Update time 
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China’s actions in 1914 were primarily inspired by Japan’s moves. In the first week of World War I Japan proposed to the United Kingdom, its ally since 1902, that Japan would enter the war if it could take Germany’s Pacific territories. On August 7th 1914, the British government officially asked Japan for assistance in destroying the raiders from the Imperial German Navy in and around Chinese waters (China had no navy worth mentioning and was deemed unable to counter the German Far Eastern Squadron). Japan sent Germany an ultimatum on August 14th 1914, which went unanswered; Japan then formally declared war on Germany on August 23rd 1914. As Vienna refused to withdraw the Austro-Hungarian cruiser SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth from Tsingtao, Japan declared war on Austria-Hungary, too, on August 25th 1914.
Yuan Shikai recognised that the Japanese wanted to expand their sphere of influence in China by taking the German concession at Tsingtao, which could project influence over all of Shandong province. On August 24th 1914, the “Empire of the Great Qing” delivered a declaration of war to the German ambassador in Beijing, complete with the imperial seal and the signature of all cabinet members, and threw out German military advisors. China immediately stopped payment of the debt it owed to Germany and Austria-Hungary as part of the Boxer Protocol (21% of total war reparations owed to the Eight Nation Alliance) and revoked the German concession at Tsingtao. The same day one New Army division – worth 12.500 men on paper and supported by 92 artillery pieces – attacked the German concession at Tsingtao, which was defended by only 3.650 German troops. This division, however, was under strength due to the suddenness of its deployment and they were repulsed by the defenders. Yuan sent reinforcements to the area. The New Army consisted of 16 divisions and 16 brigades – for a total of approximately 300.000 men, equipped with modern weapons like Krupp artillery guns – but it would take time for them to arrive. In the meantime, the Germans strengthened their defences. The city was separated from the rest of peninsula by three lines of steep hills and the Germans built a network of trenches, artillery batteries and other fortifications in anticipation of more Chinese attacks. Besides that, Shandong province was being plagued by floods at the time and that interfered with Chinese logistics.
In the meantime, printing presses and radio stations across the country were put to work to drum up support for the war, stir up Chinese nationalism and to raise popular support for General Yuan Shikai’s regime, and they were very successful. The war against Germany was declared a “people’s war” and that involved hordes of screaming Chinamen hurling themselves against German trenches, overwhelming them by sheer weight of numbers. Out of 25.000 troops deployed, the Chinese suffered 1.915 dead and 3.075 wounded, a casualty rate of nearly 20%, but Chinese officers knew they could take such losses and still come out victorious. The besieged defenders surrendered on October 21st 1914. China’s first victory over a foreign power since before anyone could remember brought about a sense of unity and pride that had been hard to find in China for a very long time. It brought support for the government, but also for the Qing since this young child Emperor had perhaps returned the Mandate of Heaven to his dynasty and would possibly prove great. A wave of nationalism went through the major cities and was expressed by hundreds of thousands volunteering for the army, buying war bonds, seeking employment in the booming armaments industry, and major demonstrations in which effigies of the Kaiser were strung up on lamp posts and set on fire. Millions of pamphlets were printed that said a time of reawakening and of reckoning had come.
The 8 year-old Xuantong Emperor, in the meantime, was busy getting lessons from Western tutors and didn’t learn about the declaration of war until several days later. Amazingly, he appeared in public alongside Yuan Shikai from late 1914 to wave at troops parading on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and he was the first Emperor of China ever to be caught on film. Yuan was one of the few of his “subjects” to appear at his court that he couldn’t boss around, couldn’t command to perform the ritual kowtow and who he couldn’t punish for minimal transgressions. In fact, Yuan was much like the occasional foreigners appearing on his court, who were required to merely bow rather than perform the kowtow and which the Emperor had to treat politely. The soldiers guarding the General only obeyed the Emperor insofar as the Emperor’s orders didn’t contravene Yuan’s. Thusly, the child ruler learned very early on that he was only a living God for as far as the military allowed it.
In the meantime, the government decided to channel the funds freed up by the cancellation of debt payments to Germany and Austria-Hungary for an ambitious military expansion program. In addition, the government loaned large amounts of money from the United States, who would displace the British as the world’s banker within the next few years. The New Army was to expand to 36 divisions, for a total of 450.000 men in two years time; if that was completed successfully it was to expand even further to 48 divisions, or 600.000 men (from 1913, military hierarchy was thus in the Chinese army: a division was only 12.500 men, which was further divided into two brigades of 6.250 men; a brigade was in turn divided into two regiments of 3.125, composed of five battalions of 625 men; each battalion was divided into five companies of 125 men each and was that the smallest unit of movement at the time). Furthermore, units of the old Qing army had to be brought up to modern standards in accordance with a Ten-Year Plan that was approved by the Ministry of War in 1915.
This provided investment opportunities for Western arms producers, which were all too eager to grab them. China needed them to develop a modern arms industry almost from scratch and wanted to pay for it, an ambitious commitment by the Chinese government that could not be anything but lucrative. The Birmingham Small Arms Company was contracted to build an enormous arms plant near Beijing. Under license this factory would produce the Lee-Enfield rifle, the fastest firing bolt-action rifle in the world, which had been selected as the army’s standard rifle. The American Colt’s Manufacturing Company was the lowest bidder on a government contract for a standard side arm, building a factory that would license-produce the M1911 semi-automatic pistol. Besides that, the army also adopted the Vickers machine gun, the French 75 mm rapid-fire field gun and the French 155 mm 1917 Schneider howitzer. Beijing, Nanjing and several other cities underwent a tremendous industrial expansion in a few years time as a result of these military expansion plans. Besides the arms industry, other sectors of the economy boomed too: the heavy machinery factories popped up like mushrooms to supply weapons factories, truck factories and tractor factories, as did coal mines, steel mills, oil refineries and power plants. Most of the development, however, was limited to the coastal cities and Manchuria. Besides an increase in their income due to the raised price of rice due to increased Russian demand, peasants barely noticed a difference compared to the pre-war years.
In 1915, one infantry brigade, one machine gun company, and one artillery battalion, for a total strength of 7.000 men, were sent to the Western Front. They were sent to serve with the British Expeditionary Force and arrived in time to receive their baptism of fire in the Second Battle of Ypres, including the experience of chlorine gas attack. Out of 7.000 men, 3.000 Chinese soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in action, a casualty rate the likes of which the New Army had never experienced. Nonetheless, they hadn’t buckled under the pressure of a prolonged German assault on their position and had distinguished themselves, though more through valour than through proficiency at modern warfare. The “Chinese Expeditionary Force” was sent to a quiet sector of the front in Alsace-Lorraine to recuperate and with reinforcements it would eventually swell to a force of four divisions, or 50.000 men, by 1917. It fought with distinction in the Battle of Passchendaele, weathered the German Spring Offensive during the Battle of the Lys, and helped achieve an Entente victory in the Fifth Battle of Ypres. During this time a “Chinese Flying Circus” was founded with 24 Nieuport 17 biplanes and 24 Sopwith Camels graciously donated by China’s Anglo-French allies, forming two fighter squadrons. That became the core of the Imperial Chinese Army Air Force founded in 1919.
The commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force was Chiang Kai-shek. He had served in the Imperial Japanese army from 1909 to 1911 and had supported the Tongmenghui, but withdrew his support after the failed Xinhai Revolution. After a pardon by the Qing government for those willing to abandon “illegal, seditious anti-state groups” and provide intelligence on them, Chiang defected. He regarded Yuan Shikai’s militarist regime as the best way to effectuate a “revolution from within” and became a “pragmatic monarchist.” He accepted a teaching position at the Boading Military Academy in 1912 and got the rank of Colonel since he was one of the few with experience in a modern, foreign army. He didn’t much like teaching and requested a command position and he received command of a regiment, and by 1914 he had reached the rank of Brigadier General. By 1919, when he returned home to China, he had not only reached the rank of Lieutenant General. He had also learnt to speak English and to a lesser extent French and he had become China’s foremost expert in modern warfare. Besides that, he had read up on economics, law, political science and philosophy, including Karl Marx even though he rejected Marxist teachings.
Another 150.000 Chinese came to France to serve in the Chinese Labour Corps. About 10.000 Chinese prostitutes were paid by the government to follow them, setting up brothels in Chinese inhabited areas and up to 25 kilometres behind the Chinese front sector (a part of Great War history that has only rarely been paid attention to). The workers mainly aged between 20 and 35 served as labour in the rear echelons or helped build munitions depots. They were tasked with carrying out essential work to support the frontline troops, such as unloading ships, building dugouts, repairing roads and railways, digging trenches and filling sandbags. Some worked in armaments factories, others in naval shipyards, for a wage of one to three francs a day. At the time they were seen just as cheap labour, not even allowed out of camp to fraternise locally, dismissed as mere coolies. When the war ended some were used for mine clearance, or to recover the bodies of soldiers and fill in miles of trenches. Men fell ill from the strange diet and the intense damp and cold, and on occasion they mutinied against their French and British employers or ransacked local restaurants in search of food.
As China’s contribution to the war grew, the Chinese government managed to stipulate better conditions for its workers. The result was a few thousand interracial relations between French women and Chinese men, several hundred of which resulted in marriages after the grooms had agreed to convert to Catholicism pro forma (a small number, but not surprising considering the taboo on interracial relationships, even with a conversion to the local dominant religion). Slightly more accepted were relations between French men and Chinese women, including those who abandoned their profession as a prostitute to engage in such relationships. After the war, a Chinese community of a few thousand remained in Paris and many became intellectuals.
Among them was a young man named Mao Zedong. After enrolling and dropping out of a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school, an economics school and the government run Changsha Middle School, he studied independently, reading the works of Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Darwin, Mill, Rousseau and Spencer. Lacking prospects, he joined the army in 1915 and had reached the rank of Captain by 1918, commanding an infantry company near Ypres. During his time in Europe he also read up on Nietzsche, Vilfredo Pareto and Marx. Given the realities of war, he saw greater truth in Nietzsche’s teachings about the will to power and individual transcendence than in Marx’s class struggle. He also accepted Pareto’s sociology, which posited that in every society a ruling class emerged that enriched itself until it got soft, withered away and was replaced by a new one. Mao accepted Pareto’s views that human nature was primitive, emotional and unyielding, that the smarter, shrewder, abler and stronger took the lion’s share, and that therefore there ultimately was no progress in human history. The only constant factor was struggle, and in the modern context that meant the struggle between nation states for a piece of the pie in terms of resources. He published a pamphlet detailing his proto-fascist and Chinese nationalist views and a print of 2.000 saw circulation among the intellectuals within the Parisian Chinese community. It had the unwieldy title “Principles of National Consolidation and the Reconciliation of Socialism and Progressivism with Chinese Ways.” Mao’s ambitious plans for a book that would further outline and specify the new road he thought China should take never came to fruition. He was killed in action in October 1918, aged only 24, during the final days of the Great War. He and his pamphlet became a footnote in history, but the Chinese militarist regime became a lot like what he had predicted. The militarists would come to fish in the same ideological pond as this young autodidactic intellectual soldier as they witnessed the post-war world.
.Chapter II: China and the Great War, 1914-1918.
Yuan Shikai recognised that the Japanese wanted to expand their sphere of influence in China by taking the German concession at Tsingtao, which could project influence over all of Shandong province. On August 24th 1914, the “Empire of the Great Qing” delivered a declaration of war to the German ambassador in Beijing, complete with the imperial seal and the signature of all cabinet members, and threw out German military advisors. China immediately stopped payment of the debt it owed to Germany and Austria-Hungary as part of the Boxer Protocol (21% of total war reparations owed to the Eight Nation Alliance) and revoked the German concession at Tsingtao. The same day one New Army division – worth 12.500 men on paper and supported by 92 artillery pieces – attacked the German concession at Tsingtao, which was defended by only 3.650 German troops. This division, however, was under strength due to the suddenness of its deployment and they were repulsed by the defenders. Yuan sent reinforcements to the area. The New Army consisted of 16 divisions and 16 brigades – for a total of approximately 300.000 men, equipped with modern weapons like Krupp artillery guns – but it would take time for them to arrive. In the meantime, the Germans strengthened their defences. The city was separated from the rest of peninsula by three lines of steep hills and the Germans built a network of trenches, artillery batteries and other fortifications in anticipation of more Chinese attacks. Besides that, Shandong province was being plagued by floods at the time and that interfered with Chinese logistics.
In the meantime, printing presses and radio stations across the country were put to work to drum up support for the war, stir up Chinese nationalism and to raise popular support for General Yuan Shikai’s regime, and they were very successful. The war against Germany was declared a “people’s war” and that involved hordes of screaming Chinamen hurling themselves against German trenches, overwhelming them by sheer weight of numbers. Out of 25.000 troops deployed, the Chinese suffered 1.915 dead and 3.075 wounded, a casualty rate of nearly 20%, but Chinese officers knew they could take such losses and still come out victorious. The besieged defenders surrendered on October 21st 1914. China’s first victory over a foreign power since before anyone could remember brought about a sense of unity and pride that had been hard to find in China for a very long time. It brought support for the government, but also for the Qing since this young child Emperor had perhaps returned the Mandate of Heaven to his dynasty and would possibly prove great. A wave of nationalism went through the major cities and was expressed by hundreds of thousands volunteering for the army, buying war bonds, seeking employment in the booming armaments industry, and major demonstrations in which effigies of the Kaiser were strung up on lamp posts and set on fire. Millions of pamphlets were printed that said a time of reawakening and of reckoning had come.
The 8 year-old Xuantong Emperor, in the meantime, was busy getting lessons from Western tutors and didn’t learn about the declaration of war until several days later. Amazingly, he appeared in public alongside Yuan Shikai from late 1914 to wave at troops parading on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and he was the first Emperor of China ever to be caught on film. Yuan was one of the few of his “subjects” to appear at his court that he couldn’t boss around, couldn’t command to perform the ritual kowtow and who he couldn’t punish for minimal transgressions. In fact, Yuan was much like the occasional foreigners appearing on his court, who were required to merely bow rather than perform the kowtow and which the Emperor had to treat politely. The soldiers guarding the General only obeyed the Emperor insofar as the Emperor’s orders didn’t contravene Yuan’s. Thusly, the child ruler learned very early on that he was only a living God for as far as the military allowed it.
In the meantime, the government decided to channel the funds freed up by the cancellation of debt payments to Germany and Austria-Hungary for an ambitious military expansion program. In addition, the government loaned large amounts of money from the United States, who would displace the British as the world’s banker within the next few years. The New Army was to expand to 36 divisions, for a total of 450.000 men in two years time; if that was completed successfully it was to expand even further to 48 divisions, or 600.000 men (from 1913, military hierarchy was thus in the Chinese army: a division was only 12.500 men, which was further divided into two brigades of 6.250 men; a brigade was in turn divided into two regiments of 3.125, composed of five battalions of 625 men; each battalion was divided into five companies of 125 men each and was that the smallest unit of movement at the time). Furthermore, units of the old Qing army had to be brought up to modern standards in accordance with a Ten-Year Plan that was approved by the Ministry of War in 1915.
This provided investment opportunities for Western arms producers, which were all too eager to grab them. China needed them to develop a modern arms industry almost from scratch and wanted to pay for it, an ambitious commitment by the Chinese government that could not be anything but lucrative. The Birmingham Small Arms Company was contracted to build an enormous arms plant near Beijing. Under license this factory would produce the Lee-Enfield rifle, the fastest firing bolt-action rifle in the world, which had been selected as the army’s standard rifle. The American Colt’s Manufacturing Company was the lowest bidder on a government contract for a standard side arm, building a factory that would license-produce the M1911 semi-automatic pistol. Besides that, the army also adopted the Vickers machine gun, the French 75 mm rapid-fire field gun and the French 155 mm 1917 Schneider howitzer. Beijing, Nanjing and several other cities underwent a tremendous industrial expansion in a few years time as a result of these military expansion plans. Besides the arms industry, other sectors of the economy boomed too: the heavy machinery factories popped up like mushrooms to supply weapons factories, truck factories and tractor factories, as did coal mines, steel mills, oil refineries and power plants. Most of the development, however, was limited to the coastal cities and Manchuria. Besides an increase in their income due to the raised price of rice due to increased Russian demand, peasants barely noticed a difference compared to the pre-war years.
In 1915, one infantry brigade, one machine gun company, and one artillery battalion, for a total strength of 7.000 men, were sent to the Western Front. They were sent to serve with the British Expeditionary Force and arrived in time to receive their baptism of fire in the Second Battle of Ypres, including the experience of chlorine gas attack. Out of 7.000 men, 3.000 Chinese soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in action, a casualty rate the likes of which the New Army had never experienced. Nonetheless, they hadn’t buckled under the pressure of a prolonged German assault on their position and had distinguished themselves, though more through valour than through proficiency at modern warfare. The “Chinese Expeditionary Force” was sent to a quiet sector of the front in Alsace-Lorraine to recuperate and with reinforcements it would eventually swell to a force of four divisions, or 50.000 men, by 1917. It fought with distinction in the Battle of Passchendaele, weathered the German Spring Offensive during the Battle of the Lys, and helped achieve an Entente victory in the Fifth Battle of Ypres. During this time a “Chinese Flying Circus” was founded with 24 Nieuport 17 biplanes and 24 Sopwith Camels graciously donated by China’s Anglo-French allies, forming two fighter squadrons. That became the core of the Imperial Chinese Army Air Force founded in 1919.
The commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force was Chiang Kai-shek. He had served in the Imperial Japanese army from 1909 to 1911 and had supported the Tongmenghui, but withdrew his support after the failed Xinhai Revolution. After a pardon by the Qing government for those willing to abandon “illegal, seditious anti-state groups” and provide intelligence on them, Chiang defected. He regarded Yuan Shikai’s militarist regime as the best way to effectuate a “revolution from within” and became a “pragmatic monarchist.” He accepted a teaching position at the Boading Military Academy in 1912 and got the rank of Colonel since he was one of the few with experience in a modern, foreign army. He didn’t much like teaching and requested a command position and he received command of a regiment, and by 1914 he had reached the rank of Brigadier General. By 1919, when he returned home to China, he had not only reached the rank of Lieutenant General. He had also learnt to speak English and to a lesser extent French and he had become China’s foremost expert in modern warfare. Besides that, he had read up on economics, law, political science and philosophy, including Karl Marx even though he rejected Marxist teachings.
Another 150.000 Chinese came to France to serve in the Chinese Labour Corps. About 10.000 Chinese prostitutes were paid by the government to follow them, setting up brothels in Chinese inhabited areas and up to 25 kilometres behind the Chinese front sector (a part of Great War history that has only rarely been paid attention to). The workers mainly aged between 20 and 35 served as labour in the rear echelons or helped build munitions depots. They were tasked with carrying out essential work to support the frontline troops, such as unloading ships, building dugouts, repairing roads and railways, digging trenches and filling sandbags. Some worked in armaments factories, others in naval shipyards, for a wage of one to three francs a day. At the time they were seen just as cheap labour, not even allowed out of camp to fraternise locally, dismissed as mere coolies. When the war ended some were used for mine clearance, or to recover the bodies of soldiers and fill in miles of trenches. Men fell ill from the strange diet and the intense damp and cold, and on occasion they mutinied against their French and British employers or ransacked local restaurants in search of food.
As China’s contribution to the war grew, the Chinese government managed to stipulate better conditions for its workers. The result was a few thousand interracial relations between French women and Chinese men, several hundred of which resulted in marriages after the grooms had agreed to convert to Catholicism pro forma (a small number, but not surprising considering the taboo on interracial relationships, even with a conversion to the local dominant religion). Slightly more accepted were relations between French men and Chinese women, including those who abandoned their profession as a prostitute to engage in such relationships. After the war, a Chinese community of a few thousand remained in Paris and many became intellectuals.
Among them was a young man named Mao Zedong. After enrolling and dropping out of a police academy, a soap-production school, a law school, an economics school and the government run Changsha Middle School, he studied independently, reading the works of Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Darwin, Mill, Rousseau and Spencer. Lacking prospects, he joined the army in 1915 and had reached the rank of Captain by 1918, commanding an infantry company near Ypres. During his time in Europe he also read up on Nietzsche, Vilfredo Pareto and Marx. Given the realities of war, he saw greater truth in Nietzsche’s teachings about the will to power and individual transcendence than in Marx’s class struggle. He also accepted Pareto’s sociology, which posited that in every society a ruling class emerged that enriched itself until it got soft, withered away and was replaced by a new one. Mao accepted Pareto’s views that human nature was primitive, emotional and unyielding, that the smarter, shrewder, abler and stronger took the lion’s share, and that therefore there ultimately was no progress in human history. The only constant factor was struggle, and in the modern context that meant the struggle between nation states for a piece of the pie in terms of resources. He published a pamphlet detailing his proto-fascist and Chinese nationalist views and a print of 2.000 saw circulation among the intellectuals within the Parisian Chinese community. It had the unwieldy title “Principles of National Consolidation and the Reconciliation of Socialism and Progressivism with Chinese Ways.” Mao’s ambitious plans for a book that would further outline and specify the new road he thought China should take never came to fruition. He was killed in action in October 1918, aged only 24, during the final days of the Great War. He and his pamphlet became a footnote in history, but the Chinese militarist regime became a lot like what he had predicted. The militarists would come to fish in the same ideological pond as this young autodidactic intellectual soldier as they witnessed the post-war world.
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