China declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary

At ten in the morning on 14 August 1917 the Republic of China announced that it was at war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. The proclamation was signed by President Feng Guozhang, who had been in office in Peking for two weeks. It recalled that China had tried to persuade Germany to change its submarine policy and, when that failed, had broken off relations with it in defence of international law and of the lives of its citizens. Now it was declaring war on Austria-Hungary as well, because it too pursued the same policy “without any modification”. Before noon the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed the legations that all treaties with Germany and Austria-Hungary had been annulled, as had those provisions of the 1901 protocol that ended the Boxer Rebellion, and of other international agreements, that concerned only China’s relations with those two states. China announced that it would observe the Hague Conventions and other agreements on the humane conduct of war.

Feng Guozhang told the nation that it had not yet recovered from the recent political upheavals and already a new misfortune was falling upon it. He wrote that he had resorted to this step only when the decision could no longer be postponed, because he could not bear the thought that through China the authority of international law would suffer, its position in the family of nations would weaken or the restoration of peace in the world would be delayed. The aim of the war was to hasten peace. China, however, had no intention of fighting at the front. The point was to take a seat at the table after the war as one of the victors.

Five months of dispute

Five months passed between the breaking off of relations with Germany on 14 March and the declaration of war, and in that time the dispute over the war turned Chinese politics upside down. Prime Minister Duan Qirui pressed for war, parliament held back, and President Li Yuanhong took parliament’s side and dismissed the prime minister on 23 May. The generals of the north rebelled against the president, parliament was dissolved, and on 1 July General Zhang Xun restored Puyi to the throne. The restoration collapsed after twelve days, and Duan returned to Peking as the “saviour of the republic”. Li Yuanhong handed over power to Vice-President Feng, who took up office in the capital on 1 August. There was no longer anyone who could stop Duan. Nor was there any parliament to hold back as it had in the spring. According to the American writer W. Reginald Wheeler, who described China’s part in the war in 1919, the matter was back on the table before the new president had worked a week in Peking, and there was hardly any opposition left.

Duan’s calculations

Duan and his supporters were counting on several benefits at once. The most important was a place at the peace conference. There China wanted to recover the German rights in Shantung province, together with the Kiautschou leased territory and the port of Tsingtao, which the Japanese had taken in 1914, and to free itself from some of its unequal obligations. War also meant money at once. Denouncing the treaties ended payment of the German and Austro-Hungarian share of the Boxer indemnity, about one fifth of the annual instalments, and since the spring the Entente powers had been promising to defer payment of their own shares and to agree to an increase in Chinese customs duties. Finally, Duan was counting on foreign loans with which he could build an army and bring the country under his control.

Japan was the most generous. From January 1917 the government of Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake, through a private envoy, Nishihara Kamezō, granted a series of loans, formally bank loans but in reality guaranteed by the state. By September 1918, according to most accounts, they amounted to about 145 million yen, and in return Japan obtained further rights in Shantung and Manchuria. The Japanese had in any case secured themselves earlier. In February and March 1917 they obtained secret promises from Britain, France and Russia that at the peace conference they would support Japan’s claims to the German rights in Shantung. The British gave theirs first, in return for Japanese destroyers in the Mediterranean. Peking knew nothing of these agreements.

The United States, which in February had encouraged China to break with Germany, tried in the summer to make sure that China’s participation in the war did not become an opportunity to strengthen Japanese influence. On 9 August the American minister, Paul Reinsch, suggested that after the declaration of war Washington should propose to China the dispatch of a commission to discuss mutual assistance. China could then politely decline to accept “exclusive” assistance from anyone else. Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied on 13 August that China should decide the nature of its participation in the war after consulting all the Allies.

An assurance from the Allies

On the eve of the decision the Allied ministers in Peking agreed the text of an assurance which they handed to the government after the declaration of war. Their governments expressed to China their “solidarity, friendship and support” and promised to do everything so that in international relations China would enjoy “the position and the regard due to a great country”. The Chinese proposed a different formula, speaking of “equality” among the powers, but it was dropped because it might undermine the extraterritoriality of foreigners in China. Reinsch later wrote with disappointment that the Chinese could have obtained much more concrete guarantees of their sovereignty had they boldly made them a condition. Instead they argued for so long that the declaration was reduced to an empty formula. The words about a “great country” nevertheless pleasantly flattered Chinese pride.

What the war changed

The government at once took over the German concessions in Tientsin and Hankow, over which in March it had assumed only police control, as well as the Austro-Hungarian concession in Tientsin. German and Austro-Hungarian banks and property were placed under state administration, and the merchant ships that had lain in Chinese ports since 1914 were later handed over to the Allies. Germans and Austrians were registered, and some of them were interned. For the following year the Allies pressed for stricter supervision, and in 1918 there was even a plan to deport them to Australia, which was abandoned in the face of German threats of reprisal. Vienna declared the Chinese declaration of war illegal and unconstitutional. The Allies, for their part, kept their financial promises: in the autumn they deferred payment of their shares of the Boxer indemnity for five years, and in 1918 they agreed to a revision of Chinese customs duties.

China’s most important contribution to the war remained labour. After the declaration of war the recruitment of Chinese workers for France, until then semi-official, could take place openly. By the end of the war more than 140,000 Chinese were working for the British and French behind the Western Front. On 19 August it was also announced that shipyards in Shanghai had received a contract to build ships for the Allies. The Chinese army never set out for Europe. The “War Participation” army that Duan raised in 1918 with Japanese money served him above all in internal fighting.

A divided country

The south did not recognise the decision of 14 August. As early as July Sun Yat-sen had come from Shanghai to Canton and summoned the deputies of the dissolved parliament there, and on 22 July the navy minister, Cheng Biguang, joined him with nine warships. Sun and his supporters regarded Duan’s government as unlawful, because it had been formed in disregard of the provisional constitution and without a parliament, and so they also considered its declaration of war void. Sun had already opposed drawing China into the war in the spring. According to some historians his movement received money in 1917 from the Germans, who were keen to keep China neutral. On 25 August the deputies gathered in Canton set up a military government, and on 1 September they elected Sun as its generalissimo. The declaration of war, which was meant to strengthen China, thus deepened its division into north and south.

Shantung and Versailles

Duan’s calculations failed where they mattered most. At the Paris Peace Conference the Chinese delegation demanded the return of the German rights in Shantung, but the great powers, bound by their promises of 1917, awarded them to Japan. The Japanese pointed in addition to the agreements that the Peking government had concluded with them in 1918. News of the decision provoked student protests in Peking in May 1919, which gave rise to the May Fourth Movement. China was the only one of the victorious states present in Paris to refuse to sign the Treaty of Versailles. It entered the League of Nations by signing the treaty with Austria at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Shantung returned to China only under an agreement concluded in 1922 during the Washington Conference.