China breaks off relations with Germany

At about 1 p.m. on 14 March 1917 the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Peking delivered to the German legation a note breaking off diplomatic relations. The minister, Paul von Hintze, his staff and the German consuls throughout the country were handed their passports. According to Chinese press reports, in the afternoon the ministry informed in turn the ministers of the Entente powers, of the neutral states and of the United States, and at five o’clock it announced the decision to journalists. President Li Yuanhong issued a proclamation to the nation that day. The Chinese minister in Washington, Wellington Koo, explained to the State Department that in their reply of 10 March the Germans had indeed agreed to discuss the protection of Chinese lives and property, but had flatly refused to give up the submarine blockade. The protest had therefore been in vain.

The protest and the Athos

China was following the appeal that President Woodrow Wilson had addressed to the neutral states when on 3 February he broke off relations with Germany. On 9 February the government in Peking protested in Berlin against unrestricted submarine warfare and threatened to break off relations if the protest had no effect. The Chinese had reasons of their own to be angry. On 17 February in the Mediterranean a German submarine sank the French liner Athos, which was carrying Chinese labourers to France. Several hundred of them died. On 7 March Prime Minister Duan Qirui explained to the American minister Paul Reinsch that it was precisely this disaster and the absence of any German concessions that had convinced the government to break off relations.

There were also political calculations behind the break. Japan, which since 1914 had occupied the German leased territory of Kiautschou with the port of Tsingtao, was pressing China to join the Entente, and the Foreign Minister Ichirō Motono personally urged the Chinese minister in Tokyo to do so. Money was also used as a lure. Japanese bankers promised loans, and the ministers of the Entente powers invited China to join and promised in return, among other things, a deferment of the instalments of the Boxer indemnity. Peking also hoped for consent to a rise in customs duties and a relaxation of the protocol of 1901. Duan and his supporters saw in this a chance of money and international prestige, and at the same time of strengthening their own position. President Li Yuanhong preferred caution and keeping to the line of the United States. Washington, however, was in no hurry to make promises. On 2 March Secretary of State Robert Lansing advised that China should wait until America itself decided what to do next.

Crisis in Peking

On 3 March, after many days of deliberation, the government decided to break off relations with Germany and to inform Japan of this by telegraph. The next day there was a clash at the presidential palace. Li Yuanhong would not agree to Tokyo being told before parliament had approved the decision, and refused to affix his seal to the government’s document on the matter. Duan held that the president was encroaching on the powers of the cabinet, announced his resignation and left by special train for Tientsin. At the station the Vice-President, Feng Guozhang, and several ministers tried in vain to stop him. After mediation Duan returned to Peking on the evening of 6 March, and the telegram to Tokyo was redrafted so as to be merely informative. The matter went to parliament. On 10 March the House of Representatives, at a stormy secret sitting during which one deputy reportedly even knocked over the Speaker, passed the government’s motion by 331 votes to 87. The following day the Senate approved it. Not everyone was in favour. The Shanghai chamber of commerce called on the government to remain neutral, and Sun Yat-sen asked the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George not to drag China into the war.

What the break meant

The Dutch took over the protection of German interests. The Chinese government, however, went further than the break in relations alone required. It at once took police control of the German concessions in Tientsin and Hankow. In the following days it placed under police supervision the German merchant ships that had been lying in Chinese ports since 1914, dismissed German employees from running the railways and ordered Germans to register with the authorities. The Entente ministers wanted more, including the confiscation of the ships and the closure of the German bank, but for the time being they did not get it. Relations with Austria-Hungary were not broken off. The Chinese Foreign Minister handed the ministers of the Entente, the neutral states and the United States a list of wishes: suspension of the Boxer indemnity instalments for ten years, higher customs duties and the abolition of the provisions of the 1901 protocol concerning the legation guards and the ban on bringing Chinese troops into Tientsin. At the same time he gave assurances that these were not conditions for entering the war.

Washington received the decision more coolly than the Chinese had hoped. On 13 March Lansing instructed that thanks be given for the support of the United States, but gave none of the guarantees Peking had asked for, and warned Reinsch that America considered a declaration of war by China inadvisable if it meant placing the Chinese army under foreign control. This meant Japan. Hintze left Peking on 25 March and set off on his journey back to Germany via Xuzhou, where he met General Zhang Xun, and Shanghai. The dispute over the next step, a declaration of war, tore Chinese politics apart in the months that followed. China declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary only on 14 August 1917, after Duan’s dismissal, Zhang Xun’s failed attempt to restore the empire and Li Yuanhong’s resignation.