China -- Civilization; China -- Foreign relations; China -- Politics and government
The next incident begins with the murder of two German missionaries in
Shantung in 1897. Nothing in their life became them like the leaving of
it; for if they had lived they would probably have made very few
converts, whereas by dying they afforded the world an object-lesson in
Christian ethics. The Germans seized Kiaochow Bay and created a naval
base there; they also acquired railway and mining rights in Shantung,
which, by the Treaty of Versailles, passed to Japan in accordance with
the Fourteen Points. Shantung therefore became virtually a Japanese
possession, though America at Washington has insisted upon its
restitution. The services of the two missionaries to civilization did
not, however, end in China, for their death was constantly used in the
German Reichstag during the first debates on the German Big Navy Bills,
since it was held that warships would make Germany respected in China.
Thus they helped to exacerbate the relations of England and Germany and
to hasten the advent of the Great War. They also helped to bring on the
Boxer rising, which is said to have begun as a movement against the
Germans in Shantung, though the other Powers emulated the Germans in
every respect, the Russians by creating a naval base at Port Arthur,
the British by acquiring Wei-hai-wei and a sphere of influence in the
Yangtze, and so on. The Americans alone held aloof, proclaiming the
policy of Chinese integrity and the Open Door.
The Boxer rising is one of the few Chinese events that all Europeans
know about. After we had demonstrated our superior virtue by the sack of
Peking, we exacted a huge indemnity, and turned the Legation Quarter of
Peking into a fortified city. To this day, it is enclosed by a wall,
filled with European, American, and Japanese troops, and surrounded by a
bare space on which the Chinese are not allowed to build. It is
administered by the diplomatic body, and the Chinese authorities have no
powers over anyone within its gates. When some unusually corrupt and
traitorous Government is overthrown, its members take refuge in the
Japanese (or other) Legation and so escape the punishment of their
crimes, while within the sacred precincts of the Legation Quarter the
Americans erect a vast wireless station said to be capable of
communicating directly with the United States. And so the refutation of
Chien Lung is completed.
Out of the Boxer indemnity, however, one good thing has come. The
Americans found that, after paying all just claims for damages, they
still had a large surplus. This they returned to China to be spent on
higher education, partly in colleges in China under American control,
partly by sending advanced Chinese students to American universities.
The gain to China has been enormous, and the benefit to America from the
friendship of the Chinese (especially the most educated of them) is
incalculable. This is obvious to everyone, yet England shows hardly any
signs of following suit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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