Sino-Japanese military agreement

On 16 May 1918 in Peking military representatives of China and Japan signed a secret agreement on cooperation between the armies of the two states against the “common enemy”. On the Chinese side it was signed by General Jin Yunpeng, on the Japanese side by Major-General Saitō Suejirō, who had come to China to conduct the negotiations. On 19 May a similar naval agreement was concluded. A British chronology of the war already records under 15 May the announcement of an agreement between the Entente powers, Japan and China against German penetration in the Far East, but at that time only the general principles of cooperation were publicly known. The text of both agreements, under their own provisions, was to remain a military secret.

The enemy in Siberia

China had declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary in August 1917. After the Bolshevik revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Peking and Tokyo feared that tens of thousands of German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Siberia would be freed and armed, and that German influence would reach China’s borders. For the Japanese General Staff, and especially for its deputy chief, General Giichi Tanaka, this threat was an opportunity to draw China into an alliance and secure freedom of action in Manchuria. The government of Prime Minister Masatake Terauchi had long supported Prime Minister Duan Qirui and his faction in Peking with loans, called the Nishihara loans after the envoy who arranged them.

On 25 March 1918 in Tokyo the Chinese minister Zhang Zongxiang and the Japanese foreign minister Ichirō Motono exchanged notes. In them both governments stated that enemy forces were spreading across Russian territory and threatening peace in the Far East, and that the manner of cooperation between the armies and navies was to be settled by the military. Japan undertook to withdraw its troops from China after the end of the war. The negotiations stalled, however, when the press began to report on their course and distrust of Japanese intentions grew in China. According to Japanese research, on 3 May Tanaka demanded an apology from Minister Zhang and threatened to halt Japanese financial and military aid. Talks resumed the next day, and in less than two weeks the agreement was ready.

Terms of the agreements

The military agreement had twelve articles. It treated both parties as equals, but obliged Chinese officials in the areas of military operations to assist the Japanese troops “so that they meet with no obstacles”. The Japanese were to respect China’s sovereignty and local customs and to withdraw when hostilities ended. The two armies were to exchange liaison officers, maps and intelligence, cooperate in transport and communications, build railway and telegraph lines if necessary and supply each other with war materials. The movement of troops on the Chinese Eastern Railway was to respect the old treaties. The agreement would expire at the end of hostilities against Germany and Austria-Hungary. The naval agreement of 19 May repeated its main provisions.

Formally the agreements were directed against Germany, but in practice they were aimed above all at revolutionary Russia and at preparing the ground for a Japanese expedition to Siberia, which after the April landing at Vladivostok was becoming ever more likely. They also gave Japan influence over the Chinese troops in northern Manchuria.

Protests

News of the negotiations caused outrage in China. Many Chinese felt that Duan’s government was selling the country to Japan for money, and compared the agreement with the Twenty-One Demands of 1915. At the end of April Chinese students in Japan, who had learned of the agreement from the foreign press, began to protest. In a “return to the homeland” movement about a third of the roughly three thousand students left Japanese universities and went back to China, though most returned to their studies in the autumn. Students in Peking and chambers of commerce in many cities also protested. Historians see this movement as a forerunner of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. The full texts of the agreements were published only in March 1919, and they were formally annulled in January 1921.