One China Rises One China Suffers (China 1902)
The Great War had not spared the Far East and in particular China. The provinces near the pre-war frontier had been devastated, and they were not the only ones. Never before had there been an industrial effort of this magnitude in Asia, and the two Empires of China had been far less prepared to the apocalyptic conflict than the European nations. Starvation and diseases took their toll. Bandits and deserters imposed their violence on isolated villages and non-patrolled roads. A few more years of war, and it was likely provinces far from the frontlines would have been cut from the authority of the central governments in all but name.
But the Great War ended in 1902. For Southern China, mauled but victorious, this was all to their advantage. Divisions and regiments redirected from the war against the North went on the offensive to restore order. The authority of the Southern Emperor was intact, and the war machine and the industries were in their great majority intact.
Furthermore, Southern China had someone to rally against: the foreigners. These so-called ‘allies’ had invited Chuan China in their ‘Central Alliance’ with false promises. In hindsight, the citizens of Guangzhou and the great coastal cities were forced to acknowledge the Danish, the Californians and the Granadans had never treated them as near-equal peers. The territorial ambitions of China had been ignored the moment Bogota and its allies were confident they would not face any military opposition. Add the conquests of Russia and Japan to the north, and before the treaties of the Great War were signed, millions of Chinese were all too ready to believe the Europeans, Americans and their allies wanted nothing less than the humiliation of China and add their cities to their growing colonial empire.
Of course, Southern China was in no condition to counter-attack for the time being. The ministers of Guangzhou knew the Great War had revealed uncountable flaws and issues in the nation’s administration levels, taxation and military forces. Moreover, being furious at their former allies did not change the fact virtually the entire pre-war army died in the last four years of struggle.
Southern China had to rebuild for the next clash with the Great Powers. It would need years, but the Emperor and his Generals were keen on playing the long game. With the capture of Hainan, the Chinese sailors had captured many merchants and auxiliaries of the Central Alliance, and while the overwhelming majority were returned, some hulls were ‘lost’ in the transfers. The Chinese shipyards were going study attentively cutting-edge technology and disseminate the knowledge all over the coast. Already plans were made to improve the existing Navy in a first five-year plan. The Southern China Sea was lost for the time being, but Southern China would wait for an opportunity to regain their dominance. No longer would it bow to false friends who broke the treaties like honour meant nothing. And in the mean time, opium, tobacco and several other drugs the great trading companies had loved to sell at Shanghai and elsewhere had their customs increased by five times. This was, of course, a prelude to the formal ban of these goods destroying the soul and the body of millions of Chinese, but few in the Far East realised this.
In contrast, Wu China was becoming more and more a non-entity in its own lands. Where the Southern Emperor reaffirmed his authorities and created a Great Council of Nobles and Generals, the Northern Emperor was a prisoner in own palace, and Russian ‘advisors’ were the real masters on theatre. And their commands were really lacking in subtlety. The loss of Chosen and the peninsula might have been forgotten by the Chinese, as their armies had been transferred southwards to prevent the Southerners from overrunning everything. However, the loss of Manchuria, sacrificed to appease the Russians, was a monumental humiliation for the subjects of Wu. Battered and defeated, the inhabitants of Beijing did not stay silent as their vast Empire was divided by the wolves circling around them and the Russian companies began to impose their rules on their country. Assuredly, their rulers had not been perfect, but they had the same skin colour. These foreign devils did not, and their taxes and their arrogance were too much.
In taverns and cities, people began to whisper the Wu dynasty had obviously lost the Mandate of Heaven, and that the Southerners had got something right for once: it was the fault of the foreigners. They had betrayed China and forced them to fight other Chinese for their own games. And what had they gotten for their plains covered in corpses and dangerous ammunition? Nothing, no worse than nothing: death, taxes and the iron fist of people who mocked their culture. This was not acceptable anymore.
As the puppet regime tried with a succession of half-triumphs and heavy-dosed propaganda to convince everything was soon going to return to pre-war levels of prosperity, the first insurrections began. The first revolt began in the city of Yinchuan, but soon dozens other joined it. Rifles and cannons which had mysteriously in the stocks confiscated by the Russians re-emerged in rebel hands in pristine conditions and the further one went west, the faster the regular forces of Beijing disintegrated when they did not outright joined the rebellion with their weapons and their supplies. In defiance of the ugly green colours of their opponents, red flags, red turbans and red armbands were prepared by the hundreds of thousands. Beijing annihilated five rebel columns in the west in November 1902, but it was too late to prevent the fires of rebellion from spreading. The Red Banners’ Rebellion had begun.
