkers that sought the roots of the current situation and how to regain China’s territorial integrity.
Radical thinkers, such as Chen Duxiu, co-founder of the Communist Party of China, or thinkers who integrated different sources of thought, such as Mao Zedong, began to look for ways to recover Chinese history, dignity, and territories in foreign hands.
Various revolutions started to take shape, with the communist revolution emerging as the winner. But that is another story…
… and if you want to know how our journey to the East continues, be sure to read the next post carefully … If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or input, please email us at info@danielecheverria.com. We will be happy to answer them.
