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National Humiliation and National Assertion: The Chines Response to the Twenty-one Demands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Zhitian Luo
Zhitian Luo
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The Japanese Twenty-one Demands toward the Chinese government headed by Yuan Shih-k'ai in 1915 marked a milestone in Sino-Japanese relations as well as in the Chinese response to imperialism. Yet studies on the event, particularly on its consequence and influence in China, are still insufficient. Studies by Chinese scholars have not gone far beyond Wang Yun-sheng's publication of collected materials more than fifty years ago. The only book-length study on the event is the first volume of Li Yu-shu's study, published in Taiwan. This last does not even cover the whole period of Sino-Japanese negotiations. His second volume has not yet appeared. Li's contribution is that he has made use of more Japanese documents than Wang. In mainland China, the most current study on the event is a chapter on the Demands in the first volume of the work by Li Hsin and Li Tsung-i. This chapter is based primarily on the works of Wang and Li Yu-shu. Compared with Japanese studies on other landmarks of Sino-Japanese relations, the coverage of this episode is rather thin. There is only one book-length study, published in 1958. As for works in English, Madeleine Chi's book has a chapter dealing with the Sino-Japanese negotiations. Two general works examine the event from a broader perspective.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , May 1993 , pp. 297 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

All Chinese names follow their practice: family name first.

The author is grateful for criticism and comments received from Professors Marius B. Jansen and Arthur Waldron, Dr Zhang Zemin, Mrs Anne Zhang, and the participants of Professor Waldron's seminar on modern Chinese history.

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75 Chou Tso-jen's case may need some explanation. His reluctant cooperation with the Japanese-sponsored regime in Peking during the Sino-Japanese War of 1930s–1940s caused many people to believe that he was rather pro-Japanese. That episode itself certainly needs careful and further examination. At any rate, he had severely attacked the Japanese ‘imperialist newspaper’ in China in a series of articles published in the middle 1920s. See his T'an hu chi [Talking about tiger] (reprinting, Taipei, 1982), vol. II, pp. 495–568.Google Scholar For an inquiry into Chou's complex relationship with Japan, see E., Nancy Chapman's Ph.D. dissertation: ‘Zhou Zuoren and Japan,’ Princeton University, 1990, particularly pp. 169–86.Google Scholar

76 The increasing importance of the returned students and the students' return can be seen from a title of a contemporary article by Hung-ming, Ku; ‘Returning Students and Literary Revolution: Literacy and Education,’ Millard's Review 9:11 (08 1919), Ku's use of the word ‘returning’ is meaningful.Google Scholar

77 The political influence of American-trained students was short-lived. It dropped swiftly after Wooddrow Wilson's ‘betrayal’ of China at Versailles Peace Conference of 1919. By the twenties, with the rise of Russian inspired Nationalists, the American-trained liberals were no longer very influential in the Chinese political arena. On the other hand, Hu Shih's influence in academic circles remained much longer.