**39
This petition was circulated by the Hua Tuo (Wato) Hospital of Wan Chai. As the Chinese community had expanded into the Wan Chai area in the 1870s, the Tung Wah Hospital considered establishing a branch there, but instead a separate institution was formed at the Hua Tuo Temple. The petition was signed by 2,262 persons and establishments, mostly shopkeepers and Chinese medical practitioners, probably representative of middle and lower strata of the Chinese bourgeoisie. The wealthiest of the bourgeoisie were located in Victoria and the Tung Wah Hospital was their base, while the Wan Chai area was apparently occupied by smaller merchants and tradespeople. In effect, the Hua Tuo petition constituted a challenge to the more elite Tung Wah effort, thus revealing the manner in which the inequities of the colonial situation could potentially mobilize larger numbers of people for a nationalist cause.
The public meeting and its aftermath placed Hennessy in a difficult position. He sought to justify his acts to the Colonial Office by asserting that he had the support of nearly the entire Chinese community as well as many prominent Europeans.11 The Colonial Office remained unconvinced. Clearly, there was "so much want of confidence in Mr. Hennessy's Chinese policy” that it might become necessary to appoint a commission such as the 7 October meeting had demanded. Yet to do so, the London officials realized, was tantamount to asking the Governor's recall.42 They could not bring themselves to go that far, and Hennessy was given a little more time to pursue his policies or follies, as they were seen in London.
37. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 16 Oct. 1878, no. 100, CO 129/182.
38. Gt. Brit., Hongkong Government Gazette 25 (7 May 1879), pp. 229–34, CO 132/17:23.
39. Ibid.
40. Eitel, Europe in China, p. 510.
41. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 10 Oct. 1878, no. 98, CO 129/182.
42. Ibid., minutes by Undersecretary Robert G. W. Herbert.
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The 7 October meeting propelled Hennessy further into alliance with Wu and the Chinese bourgeoisie. More than ever it was necessary to demonstrate to the Colonial Office that although the British residents might oppose him, the respectable Chinese, whose wealth was now the backbone of the Colony, fully supported him. He had the two petitions from the Chinese residents printed in the Hongkong Government Gazette and forwarded to the Queen with great flourish, much to the continued irritation of the British residents and the delight of the Chinese.
The alliance was in full swing.
Colonial Politics
Following the 7 October meeting, Hennessy began a campaign to formalize Wu's status as go-between with the Chinese community, for he was now even more dependent upon Wu and the Chinese community he represented. Hennessy quietly arranged to have all Chinese matters taken out of the Colonial Secretary's hands and placed under Wu's control, after being told by the Hospital Committee that it preferred to deal with a Chinese. Then in November 1878 Hennessy proposed a formal reorganization of the Colonial Secretary's Office, with all Chinese matters administered by a new bureau, the Department of Interpretation. Not daring to suggest Wu's name to the Colonial Office, Hennessy instead gave that of E. J. Eitel, an Austrian missionary well versed in Chinese and a confidential adviser of the Governor.43
Not trusting Eitel, an outsider and unknown, the Colonial Office refused to approve Hennessy's scheme. Moreover, unofficial word had reached London that Wu was serving in an unclearly defined capacity in the Colonial Secretary's Office and acting as go-between. In the opinion of the Colonial Office, this was intolerable. As Undersecretary Robert H. Meade minuted, "nothing can be worse" than for a Chinese to be a go-between. Echoing the reports from the Hong Kong press, Undersecretary John Bramston warned the Colonial Secretary against the activities of the Hospital Committee and Wu, who were "in constant communication” with the Qing Governor-General in Guangzhou, "who pulls their strings."44
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Colonial Secretary, wrote privately to Hennessy to warn him:
Our position in Hong Kong with regard to China is a very peculiar one-and demands, I should think, special caution in dealing with a people who however friendly in appearance or even in reality be to their English rulers, yet must surely have sympathies and connections with the Chinese Empire from which much danger might result.15
43. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 16 Nov. 1878, no. 116, CO 129/182.
44. Ibid., minutes by Meade and Undersecretary John Bramston.
45. Hicks-Beach to Hennessy, 19 Nov. 1878, Sir John Pope Hennessy, Papers (Oxford University Colonial Research Project, Rhodes House).
Hong Kong Barrister 1877–1882
57
Herein lay the point of difference between Hennessy and his critics. As a colonial administrator, Hennessy saw Hong Kong as a colony to be administered in conformity with the principles under which other sectors of the globe had been brought under British rule and their native populations given the advantages (as he saw them) of British civilization. Moreover, he was inclined to view China and its civilization in a light far more favorable than many of his contemporaries.
Yet the Colonial Office maintained a different strategic evaluation of Hong Kong and its role in Asia. Hong Kong was not only a British colony, but a tiny island in the shadow of the great Qing Empire, seized in warfare and maintained as a base from which to pursue British policy objectives in China. And Anglo-Chinese relations, as the Colonial Office saw them, consisted largely of intermittent warfare. No matter how far down the road towards Home Rule administrators like Hennessy might go, the potential confrontation between Britain and China acted as a brake.
Thus, for example, the Colonial Office rejected Hennessy's 1880 proposals regarding the naturalization of Chinese who had been long-term residents of the Colony. While Hennessy felt that establishing naturalization procedures "would tend to strengthen and consolidate the loyal Anglo-Chinese community that I am happy to say now exists in Hong Kong," the Colonial Office dismissed the measure as unnecessary and burdensome.46
Also, Wu Tingfang did have contacts throughout China as a result of his fame and earlier meeting with Li Hongzhang. He often traveled to Guangzhou, perhaps to visit family but also to provide legal counsel. In 1877 he was hired as counsel by a group of Fuzhou merchants in the Porter Case (see Chapter 3). And in 1878 he advised Liu Kunyi, Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, in a case involving the detention of a shipload of emigrants to Peru.47 Hence from the point of view of the Colonial Office in London, Wu's actions might have raised questions.
48
Nevertheless, Hennessy persisted. Every time a suitable vacancy arose in the government, he put Wu's name forth to fill it. In December 1878 he placed Wu's name in a new listing of Justices of the Peace for the Colony. In March 1879 the Governor brought forth Wu's name along with two others as possible replacements for Justice Snowden while the latter was on leave, but an Englishman was chosen instead.49 In April 1879 Hennessy proposed Wu's name as Police Magistrate upon the incumbent's death. Wu was lauded as a "man of high character" who had a "thorough knowledge of the work”
46. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 20 Jan. 1880, no. 5, CO 129/187. In 1881, however, Hennessy succeeded in arranging for the naturalization of six prominent Chinese, including Wu's associate Feng Mingshan. See Hennessy to Kimberley, 28 July 1882, no. 114, CO 129/193.
47. Liu Kunyi, Yiji, 5:2420–33; NCH, 22 June 1878; U.S. Department of State, “Consular Dispatches: Canton,” no. 49, 1878, M–92 (U.S. National Archieves).
48. Gt. Brit., Hongkong Government Gazette 14 (14 Dec. 1878), p. 599, CO 133/17:23.
49. Minutes of the Executive Council, 6 Mar. 1879, Gt. Brit., Sessional Papers, CO 131/10.
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and a "strictly honourable disposition."50 The Colonial Office, however, was nearly unanimous in its opposition to Wu.51
Hennessy finally succeeded in 1880. In January he appointed Wu to the Legislative Council, and later in the spring he appointed him to the post of Acting Police Magistrate. The appointment to the Legislative Council was in response to a petition presented to Hennessy in December 1879 by the "leading Chinese" who asked him to appoint a Chinese to the Legislative Council as soon as a vacancy arose, so as to "ensure a mutual good understanding between the ruling class and the ruled." Noting the non- participation of the Chinese in the colonial administration, the petition stated that "there arises easily a feeling of separate interests as if foreigners and Chinese could not be treated according to the same principles." Wu's name was put forth as the preferred candidate, a man with a "personal reputation of a high standing," "well acquainted with the English language and literature, and deeply versed in English jurisprudence” while "in thorough harmony with" and enjoying "the confidence of the Chinese community."52
Hennessy appointed Wu to the Council as soon as a temporary vacancy arose, in January 1880. In reporting to the Colonial Office, Hennessy wrote that Wu was a barrister with a "good private fortune," an "accomplished English scholar" with deep knowledge of England and its civilization, and a "man of general culture," loyal to the Queen and "thoroughly identified with the interests of England in the East.” He said that Chief Justice John Smale joined him in saying that there was “not a more honourable and straight- forward gentleman in Hong Kong."53
There was great dismay in London. Colonial Office Undersecretary Meade minuted that the appointment was "an inopportune measure," suggesting that there would be "less harm” if it were understood as a temporary measure. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach wrote to Hennessy that he would agree to Wu's being seated in the Council on a provisional basis, in view of the Governor's strong personal recommendation and of the “educational advantages” that Wu had had in England. But Wu's appointment was to be seen as an experiment only.54 Privately he told Hennessy that:
I don't doubt his [Wu's] personal loyalty or worth. But it seems to me that, at any rate for the present, it would not be well to recognize Chinese representation on the Council as a regular thing. The position which Hong Kong occupies with regard to China is very peculiar. . . . In
50. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 28 Apr. 1879, no. 38, CO 129/184.
51. Ibid., minutes by Meade; Hicks-Beach to Hennessy, 2 May 1879 (confidential), CO 129/184, with minute by R. G. W. Herbert.
52. Encl. no. 2, Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 19 Jan. 1880, no. 4, CO 129/187.
53. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 19 Jan. 1880, reprinted as Document no. 46 in Endacott, An Eastern Entrepot, pp. 268–71.
54. Ibid., minute by Undersecretary Meade and draft reply by Hicks-Beach, 20 Apr. 1880, no. 9, CO 129/187.
Hong Kong Barrister 1877–1882
the event of difficulties, actual or threatened, between England and China, a Chinese Councillor might be anything but trustworthy, and yet, if permanently appointed, it might be very impolitic to show mistrust by removing him.55
59
These cautious words from London were but a faint echo of the loud disapproval with which the English-language press of Hong Kong met Wu's appointment. The Daily Press declared that the news had been received “not only with astonishment but also dissatisfaction," adding: “It cannot be expected that natives of the British Isles would be content to be legislated by Chinese, for instance, or that they would willingly see subject races taking active part in legislation for them."56
For the Chinese community, however, Wu's appointment was good news. When Wu took his seat on the Council in February 1880, a delegation of twenty-five Chinese visited him and the Governor, congratulating the latter on his "love of the people" and "strict fair-play." The news of Wu's appointment, they said, "fills everybody near and far with gratitude and joy."57
The Museum Segregation Issue
The symbolic nature of Wu's position as member of the Legislative Council is readily apparent, but what did it mean in terms of actual power? What, in fact, could he do?
In truth, the Legislative Council was legislative in name only. In Hong Kong as in other Crown colonies, ultimate sovereignty rested with the Queen as exercised by the Governor, whose rule was a thinly disguised autocracy. The Governor's Executive Council was composed entirely of his administrative officials, while the Legislative Council was composed of officials and a minority of "unofficial" members who were appointed in an effort to have them represent the residents of the Colony in an informal manner. Cooperative discussion, not contentious debate, was supposed to be the working style of the Legislative Council.
Since the Council could do little more than rubber-stamp the Governor's decisions, Wu's appointment was only a symbolic threat. Realistically, once reconciled to its inevitability, the Colonial Office dismissed Wu's appointment and regarded him as probably “a complete cipher,” as had been, in their opinion, Hu Xuanze, the sole Chinese member of the Singapore Legislative Council from 1867 until his death in 1880.58
55. Hicks-Beach to Hennessy (private), 23 Apr. 1880, Sir John Pope Hennessy, Papers. See also James Pope Hennessy, Verandah, p. 212.
56. DP, 23 Jan. 1880.
57. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 21 Feb. 1880, no. 24, CO 129/187.
58. Minute by Undersecretary John Bramston on Hennessy to Earl of Kimberley, 9 July 1880, no. 98, CO 129/189.
60
"59
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Many Chinese in Hong Kong must have also wondered about the actual value of Wu's appointment to the Council, for the Governor took special note of it in the midst of an address in June 1881. “It has been asserted,” he said, “that an unofficial member of the Legislative Council has not the power of initiating anything, and that his position is a peculiar and somewhat discouraging one on that account. Hennessy's declaration that unofficial members of the Council had the same powers and privileges as members of the House of Commons in England cannot have sounded entirely convincing. Given the autocratic nature of colonial rule, the Governor's support was crucial for any legislative project. Wu's record in the Council indicates that he used the forum provided him to promote issues with which both the Governor and the Chinese community were concerned. The City Hall Museum segregation issue provides an illustration of Wu's role while suggesting the parameters of colonial reform.
The City Hall Museum was supported by an annual grant from the government but administered by a private corporation whose principal shareholders were some of the leading British residents. In 1879 Wu and other Chinese told Hennessy of their irritation with the museum's policy of restricting admission for Chinese to certain hours of the day during specified days of the week. Hennessy brought the issue before the Executive and Legislative Councils, pressing for the museum's desegregation in view of the fact that so many Chinese felt that the restricted admission was "invidious.” In February 1880 the Chinese delegation that came to congratulate Wu for being seated in the Legislative Council made special issue of the museum situation, while the Chinese-language press also began a campaign about it.60
The museum shareholders decided to compromise in order to continue to receive its annual grant from the government. A new notice appeared permitting Chinese access to the museum each morning until one p.m., when the museum would be closed for cleaning. Europeans would then be admitted daily from two until five p.m., but "any respectably dressed and well-behaved person" could apply for admission at any time with the curator. This concession was not satisfactory to Wu or his constituents, and he was determined to press the issue when it arose in the Council in September 1880.
The spokesman in Council for the Museum Committee was William Keswick, one of the organizers of the anti-Hennessy public meeting in 1878 and the Governor's principal foe in Council. In a later communication to the Colonial Office Keswick wrote that the desegregation of the museum would "practically" close it to “European ladies, respectable Chinese women and also to almost all of the European residents" of Hong Kong:
59. “Address on the Census Returns and the Progress in Hong Kong,” 30 July 1881, Hong Kong Administrative Reports, 1879–1884, Gt. Brit., Sessional Papers,CO 131/11.
60. Hennessy to Hicks-Beach, 24 Oct. 1879, no. 94, CO 129/185 and 21 Feb. 1880, no. 24, CO 129/187.
Hong Kong Barrister 1877–1882
The position that women hold in China and the fact that a Chinese lady is seldom seen outside of the private apartments of a house renders it perfectly impossible for a large number of Chinamen to understand the freedom accorded to ladies in Europe and America. This fact alone renders it extremely undesirable that ladies should be allowed to visit the Museum when it is crowded with natives. The personal habits of the Chinese of the lower classes who I am glad to observe flock in large numbers to the Museum, who eat garlic with their rice, and whose clothing in winter is not in the cleanest state and in summer is of the very scantiest description are quite sufficient to discourage Europeans from visiting the Museum when it is thus crowded.61
61
Wu gave an impassioned address advocating the desegregation of the museum. Although the matter itself was not of much practical import, he said, the principle involved was a highly significant one. He had traveled abroad considerably and had never seen such notices at public institutions in Europe. The Museum Committee maintained that their purpose was to prevent a "collision between the lower class of Chinese and the corresponding class of other nations,” but, he asked, “if the principle of class distinction was to prevail, where was it to end?" Was there to be segregation in all public places in the Colony, in its public parks? Would Chinese be forced to walk on one side of the street and Europeans on the other? Because of the "great principle' involved in the issue, every Chinese in the Colony found the notice objectionable. Would Mr. Keswick or other members of the museum Committee themselves like to be treated this way if they were Chinese? As a Member representing the Chinese community, he concluded to the sound of applause, it was his duty to speak out even if he had to hurt the feelings of others.62
Wu's address illustrates the growing national awareness that the colonial environment bred in him and other Chinese. It was clear to Wu that there were two sets of European institutions, one for Europe and the other for the colonies, one for Europeans and one for colonial subjects. The museum was a comprehensive symbol of the inferior position into which the Hong Kong Chinese had been placed as colonial subjects by virtue of race, and the campaign to desegregate the Museum reflected the new mobilization of the Chinese community to resist that ascription.
The Legislative Council voted to eliminate the grant to the museum unless the situation changed, and the Museum Committee reluctantly complied. As in every issue involving the Chinese, the Governor's support was vital. Had not Hennessy declared his support, Wu would have had little chance of success. Hence, Wu's power was indeed circumscribed. On the other hand, Wu's
61. Keswick to Kimberley, 31 Mar. 1881, encl. in Hennessy to Kimberley, 5 Apr. 1881, no. 31, CO 129/192.
62. "Meeting of the Legislative Council, 10 Sept. 1880,” encl. in Hennessy to Kimberley, 10 Sept. 1880, no. 134, CO 129/189.
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presence in the Council gave the Chinese community an authentic voice that neither the Governor nor an English Member could provide. He could authoritatively demonstrate to the Colonial Office that Hennessy's policies had a legitimate basis and were not merely capricious whims. Even though Keswick persisted by appealing directly to London, the Colonial Office supported Wu and the Governor because it was committed to the principle of equal access in all public institutions. While perhaps sorry that the issue had ever arisen, the London officials had to agree with the justice of the Chinese case.63
The Bubble Bursts
Hennessy's persistence eventually brought results on issues such as penal reform, educational reform and Chinese representation. In April 1880 he was honored with the Queen's decision to make him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, which delighted the Governor and encouraged him to persist further. Ironically, however, that honor marked the high point of his influence in London. In the same month Disraeli's conservative cabinet fell and was replaced by a liberal one under Gladstone. When Hicks-Beach had been Colonial Secretary, Hennessy had been able to appeal directly to him about “Hong Kong influences" among the Secretary's subordinates with some satisfaction. The new Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Kimberley, discouraged private communications from Hennessy and was not disposed to treat him with special consideration. With the conservatives out of power, the Colonial Office had less to fear from Hennessy.
64
In July 1880 when Gibbs formally resigned from his seat in the Legislative Council, Hennessy unsuccessfully tried to have Wu accepted in that post on a permanent basis. In spite of Hennessy's strong personal recommendation of Wu's character and ability, the Colonial Office officials thought that although "it is quite right and politic to give some weight to the claims of the Chinese to a share in the administration . . . we must be on guard against Sir P. Hennessy's 'Chinomania."" The provisional nature of Wu's appointment was insisted upon throughout the entire period that he served in the Council.65
Hennessy's appointment of Wu as Acting Police Magistrate also aroused much opposition. In July 1880 Hennessy was criticized in the House of Commons when a Liberal Member asked the Colonial Secretary “whether he is aware that a native [i.e., Wu] has been appointed a Member of the Council and Magistrate at Hongkong, and that in the latter especially he exercises jurisdiction over Europeans as well as Natives."66
63. The Colonial Office at first upheld Keswick until the Legislative Council voted to support Wu. See Hennessy to Kimberley, 6 Oct. 1880, no. 157, CO 129/190; 5 Apr. 1881, no. 31, CO 129/192 and minutes.
64. Hicks-Beach to Hennessy, 23 Apr. 1880 (private), Sir John Pope Hennessy, Papers. 65. Minute by Kimberley on Hennessy to Kimberley, 9 July 1880, no. 98, CO 129/189. 66. No. 11134, 23 July 1880, CO 129/191.
Hong Kong Barrister 1877–1882
63
Wu's appointment as Acting Magistrate had caught the Colonial Office unawares, for regulations had not required Hennessy to inform London of it. On the one hand, as one of the undersecretaries minuted:
It is difficult to feel satisfied that Mr. Ng A Choy, who has plenty of ability, has the moral stability desirable in a magistrate, but it may be inferred that he is doing well, as if he had tripped in any way we should have heard a great deal about it.67
On the other hand, the Earl of Kimberley felt that Wu's appointment had not been prudent and decided to ask Hennessy for an official explanation. The MP who raised the question was told that Wu's temporary appointment to the Legislative Council was so far successful, and that the Colonial Office was still waiting for official notification of Wu's appointment as Acting Magistrate.68
Hennessy replied with a strong defense of his appointment of Wu as a person with a “good temper, patience, a sound knowledge of his profession as an English barrister, and a thorough acquaintance with the customs and real feelings of the inhabitants of the Colony," who in these qualities was “not equalled by any gentlemen [sic] that has sat on the Magistrate's bench since my arrival in the Colony."69
The situation must have been somewhat galling for Wu. In spite of his qualifications and strong recommendation from Hennessy, the Colonial Office remained hostile to the effort to place Chinese in responsible administrative positions. From the vantage point of the early 1880s, there were definite limits to efforts by educated Chinese to achieve parity within a colonial framework.
Hennessy's reaction to his deteriorating position was twofold: On the one hand, he began sending discreet inquiries to his friends about other posts. Hong Kong was getting too hot, and he began looking forward to the day when he would be gone. The death in 1881 of his patron, Benjamin Disraeli, further weakened his position. None of his inquiries were made public, but the Colonial Office began to anticipate the day when the Governor would be gone from the hornets' nest he had helped to create in Hong Kong.
On the other hand, debate and conflict made Hennessy more outspoken in his support for the Chinese community and even more radical in his concepts of colonial rule. In groping towards a theory of Home Rule, Hennessy displayed increasingly positive attitudes towards Chinese society and culture, stating that it was worth "straining every nerve" to encourage Chinese commerce in the Colony. In 1881 he asserted that “above all, we should avoid either in dealing with the Queen's subjects in this Colony, or in our
67. Ibid., minute of R. G. W. Herbert.
68. Ibid., draft reply by Undersecretary Grant Duff.
69. Hennessy to Kimberley, 17 Sept. 1880, no. 142, CO 129/189.
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relations with the Empire near us, any attempt to force on the Chinese institutions which are unsuited to them, and some which we, in the course of time, may perhaps discover are unsuited to ourselves.” Hennessy even went so far as to propose the establishment of an armed Chinese defense force for the Colony, a suggestion that flew in the face of the Colonial Office and its views of Hong Kong and Anglo-Chinese relations.70
Towards the end of his stay in Hong Kong, Hennessy's enemies grew more numerous, and he had many quarrels with friends and supporters, leaving him in an isolated position. In March 1882 he left on a six-month leave of absence. The Governor's departure left Wu in a difficult position, for it was clear that Hennessy would not be returning. Forces hostile to Hennessy came into ascendancy. The new colonial administrator, Austin W. Marsh, sharply disapproved of Hennessy's policies and especially of Wu, who was now referred to in the English-language press as a mere "hanger-on" of Hennessy.71
The fragility of Wu's position was made painfully clear in May and June 1882, when a disastrous panic and crash in Chinese commercial circles occurred, following a speculative craze in land investments that Wu and many other wealthy Chinese had taken part in. The craze had been facilitated by Hennessy's decision in 1880 to accede to the request of many Chinese to open large areas of government-owned land for purchase, in spite of the considerable opposition on the part of the British and Europeans to further land purchases by Chinese.72
Just before leaving Hong Kong in March 1882, Hennessy agreed to lease Wu and other wealthy Chinese investors a portion of public recreation grounds for a large-scale development project that would have provided new offices for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Po Leung Kuk (Baoliang Ju, a Chinese organization aimed at preventing kidnapping of children), a museum and administrative offices. Wu was one of the four trustees for the lease. After Hennessy had departed, Marsh informed the Colonial Office that in his opinion, the Governor had erred in granting the lease. Accordingly, the Colonial Office refused to sanction the development scheme and the lease was nullified.73
A number of Chinese investors apparently panicked because of the uncertain political climate. A run on the Chinese banks led to their closure within a few days. The crash came with devastating suddenness, causing a "complete paralysis and stagnation" in the Colony's trade. Several members of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee went bankrupt, and one comprador was reported to have committed suicide. Wu's brother-in-law He Shantian
70. Hennessy to Kimberley, 15 June 1881 (secret and confidential), CO 129/193.
71. DP, 2 Mar. 1882.
72. Hennessy to Carnarvon, 27 Sept. 1877, no. 123, CO 129/179, printed as c. 426, Gt. Brit., Sessional Papers, 1881, no. 65; “Address on the Census Returns and the Progress in Hong Kong”; Address to the Legislative Council, 7 Feb. 1882, Gt. Brit., Hongkong Government Gazette 28 (1882), pp. 77–79, CO 132/23.
73. Marsh to Kimberley, 14 Apr. 1882, no. 21, CO 129/199.
Hong Kong Barrister 1877–1882
65
(Ho Tim) suffered severe losses, and Wu himself was forced to take a loan from his in-laws in order to meet his debts rumored to total $45,000.7
74
The British gloated over the disaster and blamed Wu along with Hennessy for it. A representative view was that of a manager of one of the major European banks in Hong Kong, whose memorandum on the subject was sent confidentially to the Colonial Office by Marsh. "This disastrous movement [to buy land] originated," the banker wrote, "with a few of the so-called 'leading Chinese' who have recently dabbled a good deal in the politics of the place to the neglect of their ordinary callings." Unfortunately, he continued, “hitherto honest and upright traders” had been drawn into it. He concluded: “The Chinese have received a terrible lesson . . . they will not recover from it for many years.
"75
The banker's prophecy did not quite come true, for Chinese commercial interests recovered and the Colony's trade was back to normal within a year. Yet the crash was of sufficient duration and severity to put an end to Wu's career in Hong Kong. As persona non grata with the new colonial authorities, Wu could no longer serve as pipeline to the administration as he had in the past. To protect their own interests, the wealthy Chinese found it best to obviate Wu's role and to try to come to terms with the new administration as best they could.
Wu's isolation from the propertied Chinese whom he had previously represented was soon painfully clear. In August Marsh received a petition signed by twenty-four wealthy Chinese ("with the notable exception of the Honourable Ng Choy,” Marsh declared triumphantly) and the seals of eighty- one shops, asking that communications between the Government and the Chinese be restored to the office of the Registrar-General, as they had been in 1877 before Hennessy's changes. Only in this way, the petition stated, would rich and poor Chinese alike have access to the Government. This of course supported Marsh's contention that the Chinese community did not wish Wu to be the go-between for them. Anxious to restore their ties to the Colonial Government, the wealthy Chinese found it expedient to make Wu and Hennessy the scapegoats for the disaster. On 28 August the directors of the Tung Wah Hospital paid a visit to Government House specifically to express their satisfaction with the Registrar-General.76
Wu's isolation is easily explained. First, his rise had been associated with Hennessy's stay as Governor. In view of the great opposition to Hennessy on the part of the powerful British merchants, it was too risky for the wealthy Chinese to pin their hopes on someone who was so closely associated with him.
74. Ibid., minute by John Bramston. On Wu's indebtedness to the Hes see Fu Bingchang, Fangwen jilu, p. 63b. On He Shantian's bankruptcy and move to Guangzhou see Choa, The Life and Times of Sir Kai Ho Kai, p. 12. Ng Sang was the comprador who reportedly committed suicide. On Ng Sang's finacial difficulties see Smith, "Emergence of a Chinese Elite,” p. 100.
75. Marsh to Kimberley, 2 June 1881 (confidential), CO 129/201.
76. Marsh to Kimberley, 17 and 28 Aug. 1882, nos. 166, 174, CO 129/202.
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Moreover, some wealthy Chinese may have blamed Hennessy for the disastrous speculative craze and subsequent crash. In September, the Zhongwai Xinbao published an article charging that Hennessy had been petitioned over a year earlier by a group of merchants asking him to issue controls against speculation. Hennessy was said to have "pocketed" the petition, and the newspaper charged Hennessy with sole responsibility for the disaster." If this indeed was correct, we must ask what was Wu's own role in the debacle. As noted above, he had speculated heavily himself and may have been motivated to see that the petition was ignored. It is possible, then, that because of his own financial interests, Wu may have acted irresponsibly and thereby incurred the enmity of the wealthy Chinese. And the crash had come at a bad time for the wealthy Chinese: they had been facing increasingly stiff competition from western trading and shipping interests and had been losing ground since 1880, as noted earlier. Moreover, their leadership now faced continued challenges from the Wan Chai and other smaller merchants. Thus a combination of reasons, some of which may have been due to Wu's own dealings, were responsible for his being abandoned by his constituency.
Wu's situation was probably worsened by Hennessy's maneuverings in London. In late July Hennessy had been visited by a group of Chinese merchants residing in Britain. They expressed appreciation for his liberal policies towards the Hong Kong Chinese and told him that things had not been going so well for them since his departure from the Colony. Acting perhaps under Hennessy's inspiration, the London Pall Mall Gazette reported the visit and expressed its hope that the Colonial Office would "scrutinize carefully" the new administration in Hong Kong. The newspaper also reported that Wu had predicted dire consequences if any of Hennessy's policies were reversed. "Unfortunately," the Gazette wrote, "this warning was unheeded. The Chinese became alarmed at one or two apparently unfriendly acts of the Administration as soon as the Governor had left."78
When the article was published in Hong Kong in September, Wu wrote to the China Mail to try to smooth things over. Although he had prophesied bad tidings if Hennessy's policies were not followed, “in justice to Mr. Marsh,” Wu wrote, his "public acts have not been antagonistic to the community; and he is in no way to blame for the commercial panic. He had no more to do with the causes which led to the recent calamity than Governor Hennessy had. The disastrous events would have happened even if neither Mr. Marsh nor Sir John Pope Hennessy had ever administered the Government of this colony. "79
Apparently Hennessy tried to put in a word for Wu with the Colonial Office, but all to no avail. Wu's position in Hong Kong was clearly untenable. Justly or unjustly, he had lost the confidence of the propertied Chinese who
77. Translated in Marsh to Kimberley, 23 Sept. 1882, no. 205, CO 129/202. 78. Pall Mall Gazette, 26 July 1882, clipping in 13141, CO 129/206.
79. CM, 6 Sept. 1882.
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67
constituted his political base. He could have perhaps weathered the storm, especially since the crisis was of relatively short duration, but he was also heavily in debt to his wife's family, who persistently urged him to leave Hong Kong and take up the post under Li Hongzhang that he had rejected in 1877.80 Wu finally acceded to their demands. On 31 October 1882 he took a six-month leave of absence from his seat in the Legislative Council and traveled north to Tianjin, stopping en route at Nanjing to visit with Liu Kunyi. He was cordially received by Li Hongzhang who agreed to hire him as his adviser on the same terms that they had previously arranged. Thus Wu's Hong Kong career came to a somewhat discouraging end.
Wu Tingfang's Colonial Legacy
We must assume that Wu's last few months in Hong Kong were difficult for him. As the full impact of the crash was felt and his personal debts mounted, his political base weakened by the day. Wu had little choice but to agree with his in-laws and take up the post with Li Hongzhang; but, it must be viewed in some respects as a personal defeat.
Still, from the perspective of colonial social structure, what is significant is that he did have an option, something not necessarily available to colonized peoples in other Asian and African societies. This once again points up Hong Kong's special nature in contrast to many other colonies; it existed in relation to China and not in and of itself alone.
Another issue to be examined is that of the He family's motivations in propelling Wu towards Qing officialdom, first in 1877 through Mrs. He's introduction to Li Hongzhang, and now in 1882 in insisting that he take up a post as Li's adviser. This is suggestive of a larger family strategy. He Qi had returned to Hong Kong in 1882 with his medical degree and also qualifications as barrister, not to mention his English wife, Alice Walkden. With He Qi back in Hong Kong and excellently suited to continue the role of "civic leader," the He family interests in Hong Kong, one may argue, were well taken care of. With a son-in-law well situated as Li Hongzhang's secretary, the He family could garner up additional influence and prestige. Important as the marks of elitedom were within the British colonial context, those of China itself were at least as powerful. To be an official brought enormous prestige, opportunities for personal advancement and the possibility of enrichment. The He family may well have reckoned that it certainly couldn't hurt to have Wu in a position of influence in Li Hongzhang's administration, especially in view of Li's importance in Chinese politics and growing role in developing self- strengthening enterprises.
The He family strategy is symptomatic of the larger process then beginning to occur in China by which bourgeois and gentry interests began to merge.
80. Kimberley to Hennessy, 7 Aug. 1882, Sir John Pope Hennessy, Papers.
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This process has been discussed by Wellington K. K. Chan in his study of late Qing merchant-official relations. As China's gentry-official class began to invest in treaty-port real estate and engage in various business activities, sometimes covertly through agents or relations, the lines between the traditional elite and the new bourgeoisie weakened significantly.81 The other part of that process was the entrance of members of the bourgeoisie into the Qing administration.
With this in mind, an important point stands out: The last episode of Wu's Hong Kong career strongly suggests the lack of internal cohesiveness of the Hong Kong bourgeoisie when faced with temporary financial losses and a temporarily hostile colonial administration. The willingness of the Tung Wah group to abandon Wu points up the organizational weakness of the bourgeoisie and its inability to effectively assert itself within the colonial structure when confronted with adversity.
The lack of internal cohesiveness of the bourgeoisie has major ramifications. If the bourgeoisie could not “stand up" to the colonial authorities in Hong Kong, how could it "stand up" when dealing with the extraordinarily organized and cohesive Qing bureaucracy? Thus in the fusion of official/gentry and bourgeois interests that occurred later in the nineteenth century the non- cohesive bourgeois elements were disadvantaged.
When Wu left Hong Kong in 1882 he was forty-one years old-half of his life had passed. His careers as journalist, interpreter, barrister, magistrate and legislator had given him a degree of insight into British culture and institutions that few of his countrymen had. Understandably, his outlook differed radically from most of them. Wu's experiences in Britain and Hong Kong had made him a culturally marginal person.
On the one hand, Wu was ethnically and culturally Chinese. In the context of Hong Kong society, that meant the automatic ascription of an inferior position as a colonial subject. The indignation that Wu and other Chinese in Hong Kong felt over such issues as racial segregation was an index of the incipient national awareness that the colonial environment bred. The inferior positions to which they had been assigned in Hong Kong as Chinese were seen as reflections of the low status to which China as a nation had been assigned in the international context, where foreigners assumed privileged positions, governed themselves in treaty ports and foreign concessions, and forced the Qing Government to pay enormous indemnities and grant further privileges each time a foreigner was hurt or killed by the people. The indignation that Wu and his friends felt within the specific colonial circumstance could thus be easily transferred to the nation as a whole.
On the other hand, Wu accepted Great Britain as the standard of civilization. The belief led him to the emotional conviction that relations between China and the West should be harmonious. If China and Britain
81. Wellington K. K. Chan, Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge: Harvard University East Asian Research Center, 1977), pp. 39–63, 107–53.
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were at odds, it was somehow because China had fallen out of step, and the task at hand was that of bringing China up to the superior level prevailing in the West. Parity was not assumed in this relationship. In debating with Britishers such as Keswick, Wu and the Hong Kong Chinese did not publicly question Britain's right to rule Hong Kong, but rather charged the Westerners with failing to live up to the ideals of British civilization. Thus the fundamental framework of British imperialism was not directly challenged by the colonial Chinese of Wu's generation. Wu and others of his generation could see themselves as Anglo-Chinese—and try to ignore the contradictions between the two components of that identity.
This world view led Wu to see himself in a very special way as a member of a tiny cosmopolitan, international elite whose duty it was to somehow bring harmony in the relations between China and the West. China had to be "opened" to modern influence: its economy developed, trade expanded, the people educated and made politically conscious, and the nation elevated to a status of equality vis-à-vis the western powers. As Wu saw it, his efforts would find their parallels among enlightened people of the western world, such as Hennessy, who would also exert themselves to reform their own societies so that all nations would progress towards a morally refined future Utopian world.
The nationalism inherent in Wu's outlook was symbiotically linked with the West and the imperialist presence. I believe that this linkage was of profound emotional depth for him and continued to be so throughout his long life. It is one aspect of the colonial legacy of his youth.
3
With Li Hongzhang 1882–1896
Li Hongzhang's Mufu
When Wu Tingfang moved to Tianjin in 1882 he changed worlds. In spite of his ties to family and associates in Hong Kong, and a three-year stay in the Colony from 1889 to 1891 following the death of his mother, Hong Kong was never to be his permanent home again. From Tianjin and Beijing, Wu went to Washington as Minister to the United States, Spain and Peru, and when he returned to China in 1902, Wu chose Shanghai as his new home. In 1882, then, the colonial phase of Wu's life, strictly speaking, ended, and a new world opened up to him.
This new world was that of the foreign affairs official for the Qing Government. In Hong Kong, the most an ambitious Chinese could aspire to was to become a foreign-educated professional “civic leader.” We have already seen the limitations inherent in that role. It is most significant that Wu's elite standing as a barrister was transferable to the elite standing of a Chinese official. He lost nothing in terms of prestige, formal income and opportunities for advancement. And, eventually he was able to rise to far loftier heights than the colonial social structure could offer. That the Chinese context offered greater possibilities of social mobility than the colonial could once again points up the differences between China as a semi-colony and fully colonized nations.
Wu may be viewed as a member of the first generation of modern foreign affairs officials, men trained abroad and knowledgeable about the West in a manner far deeper than was true of the vast majority of Qing officials. They were used by the Qing Government to conduct diplomacy and to manage modern enterprises developed by the state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first generation of modern foreign affairs officials were in the main associates of Li Hongzhang, in contrast to the second generation, who were mostly part of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang administration in the twentieth century.'
1. On Tang Shaoyi as the most prominent of the second generation of modern foreign affairs officials, see Sigel, "T’ang Shao-yi”; MacKinnon, Power and Politics, pp. 66–72, 182–86.
71
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Wu Tingfang (1842–1922): Reform and Modernization in Modern Chinese History
The modern foreign affairs officials were one of the key links in the process of fusion of bourgeois and gentry-official interests in modern China that has been referred to in earlier chapters. While the link between commercial and official-gentry classes was of long standing nature, the pace of their amalgamation accelerated in the latter part of the nineteenth century, particularly in highly commercialized areas such as Guangdong and Jiangsu Provinces. Of great importance in this process and in the development of modern capitalism in China was the Self-Strengthening or Westernization Movement (Ziqiang/Yangwu Yundong) of the late Qing period, in which the Qing Government undertook to develop a number of modern enterprises in an effort to deal with the protracted crisis posed by imperialism in China.
Officials such as Li Hongzhang were interested in the bourgeoisie as a source of skills and capital, while the capitalists were attracted to the self- strengthening projects as areas of investment that could also lead to the protection of Chinese sovereignty, a major concern they shared with many officials. Thus mutual self-interest created the basis for the close relationship that developed between some officials and some members of the newly emerging capitalist class.2
The institutional setting for this fusion was the mufu, "tent government" or personal staff of powerful regional officials, the most important of whom were Zeng Guofan (1811–72) and Li Hongzhang. Most American authorities on the late Qing mufu have stressed its relative modernity. Jonathan Porter has argued persuasively that the mufu as developed by Zeng and later expanded by Li departed significantly from traditional mufu structures. They were modern bureaucratic structures functioning under the personal authority of Zeng and Li.3 In their studies of Li Hongzhang's mufu, Kenneth E. Folsom and Stanley Spector also emphasize this dimension. Because the mufu functioned under the personal authority of powerful officials, the latter could bypass regular channels of bureaucratic appointments to hire persons with the appropriate areas of specialization to manage a host of modernizing activities. While having low status in traditional terms, Wu and others like him could command high salaries (his was reportedly 6,000 taels a year, compared to the formal salary of 300 taels that was the norm for regularly recruited officials) and could exercise considerable responsibility.*
2. Discussed at some length in Ding Richu and Shen Zuwei, “Lun wanQing de guojia ziben zhuyi,” Lishi yanjiu, 1983, no. 6: 151–74; Huang Yifeng and Jiang Dou, “Zhong ping Yangwu Yundong,” ibid., 1979, no. 2: 58-70; and their "Yao qiadang de pingjie Yangwu Yundong de jiji zuoyong," ibid., 1980, no. 6: 21–30; Li Shiyue, “Cong yangwu, weixin dao zichan jieji geming,” ibid., 1980, no. 1: 31-40; Wang Xi, "Shilun yangwu pai guandu shangban qiye de xingzhi yu zuoyong,” ibid., 1983, no. 6: 175–87; Xia Dongyuan and Yang Xiaomin, “Lun Qingji lunchuan zhaoshangju de xingzhi,” ibid., 1980, no. 4: 55–66; Xu Tailai, “Ye ping Yangwu Yundong,” ibid., 1980, no. 4: 19–36.
3. Jonathan Porter, Tseng Kuo-fan's Private Bureaucracy, China Research Monographs, 9 (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, 1972).
4. Kenneth E. Folsom, Friends, Guests and Colleagues; Stanley Spector, Li Hung-chang and the Huai Army: A Study in Nineteenth Century Regionalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964). On salaries of Qing officials, see Ch'u Tung-tsu, Local Government in China, p. 22.
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Li Hongzhang's administration, based in Tianjin but including enterprises in many parts of China, was a widespread network requiring a personal staff of several hundred people, in addition to regularly appointed local and provincial level officials under his authority. More than fifty key persons were involved at an administrative level in Li's modern enterprises and in the conduct of diplomacy.5
Wu was one of three foreign-educated experts who played important roles as Li's advisers in foreign affairs. The other two were Luo Fenglu (d. 1903) and Ma Jianzhong (1844-1900). Luo Fenglu was a native of Fuzhou (Foochow) who was a member of the first class at the Foochow Naval School. He was selected to study naval science in England and served for a period as attaché in the Chinese Legation in Berlin before joining Li Hongzhang's mufu late in 1880. He held the title of Sub-prefect, fifth grade, and later that of Expectant Daotai, first class. He was Li's expert on naval matters but also served Li as negotiator and translator in a broad range of areas.6
The third of Li Hongzhang's foreign trained advisers was Ma Jianzhong, a native of Jiangsu who came from a Catholic gentry family. He received a formal education in Jesuit schools in Shanghai as well as a classical Chinese education. In 1877 Li Hongzhang sent him to France to study ship construction. In the following year he received a baccalaureate degree, and in 1879 he received the licentiate from the Faculte de Droit of the Universite de Paris. Back with Li Hongzhang again in 1880, Ma was an important figure in Li's administration, assisting him in negotiations during the Sino-French War and then being assigned as assistant manager in the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, the most important of the self-strengthening enterprises under Li.7 The first phase of the Self-Strengthening or Westernization Movement, 1860–72, had been dominated by Zeng Guofan. As a natural outcome of the suppression of the Taiping rebellion, his mufu expanded and became rationalized to enable him to develop military modernization projects, the most important of which was the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai established in 1865. Zeng also developed ties with the American educated Chinese Rong Hong (Yung Wing, 1828–1912), who was the prototype of the late nineteenth century modern foreign affairs official, serving however in a far more limited capacity than those who followed him.8
5. See Table 17, "Western-Oriented Functionaries under Li," in Spector, Li Hung-chang, pp. 287- 96.
6. In a career somewhat parallel to that of Wu, Luo served as China's Minister to the Court of St. James from 1897 to 1901. He retired due to illness and died in 1903. See obituary notice in NCH, no. 74, p.1260, 26 June 1903. Paul King wrote that Luo was an ardent student, an admirer of Herbert Spencer, and a highly cultured man of interesting personality. See Paul King, In the Chinese Customs Service: A Personal Record of Forty-seven Years (London: Unwin, 1924), pp. 88-89. 7. This sketch of Ma's life is based on Paul A. Cohen's research. See his “Littoral and Hinterland,” pp. 203–4. Ma retired in 1896 to write his famous study of Chinese grammar, Mashi wentong. See also Qing shi (Yangmingshan, Taiwan: Guofang yanjiuyuan, 1961), 6:4947-48.
8. On Zeng Guofan's self-strengthening measures, see Mary C. Wright's The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The Tung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874 (New York: Atheneum, 1969), chap. 9. On Rong Hong and Zeng Guofan see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hongkong and Western Cultures, pp. 92–97.
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The second and third phases of the Self-Strengthening Movement, 1872– 85 and 1885-94, were dominated by Zeng's former subordinate, Li Hongzhang, and were marked by a shift from military enterprises to a broader range of commercial and industrial activities. These latter provided more room for the skills and interests of the bourgeoisie.
A major innovation of the late Qing modernization movement was the guandu shangban, or merchant undertaking under official supervision, form of enterprise. The most important of the guandu shangban enterprises was the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company (CMSNC), founded in 1872 as a competitor to western shipping in China. The leading figures in the Company before 1885 were the compradors Tang Tingshu, Xu Run and Zheng Guanying, all associates of Wu Tingfang's. After 1885, Sheng Xuanhuai (1844-1916) assumed the leading managerial role in the company's affairs. The CMSNC became the hub of a great number of enterprises in mining, manufacturing and communications involving these figures and all enjoying Li Hongzhang's protection.9
The guandu shangban structure has been the subject of much interest by historians of China, and in particular its relationship to the development of capitalism. On the one hand, the guandu shangban structure provided a framework for Chinese capitalists to invest funds and utilize their technical and managerial knowledge in developing modern industrial and commercial enterprises in a more effective way than might have been possible otherwise. On the other hand, guandu shangban structures left merchants at a disadvantage in dealing with the official supervisors, who found ways to siphon off funds for non-productive purposes and thereby lower the profitability of the projects. Thus the relationship between the merchants and officials, and the significance of the guandu shangban structure as aid to or impediment to the development of capitalism, as embryonic versions of national capitalism or bureaucratic capitalism, are subject to debate. Similarly, the degree to which the guandu shangban enterprises under Li Hongzhang and Sheng Xuanhuai manifested backward practices linked to bureaucratism is also an area of controversy among historians.1o
Wu Tingfang's career as an official subordinate of Li Hongzhang suggests the limited range of activities open to foreign trained foreign affairs officials in the mufu structure. As a modern official with close ties to the mercantile community and highly sympathetic to its interests, Wu was able to accomplish some of the goals of the emerging capitalist class within the mufu setting and guandu shangban structure, but increasingly found himself confronted with the limitations inherent in them as vehicles for reform.
9. The classic study in English of the guandu shangban system and the CMSNC remains Albert Feuerwerker's China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai (1844–1916) and Mandarin Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).
10. For recently published contrasting views see Wang Xi, “Shilun yangwu pai guandu shangban qiye de xingzhi yu zuoyong,” and Ding Richu and Shen Zuwei, “Lun wanQing de guojia ziben zhuyi."
With Li Hongzhang 1882–1896
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Wu's early years as a member of Li Hongzhang's mufu were dominated by foreign policy crises posed by French aggression in Vietnam and Japanese aggression in Korea. In particular, the Sino-French War put Li Hongzhang in a difficult political position. His determination to avoid all-out hostilities with France led to vehement public denunciations of his leadership on the part of most members of the Qing elite, especially the moralistic qingyi pai of critics."
Upon his arrival in Tianjin in December 1882, Wu was feted by the Tianjin manager of the CMSNC, where Wu dressed himself in wig and gown for the company's amusement, but in general, Wu maintained a low profile during the Sino-French difficulties.12 His first few months were spent getting familiar with Li's administration and cultivating cordial relations between the western diplomatic community in Tianjin and Zhang Shusheng, who temporarily replaced Li following his mother's death.13
In May 1883 Li was recalled from mourning and ordered to take charge of military operations against the French. Li brought Wu and Ma Jianzhong to Shanghai to assist in arranging for supplies and matériel. Upon entering into discussions with the French representative Tricot at the beginning of June, however, Li ordered Wu to return to Tianjin, where he remained for the rest of the Sino-French conflict, providing legal advice for Li and serving as liaison with foreigners in Tianjin.14
Thus Wu was not in Shanghai during the disastrous financial crash of November 1883 that nearly ruined Tang Tingshu and Xu Run and resulted in Li Hongzhang's removal of their leadership from the CMSNC and replacing it with that of Sheng Xuanhuai. Similarly, Zheng Guanying faced severe difficulties as a result of the crash and was forced to relinquish control of a major textile operation under the guandu shangban format. Li Hongzhang's inability or unwillingness to help these people, who were the mainstays of capitalist support for his projects, set the stage for the degeneration of the guandu shangban system into one increasingly controlled by the bureaucracy, and in which enlightened capitalists had less power.1
15
11. Lloyd E. Eastman, Throne and Mandarins: China's Search for a Policy During the Sino-French Controversy, 1880–1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), especially chap. 8. 12. NCH, 10 Jan. 1883, p.38.
13. Ibid., 27 Apr. 1883, p. 460.
14. Li Hongzhang to Zhang Shusheng, 19 May 1883 (GX9/4/12) and 2 June 1883 (GX 9/4/27), Li Hongzhang, Quanji, “Dian'gao," 1:13, 16.
15. Chuan Han-sheng, "The Economic Crisis of 1883 as Seen in the Failure of Hsu Jun's Real Estate Business in Shanghai," in Conference on Modern Chinese Economic History, ed. Hou and Yu (Taibei, 1979), pp. 493–98, and Liu Kwang-ching, “Credit Failures in China's Early Industrialization: The Background and Implications of Hsu Jun's Bankruptcy in 1883,” ibid., pp. 499–509. On Zheng Guanying's economic difficulties see Wang Xi, “Lun Zheng Guanying,” pp. 33–34.
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As to Wu's own reactions to these events, we unfortunately have no information. He and Wang Tao maintained an active correspondence during the war, and Wu may have sympathized with Wang's dismay at the Court's inept handling of the situation, and with Wang's efforts to engage the support of sympathetic Japanese Pan-Asian military figures.16
In terms of Wu's personal life, his correspondence with Wang Tao indicates that Wu was greatly distressed over his continued childlessness. In a letter of 1884 or 1885, Wang urged Wu to find a suitable concubine. In 1886 Wu's only son Chaoshu (Tiyun) was born. Chaoshu's birth mother was surnamed Ye, and he was said to have been a good son to her as well as to Mrs. Wu, He Miaoling.1
17
In 1885 things began to look up for Wu in other matters as well. In February 1885 Wu served as Li's aide and interpreter in negotiations with Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909). During these negotiations, conducted in English, Wu apparently made a favorable impression on Ito, and the talks resulted in a compromise that averted war and enabled China to make an effort to strengthen its position in Korea. 18
In March 1886, Zhang Yinhuan (1837-1900), newly appointed Minister to the United States, Spain and Peru, requested that Wu serve as his councillor in the Chinese Legation in Washington, but Li was reluctant to have Wu leave Tianjin. He delayed Wu's departure on the grounds that there was unfinished business that only he could handle, then memorialized the Throne requesting that honors be granted Wu in recognition of his varied services in legal matters and diplomacy. Although he did not accompany Zhang to the United States, Wu maintained close ties with Zhang.19
Wu's influence continued to grow through 1886. After long and complicated negotiations with the foreign diplomatic corps for the transfer of the Beitang Cathedral in Beijing to a new site, Li again proposed Wu's name to the Court for honors. These were granted early in 1887 in the form of a brevet button of the second degree to add to his rank of Expectant Daotai.20 Wu's skill in diplomacy were also recognized by Westerners in Tianjin who lauded his “able and clear intellect."21
16. On Wang Tao's promoting of Sone Toshitora, see his letters to Wu of 1882–84, in his Taoyuan chidu 2:11b-12a; and 5:3b-4b. See also Paul A. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity, pp.103–4, 298, 299.
17. Wang to Wu, probably 1884, in Wang Tao, Taoyuan chidu 5:5b-6b. Zou Lu, Zhongguo Guomindang shigao (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1944),
p. 1618.
18. Li Hongzhang to Zongli Yamen, 12 Mar. 1885 (GX 11/1/28), Li Hongzhang, Quanji, "Dian'gao," 5:18. Fu Bingchang wrote that Wu and Ito were slightly acquainted with each other from their days as students in London, but I have found no verification of this. See Fu Bingchang, Fangwen jilu, p. 63b.
19. I have been unable to locate the original memorial and resulting edict, but a portion was translated from the Peking Gazettes of 8 and 15 March and printed in NCH, 11 and 18 June 1886. On Zhang Yinhuan see Ho Ping-ti [He Bingdi], "Zhang Yinhuan shiji,” in Weixin yu baoshou (Taibei: Zhengzhong, 1959), pp. 91–113; Qing shi 6:4928–29.
20. Li Hongzhang, “Wu Tingfang deng ren qing gei jiang pian,” 1 Oct. 1886 (GX 12/9/4), Li, Quanji, “Zougao," 58:3; Da Qing lichao shilu (1927; reprint, Taibei: Wenxing, 1963) (hereafter cited
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By 1886, then, Wu was well established in Li Hongzhang's administration as an effective and influential staff member. His efforts to introduce innovations in diplomatic procedures during the Nagasaki Incident of 1886 and his experiences developing railways are both areas illustrating the possibilities as well as problems in reform under the mufu structure and Li Hongzhang's leadership.
The Nagasaki Incident
The Nagasaki Incident was a waterfront brawl between Chinese sailors and Japanese townspeople and police that occurred in summer 1886, resulting in the deaths of eight Chinese and two Japanese, as well as numerous injuries and some property damage. Wu pressed Li Hongzhang to use international legal proceedings to determine who was at fault and seek redress for damages. In general, when disputes between Chinese and foreigners occurred in China, the foreign nations insisted in upholding the principle of extraterritoriality, and Wu was well aware of the difficulties involved in introducing innovations in the established procedures.
In 1877, shortly after returning from England to Hong Kong, Wu had been hired by the Fuzhou Chinese Trade Committee to represent it in the Porter Case, in which an American vagrant seaman was accused by the Committee of participating in a fraudulent protection racket. Porter was absolved of the charges after a short inquiry by the U.S. Consulate in Fuzhou, but the Chinese Trade Committee charged that bribery had been involved in the decision. The Committee hired Wu and another Hong Kong barrister (who soon left the case) to represent it at a new inquiry held by Chester A. Holcombe, Secretary of the U.S. Legation in Beijing.
Holcombe refused to permit Wu to participate in the inquiry in any fashion. When Wu tried to present him with a brief written on behalf of his clients, Holcombe "declined to receive it at his hands or to recognize him as in any way connected with the case." He later reported: "I did not acknowledge him as having any connection with the business in hand, or right to put any questions to me." Although Holcombe did in fact later report that most of the Committee's charges were true, Wu could not even obtain a verbal promise
as Shilu), 30 Dec. 1886 (GX 12/12/6), 236:7a. The land for the Beitang Cathedral was given to the Church by the Kangxi Emperor. In an audience granted to Li in 1885, Cixi expressly ordered him to negotiate its removal to a different site because she thought that the palace grounds could be seen from the church tower. Alexander Michie and Gustav Detring were also involved in the negotiations, which resulted in an agreement to pay the Church Tls 350,000 to vacate the site and relocate. For concise summaries, see Lei Longqing, Li Hongzhang nianpu (Taibei: Shangwu, 1977), pp. 338, 339, 345, 363. Materials on the transfer of the cathedral are collected in a separate section of Li Hongzhang's collected works entitled "Canchikou jiaotang han'gao." The final agreement is also reprinted in Qingji waijiao shiliao 66:23–27.
21. NCH, 19 Jan. 1887.
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that the culprits would be punished.22 When queried about the matter by China's ministers to the United States, Chen Lanbin and Rong Hong, the Secretary of State disclaimed all knowledge of the affair.23
This incident apparently convinced Wu that the western powers would not tolerate any innovations in judicial matters when foreign nationals were involved, and he so advised Li Hongzhang during the Shameen Affair in 1883. In that incident the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi hired two Hong Kong barristers to participate in the trial of an Englishman accused of killing three Chinese in Guangzhou. The barristers were not permitted to participate in the proceedings before the British Supreme Court for Asia. The accused was pronounced guilty of manslaughter, and in the inflamed atmosphere prevailing during the Sino-French War, there was a great public outcry. The Governor-General, in response, wanted to have the case reopened. Wu knew that the case could not be opened after the Supreme Court had come to a decision, and he so advised Li. Li then informed the Governor-General and the Zongli Yamen, to whose attention the matter had been brought, that "since Chinese and foreign laws are different, foreign criminals must be tried by the officials of their own countries as is set forth in the existing treaties, and Chinese officials cannot change this at will.”24
In the Nagasaki case, however, the incident occurred on Japanese soil and not in China, and Wu hoped that Japan would agree to procedures based upon equality in international law. Wu may have felt that Japan would be receptive to this approach. Ito's cordiality in 1885 and Wu's contact with Wang Tao's friend Sone Toshitora, a Japanese naval officer with high connections in Japan and strong Pan-Asian sympathies for China, may have led him to form such a view.
Accordingly, Wu engaged W. V. Drummond, sometime acting British Crown Advocate in Shanghai who had earlier been involved in negotiations between the CMSNC in negotiations and Russell and Co., to conduct inquiries for the Qing Government and to press Japan for a formal apology and indemnification.25 Drummond left immediately for Nagasaki with a private detective in his employ and began gathering evidence to support China's case. These unprecedented steps, which stood in such sharp contrast to China's abject humility vis-à-vis the western powers, infuriated the Japanese leadership, who refused to accept the Chinese claims. When the inquiry opened, each side refused to accept blame and brought forth ever more witnesses to support
22. Seward to Secretary of State, 26 Oct. 1877, dispatch no. 340, U.S. Department of State, "Dispatches from U.S. Ministers in China,” M-92 (U.S. National Archives) (hereafter cited as "MCD").
23. Chen Lanbin and Rong Hong to Evarts, 1 Feb. 1879 and memorandum of 11 Dec. 1879, China, Legation, Washington, D.C., “Notes from the Chinese Legation to the Department of State" (U.S. National Archives) (hereafter cited as “NFCL").
24. Li Hongzhang to Zongli Yamen, 8 Nov. 1883 (GX 9/9/23), Li, Quanji, “Yishu hanʼgao,” 15:1-2. 25. On William Vern Drummond, see Arnold Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 516.
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its claims. As the proceedings dragged on, Li and other officials became uneasy, and many foreigners in China too began to criticize Wu's methods.26
In November 1886, Japanese Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru (1835-1915) proposed a compromise in which China would share blame for the incident. Along with Japan, China was to arrest “ringleaders" and try them before a naval board of inquiry. Inoue's note to China ended with a barely concealed threat of force. Xu Chengzu, the Qing Minister to Japan, had never approved of Wu's procedures and urged the Zongli Yamen to act upon Inoue's suggestion."
27
But Wu fought hard to persuade Li Hongzhang and the Zongli Yamen to continue following his methods. In a strongly worded memorandum to the Zongli Yamen, Wu had urged that China await the results of the inquest before taking the steps outlined by Inoue. Only if the inquest failed to reach a clear verdict should the matter be handled through diplomatic channels, but Wu felt that China's case was so strong that to abandon the inquest at this stage would be an error. Should arbitration through a third party eventually prove necessary, Wu proposed the name of Sir Richard Rennie (1839-1905), Chief Justice of the British Supreme Court in Asia, but in any case, he repeatedly stressed the importance of the inquest.
28
Li Hongzhang and the Zongli Yamen at first upheld Wu's views and Xu Chengzu was chastised for his gullibility. But as the expenses rose and no prospect of a speedy settlement appeared, Li began to waver, and Prince Chun (Yixin) began to express doubts about the motives of the various Westerners involved in the matter, first William Lang, adviser to the Qing Navy, then Drummond, and now possibly Rennie.29
A few weeks later Japan threatened to break relations with China unless it agreed to share the blame for the incident. Li at once memorialized for permission to halt the inquest while he personally examined the documents in the case, even though Wu continued to maintain that Japan alone was responsible. Finally, traditional negotiation took the place of judicial procedure. In the final settlement signed in January 1887, China withdrew its demand for a formal apology, and each nation agreed to compensate the other for casualties and damages sustained. As China had sustained greater losses than Japan, it received a larger payment than that which it paid out.30
26. See Li Hongzhang to Xu Chengzu, 18 Aug. 1886 (GX 12/7/19), Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 7:32; Li to Ding, 20 Aug. (GX 12/7/21), ibid., pp. 32–33; Li to Xu, 20 and 21 Aug. (GX 12/7/21, 22), ibid., p. 33; to Ding and Lang, 27 Aug. (GX 12/7/28), ibid., p. 35; Li to Zongli Yamen, 30 Aug. (GX 12/8/2), 25 Sept. (GX 12/8/28), 22 Oct. (GX 12/9/25), Qingji waijiao shiliao 68:18, 35–36, 69:15-16; NCH, 6 Oct. 1886.
27. Li to Zongli Yamen, 16 Nov. 1886 (GX 12/10/21), Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 7:49.
28. "Wu Tingfang nichou Changqi'an banfa,” 22 Oct. 1886 (GX 12/9/25), Li, Quanji, “Yishu han'gao," 18:49–51. On Rennie see Who Was Who, 1897–1915, vol. 1.
29. Zongli Yamen to Li Hongzhang, 17 Nov. (GX 12/10/22) and 18 Nov. 1886, Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 7:50-51; Zongli Yamen to Li, 20 Nov. 1886 (GX 12/10/25), Qingji waijiao shiliao 69:19–20.
30. Li to Zongli Yamen, 20 Nov. 1886 (GX 12/10/25); Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 7:52; 26 Nov. 1886 (GX 12/11/1), 27 Jan. 1887 (GX 13/1/4), Qingji waijiao shiliao, 69:24; 70:102. The final agreement is reprinted as Document no. C 07030403, China, Foreign Ministry, Waijiao dang'an (Nan'gang, Taiwan: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica).
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Probably the closest analogies for the Nagasaki Incident were the anti- Chinese riots in the United States in the 1880s. Certainly Wu attained more positive results in the Nagasaki matter than China did with the United States.31 Yet there were troublesome implications to Li Hongzhang's vacillation. Li supported Wu's plan until the threat of force compelled him to seek a compromise rather than risk hostilities with Japan. Although Li had strongly upheld China's sovereignty in the issue of foreign-owned railways and telegraphs in China, in international disputes it was another matter. In the face of Japan's hostility, the status quo was more important than defense of China's sovereignty.32 Thus there were clearly defined limits to Li's willingness to seek reform in China's unequal relations with the imperialist world. In any case, with the conclusion of the Nagasaki matter, Wu turned his full attention to railway administration. As in the case of foreign relations, there were mixed results here too.
The North China Railways
Railway enterprise under Li Hongzhang is often considered among the more successful of the early self-strengthening projects, but for Wu and his close associates one must conclude that they did not live up to their expectations.33
The North China railways under Li are intimately connected to the Kaiping mines and to their major promoter, Tang Tingshu, whose early career was related in Chapter 1. In 1877 Li appointed Li Zhaotang and Ding Shouchang to work with Tang in developing coal mines near Kaiping, north of Tangshan. (Li Zhaotang, it will be remembered, was the relation of Wu's in-laws who arranged for Wu's introduction to Li Hongzhang.) 34
Their plan to develop the coal fields was contingent upon developing a
31. On the question of reparations by the U.S. Government, see Ma Wenhuan, American Policy Towards China as Revealed in the Debates of Congress (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1934), pp. 178–81; Jules Alexander Karlin, "The Indemnification of Aliens Injured by Mob Violence," Southwesten Social Science Quarterly 25 (1945): 235–46.
32. On Li's defense of China's sovereignty with respect to railways and telegraph lines, see Saundra Sturdevant, “Imperialism, Sovereignty, and Self-Strengthening: A Reassessment of the 1870's," in Reform in Nineteenth-Century China, ed. Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 63–70.
33. On the early railways see Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum, "China's First Railway: The Imperial Railways of North China, 1880–1911" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1972); Li Guoqi, Zhongguo zaoqi de tielu jingying (Nan'gang, Taiwan: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1961); Ministries of Communications and Railways, comp., Jiaotong shi, vols. 30–32, Lu-zheng bian (Nanjing, 1930). Short accounts may be found in Zeng Kunhua, Zhongguo tielu shi (Beijing: Xinhua zengjia, 1924); Ling Hongxun, Zhongguo tielu zhi (Taibei: Zhangliu banyuekan, 1954); Percy Horace Kent, Railway Enterprise in China: An Account of Its Origin and Development (London: E. Arnold, 1907); Zhang Guohui, Yanguu Yundong yu Zhongguo jindai qiye (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan, 1979), pp. 260-68.
34. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 34-37. Their petition is reprinted in Yangwu Yundong (Zhongguo jindaishi ziliao congkan), ed. Zhongguo kexueyuan, Jindaishi yanjiusuo shiliao bianji shi and Zhongyang dang'an'guan Ming-Qing dang'anbu bianji zu (Beijing, 1961), 7:113–18, 129.
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railroad to transport the coal. At first Li gave his support to the construction of a small line connecting the mines to Lutai, a town located on the east bank of the Beitang River, where the coal could be transported by barge to the port of Tanggu and ships of the CMSNC could dock and load the coal. However, given the opposition to railway construction following the British illegal construction of the Shanghai-Wusong line, Li apparently advised against trying to develop a railway at that time. In fact, a small railway was surreptitiously constructed in 1881 between the mines and the village of Xugezhuang. This seven-mile railway was designed by British engineer C. W. Kinder, who named it “Rocket of China." From Xugezhuang the coal was transported by barge along a canal to Lutai. The "Rocket" could not thus alleviate the problems caused by silting in the canal and theft of coal from the slow moving barges. Also, output was greatly decreased in winter when the canals froze over. Tang hoped that facilitating the transport problem would help the mines become more productive and alleviate the financial difficulties the mining venture was encountering, but the Company was unable to obtain official approval for further railway building until 1886.35
In the early 1880s there was talk of large-scale railway enterprises using the Kaiping coal fields as their hub, expanding from Kaiping to Tangshan, from Tangshan to Tanggu and Dagu, thence to Tianjin, and from Tianjin to Tongzhou, on the eastern outskirts of Beijing. While the problem of coal transport would be initially solved by the first phase of the line, increased freight and passenger traffic in the latter phases of the line would make the railway a moneymaker and help the mining enterprise to expand. In particular, the Tianjin-Tongzhou line was the linchpin in the vision. In the words of the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1889, "the Kaiping line as it were is the bones, the [Tianjin-]Tung-chow one was to be the flesh.”37
36
In writing to Tang Tingshu to congratulate him on getting the Kaiping mine going, Wang Tao wrote that he saw the mines as the hub of a host of industrial enterprises that would help to transform China and enable it to achieve the goal of wealth and power. For Wang, too, railways were crucial to the success of the entire endeavor. Although the above was Wang Tao's own view and not Tang's, it probably reflects views that were not too far from
35. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 37-39; Li Guoqi, Zaoqi tielu, pp. 49–61; NCH, 15 Nov. 1882, p. 531; "Report on the Trade of Tientsin for the Year 1882,” enclosed in Brenan to Secretary of State for Foreign Foreign Affairs, 31 Mar. 1883, nos. 133–46, FO 17/936. On theft, see Claude William Kinder, “Railways and Coal Mines of North China,” Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 103 (1890):286. On silting see Li, “Zhijing kaiban kuangwu zhe,” 18 May 1881 (GX 7/4/ 21), in Wei Zichu, Diguozhuyi yu Kailuan meikuang (Zhongguo jindai jingjishi ziliao congkan) (Shanghai: Shenzhou, 1954), “Kaiping meikuang di sheli,” pp. 1–3.
36. In 1883 Li contacted two well-known silk merchants in Shanghai about financing a Beijing- Tianjin railway line. See Edward Le Fevour, Western Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China: A Selective Survey of Jardine, Matheson and Company's Operations, 1842–1895 (Cambridge: Harvard University East Asian Research Center, 1968), p. 73. On his repeated efforts to get official support for the Jin-Tong line see Li to Zongli Yamen, 3 Dec. 1886 (GX 12/11/8); Lei, Li nianpu, p. 337. See also Li Guoqi, Zaoqi tielu, pp.
57-58.
37. Hong Kong Telegraph, 23 Nov. 1889.
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Tang's own, and which were shared by others in Wang's network of friends and associates, including Wu Tingfang.
38
Given these high expectations for the Kaiping enterprise and its associated railway ventures, it must be judged a failure, but initially the situation appeared quite hopeful. The Sino-French War had resulted in a burst of activities bolstering China's maritime defenses. Prince Chun headed the new government agency in charge of these operations and worked with Li Hongzhang and his subordinates to upgrade and modernize defenses at Luda (Port Arthur) and Weihaiwei (Chefoo). Prince Chun saw the military importance of railways for transportation of troops and matériel and became an enthusiastic supporter of the project to extend the tiny line from the Kaiping mines to Tianjin.39
This led to a flurry of activity on the part of European and American businessmen, many of whom rushed to Tianjin and Beijing with one after another grandiose proposal to help China develop its mines, communications and defenses, and to of course enrich themselves in the process."
40
These two factors, Tang Tingshu's need to see a commercial railway as an aid to the Kaiping mining project and Prince Chun's interest in the military importance of rail communication, led to the formation in summer 1886 of the Kaiping Railway Company, Ltd. The leading figures in the Company were Wu Tingfang and Wu Nan'gao as co-directors. Wu Nan'gao (Wu Mouding or Woo Jim Pao), was the chief comprador for the Tianjin branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and closely associated with Tang Tingshu in the Kaiping mines as "resident director."41
38. Wang Tao's letter to Tang reprinted in Taoyuan chidu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), pp. 137–38. See also Paul A. Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity, pp. 193-96; Ma Jianzhong, “Tiedao lun,” in his Shikezhai jiyanjixing (Jindai Zhongguo shiliao congkan, vol. 16) (Shanghai, 1896; reprint, Taibei: Wenhai), 1:11a-19.
39. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 51–55. Prince Chun became a leading figure in the government in April 1884 with the dismissal of Prince Gong. See Li Guoqi, Zaoqi tielu, pp. 61–63. For a recent analysis of his power see Ding Mingnan, “Shijiu shiji liushi zhi jiushi niandai Qingchao tongzhi jituan zuigaoceng neibu douzheng gaishu,” Jindaishi yanjiu, 1982, no. 1: 166–
70.
40. On the concession hunters, see Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Jindaishi yanjiusuo, comp., Haifangdang (Taibei, 1957), Tielu bian, document nos. 1–3; Tyler Dennett, Americans in East Asia: A Critical Study of the Policy of the United States with Reference to China, Japan and Korea in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1922), pp. 579–99; Le Fevour, Western Enterprise, pp. 77–80. Commenting on the range of proposals, the British Consul in Tianjin wrote to his superiors in London that "what is passing through the mind of the Chinese statesmen may be imagined from the remark made to me by an intelligent Chinese official who said that if China would only wait a little, foreign capitalists would not only offer to lend capital for nothing but to pay interest into the bargain.” "Report on the Trade of Tientsin for the Year 1885,” encl. in Brenan to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 15 Apr. 1886, nos. 113–35, FO 17/1030. See also NCH, 3 Dec., 1884, p. 627; 14 Aug. 1885, pp. 188–89; 17 Feb. 1886, p. 170.
41. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” p. 56; Li Guoqi, Zaoqi tielu, pp. 110–11 n. 59; NCH, 9 July 1886; Kinder, “Railways and Coal Mines,” p. 288. On Wu Nan'gao see O. D. Rasmussen, Tientsin: An Illustrated Outline History (Tianjin: Tientsin Press, 1925), pp. 268–69. See also Morrison, Correspondence 1:95, 107–9.
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The Kaiping Railway Company was a bona fide commercial enterprise. Its charter was based on an up-to-date model supplied by the U.S. Minister to China, Charles Denby.42 Contracts for equipment and services were arranged by competitive bidding, with the German firm of Krupp winning the contract to supply the rails for the first part of the line. Although Jardine, Matheson thought the Germans won the bid because many Chinese officials were piqued at J. M.'s effort to take over the management of the Kaiping mines, it is also true that the Krupp bid was so low as to cause the British surprise.43
The Company's main problem was lack of capital. The Company initially issued 2,500 shares at Tls 100 each, for a total of Tls 250,000. Apparently these did not sell rapidly, for the Company faced an immediate cash flow problem. This was met by a loan from Zhou Fu (1837-1921). Zhou was a fellow provincial of Li Hongzhang's who had been closely associated with him since the campaigns against the Taiping rebels. He had served in various capacities under Li and was presently in the powerful position of Tianjin Customs Daotai. Zhou's loan was an indication of his deep involvement in the railway enterprise.
44
Zhou's loan brought the amount of capital up to £70,000, about half of which was used to purchase the small existing line and its rolling stock. The £36,000 left enabled work to start on the line as soon as the rails arrived from Germany in November 1886, and by spring 1887 the first section of the line, a twenty-one mile stretch to Lutai costing £34,000, was complete.a
45
Zhou Fu's loan was repaid by Wu's negotiating a loan from a German syndicate represented by the firm of Carlowitz and Company. This loan for Tls 439,000 or DM 5 million, carried a 5% interest rate, which was very good. This proved to be the first of four foreign loans needed to complete the line to Tianjin.46
Even before construction on the line had started, however, opposition appeared. In October, a military provincial candidate named Li Fuming, a native of a prefecture through which the railway was to pass, memorialized the Censorate to oppose the project, especially the much talked about
42. Dennett, Americans in East Asia, p. 598.
43. Rosenbaum, "China's First Railway," p. 58; Le Fevour, Western Enterprise, p. 81; Kinder, "Railways and Coal Mines,” p. 289; NCH, 23 July 1886. On Germany's aggressive commercial policies see Li to Zongli Yamen, 3 Dec. 1886 (GX 12/11/8), Li, Quanji, “Yishu han’gao,” 18:55–57. 44. On the difficulty raising capital, see Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway," p. 56; Li to Zongli Yamen, 3 Dec. 1886; “Tiaofu si shi,” 2 Feb. 1887 (GX 13/1/10), Li, Quanji, “Haijun han'gao,” 3:1– 3; reply to Prince Chun, 3 Jan. 1887 (GX 12/12/10), ibid., 2:26. See also Zhou Fu, Zhou Queshengong ziding nianpu (reprint, Taibei: Guangwen, 1971), pp. 22b–23a; Hong Kong Telegraph, 23 Sept. 1889. On Zhou Fu see Boorman, Biographical Dictionary 1:409–13.
45. National Review 10 (14 Oct. 1911): 280. For reports on the railway's construction see NCH, 1 and 8 Dec. 1886, 19 Jan., 16 Feb. 1887. (It is worth noting that the NCH carried detailed news about railway construction based on reports from the Chinese Times of Tianjin.)
46. NCH, 23 Feb. 1887. Although the Bank of England charged 3% for domestic British loans, 5% was the norm for British banks lending to foreign firms in China. Domestic Chinese loans ranged well over 10%, cf. Zhang Guohui, “Lun waiguo ziben dui yangwu qiye de daikuan,” Lishi yanjiu, 1982, no. 4: 63.
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extension of the line from Tianjin to Beijing. Li argued that the line should not be built, or if it must be built at least financed entirely by Chinese merchants. Li also charged that the Company had sold phony shares.47
In response to this development, Li Hongzhang refuted Li Fuming's charges, and he and Prince Chun memorialized early in 1887 supporting the plan to build the railway south to Tianjin and north to Shanhaiguan, but not mentioning the Tianjin-Tongzhou extension. They justified the railway enterprise on grounds of military necessity, and proposed that the Kaiping Railway Company be reorganized as the China Railway Company. This company was to be under "joint official-merchant management" (guanshang heban), with Wu Tingfang and Wu Nan'gao remaining as co-directors, and Zhou Fu and Shen Baojing added as official directors. Zhou's interest in the line was apparent, and from then on he assumed a leading role in the railway's affairs and his son Xuexi in those of the Kaiping mines. Shen Baojing had served as Financial Commissioner for Fujian Province before being demoted in 1885 as a consequence of the French bombardment of Fuzhou.48 Why was it necessary to use the guanshang heban format? One reason is that in view of the perceived military importance of the railway and to disarm critics such as Li Fuming, it was necessary to demonstrate that this was a state- sponsored project being carefully supervised by officials. The other important reason was that Tang Tingshu was not in a secure enough position to keep the railway in the private sector. Tang had been financially damaged in the financial panic and crash of 1883–84. Speculation in Kaiping stocks in fall 1883 had left the company in financial trouble. Tang had been forced to relinquish control of the CMSNC in 1885 to Sheng Xuanhuai at Li Hongzhang's insistence. Li was so angered by Tang's handling of the mine's affairs that he apparently intimated to Jardine, Matheson and Company's representatives that he would not be adverse to its taking over the management of the mine. Li subsequently backtracked from this position, but it is clear that Tang's financial difficulties weakened his bargaining power in dealing with Li.49
Arthur L. Rosenbaum's study of the early railway notes that Li Hongzhang was unable to be candid about its financial situation in his communications with the government. Although he knew that it would be impossible to rely entirely upon merchant capital to finance the line, he feared that honesty would not be rewarded with official permission to proceed.50
47. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” p. 58. Reprinted in Yangwu Yundong wenxian huibian, ed. Yang Jialuo et al. (Taibei: Shijie, 1963), 6:183-86.
48. Prince Chun and Li's memorial is reprinted as document no. 5, Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Haifangdang. Summarized by Li Guoqi, Zaoqi tielu, pp. 65–66. On Shen Baojing see Qian Shifu, Qingdai zhiguan nianbiao (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1980), 4:3164. On the guanshang heban format see Wellington Chan, Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise, pp. 85–106.
49. Zhang Guohui, Yangwu Yundong yu Zhongguo jindai qiye, pp. 184, 188; NCH, 24 Oct. 1883, p. 471. Le Fevour, Western Enterprise, pp. 79–80.
50. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 60–61.
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Official involvement in the railway company proved to be the kiss of death in any case as far as merchant investment was concerned. In April 1887 the company issued 10,000 shares of stock, with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank acting as the agent for their sale. In this way the company hoped to raise 1 million taels.51 Almost immediately, however, it was reported that Tianjin capitalists were wary of the project because of the official involvement, especially that of Zhou Fu, citing the past take-over of the CMSNC by Sheng Xuanhuai as evidence for the officials' disregard for merchant managers. If the merchants had control and if there were assurances "against being plundered," merchants said they would be happy to invest.52
Li Hongzhang wrote a proclamation which was posted throughout China's major cities declaring that the railway company, under Wu Tingfang's management, was to be run by a merchant board of directors strictly in accord with western business practices. Officials, declared Li, would not interfere with the managers' authority but only guard against malpractices. All to no avail: there was too much distrust.53
Wu was forced to resort to loans from foreign banking agencies once again. In 1887 a loan was negotiated with Jardine, Matheson for Tls 637,000 at 5% interest. In 1888 two more loans were negotiated, the first with Jardine, Matheson for Tls 150,000 at 5.5%, and the second with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation for Tls 134,000. Together with the earlier loan from the German syndicate, the four loans needed to construct the Tangshan-Tianjin line amounted to Tls 1,360,000.54
In all, few shares were sold. According to one source, by 1889 Tls 108,500 in shares had been sold, representing about 8% of the total capitalization of Tls 1,344,500. Wu later said that he had induced his friends to invest Tls 202,000 in the railway, but they “had never been able to get a dividend paid” for reasons that will be discussed shortly.55 In addition to Wu and Wu Nan'gao, another important investor was Yan Xinhou (Yan Yibin), a Zhejiang capitalist who played an important part in a number of early industrial projects, and a Cantonese merchant named Chen Chengde.56 What is clear, however, is that the commercial success of the railway venture hinged upon the Tianjin- Tongzhou extension, but even though Li Hongzhang supported this plan, he decided to wait until the line was constructed all the way to Tianjin before
51. NCH, 22 Apr. 1887, p. 1030. On merchant financing, see Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 66-68.
52. NCH, 29 Apr. 1887, p. 1031.
53. Ibid., 27 May, 10 June 1887; Smithers to Porter, 21 May 1887, U.S. Department of State, "Consular Dispatches: Tientsin,” M–92 (U.S. National Archives).
54. Zhang Guohui, “Lun waiguo ziben,” p. 62.
55. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” p. 72. Wu's statement is in Satow to Lansdowne, 2 Mar. 1904, FO 17/1636.
56. On Yan Xinhou see Wellington Chan, Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise, pp. 51–52; Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization, p. 21. Chen is the principal merchant mentioned in the petition to build the Jin-Tong Railway. See n. 62; Zhang Guohui, Yangwu Yundong yu Zhongguo jindai qiye, p. 264.
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proposing the extension, correctly perceiving that there would be strong opposition to it.5
57
Wu closely supervised the construction of the line to Tianjin, including the surveying, calling for bids, purchasing of land and laying of track. C. W. Kinder was hired as chief engineer for the project, and Wu hired two young American-educated engineers, Zhan Tianyou (Jeme Tien Yao, 1861-1919) and Guang Sunmou (Jingyang, or Kwong King Yang, b. 1863) to serve as Kinder's assistants. 58 He hired skilled Cantonese railway workers, many with experience in railway construction gained in the United States. He stayed with the workers and engineers as construction progressed, trouble-shooting when difficulties occurred, as they did between the Cantonese workers and locally recruited unskilled workers, between Chinese workers and foreign workers, and with farmers nettled at the way officials handled the purchase of their lands for the railway. 59
Wu's hard work and skill as a manager bore good results. In its first annual report in December 1887, the railway company's directors announced modest profits. From April to September, over Tls 22,864 had been earned from the transporting of coal, Tls 1,682 in the transporting of merchandise, and Tls 4,424 from passengers. As maintenance costs had amounted to a little over Tls 16,000 for the same period, this report was indeed encouraging. That the transport of coal was the main source of revenue for the railway was also born out in the next six-month report to the shareholders in July 1888. Because the rivers were frozen over in the winter and work in the mines slowed down, the company showed net earnings of Tls 14,698,826 and a profit of Tls 6,549 less than the previous six- month period. Still, the directors were able to propose that shareholders receive a 6% dividend. The entire 86.5 mile line from the Kaiping mines to Tianjin was completed by July 1888 with economy and efficiency, much to the surprise of many foreign observers and to the delight of Li Hongzhang and the investors.
From this point on, the railway project encountered severe-one might even say fatal-obstacles. Following the official "opening" of the line in October 1888, the principal shareholders petitioned Zhou Fu and Shen Baojing for permission to extend the railroad north to Shanhaiguan and
57. Li to Zhou Daotai [Fu], 30 Apr. 1887 (GX 13/4/8), Li, Quanji, “Dian’gao,” 8:14. 58. On Zhan Tianyou see Ling Hongxun, Zhan Tianyou xiansheng nianpu (Taibei: Zhongguo gongchengshi xuehui, 1961); Xu Ying, Li Xibi and Xu Qiheng, Zhan Tianyou (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1956); Boorman, Biographical Dictionary 1:12–15. On Guang Sunmou see Yang Jialuo, comp., Minguo mingren tujian (n.p., 1937), 2:65; Who's Who in China.... 4th ed. (Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 1931), pp. 211–12.
59. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 73–78; Li to Xu, 26 June 1887 (GX 13/5/6) and return, same date, in Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 8:21, 28; Kinder, “Railways and Coal Mines,” p. 285; Zhang Yinhuan, Sanzhou riji, 5:37b; “Report on the Trade of Tientsin for the Year 1882," FO 17/ 936; NCH, 17 and 24 June 1887.
60. In December the managing directors were: Yan Xinhou, Wu Tingfang, Wu Nan'gao and Wang Yunfang. Cf. NCH, 28 Dec. 1887. See ibid. for first year income and ibid., 21 July 1888 for next six-month figures.
61. Ibid., 4 Aug., 21 Sept., 19 Oct. 1888.
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west to Tongzhou. Li Hongzhang approved this plan and memorialized for its immediate implementation, suggesting that another foreign loan be obtained until enough merchant shares were purchased. Citing Chen Chengde and the other merchant investors, Li wrote that the construction costs could be rapidly repaid upon the completion of the line.62
Li's memorial gave rise to a great railway debate that lasted nearly a full year and resulted in a major defeat for Li's policies. During this period of time a great many criticisms were levied at Li, the railway he sponsored, and railway construction in general. The opposition was spearheaded by Weng Tonghe (1830-1904), President of the Board of Finance and the Guangxu Emperor's tutor, and Sun Jia'nai (1827-1909), Vice-President of the Board of War (Bing Bu). In the flood of memorials they and a host of other officials presented on the subject, the railway enterprise under Li was charged with taking farmlands out of production, moving graves, forcing farmers to move their houses, and resulting in economic dislocation for those involved in transport of grain and other goods to the capital. Also there was great concern that construction of a railway from the coast to the capital would make the Court vulnerable in case of military conflict with foreign nations.63
Li replied to these memorials with great vigor. He asserted that rather than result in loss of livelihood, the railway would stimulate the economy and create new jobs throughout the region. As to farmers being forced to leave land and houses and having their ancestors' graves disturbed, Li said that the farmers were being adequately recompensed for their trouble, and that only two complaints had been received about the company's handling of this matter. And he disputed the idea that the capital would be any more vulnerable because of the railway than it already had proven to be in past decades. In particular, Li made it very clear that abandoning this railway project would have dire consequences for the merchant investors. Without the Tianjin-Tongzhou line, the company would be unable to repay its debts, the stocks would become worthless, and merchants would lose confidence in the government.64
This great railway debate was finally resolved by a proposal made by Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909), Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, to reject the Tianjin-Tongzhou line and instead construct a North-South trunk line starting at Lugouqiao, in Beijing's western suburbs, and going all the way to Guangzhou via Wuhan. Zhang's proposal was accepted by the Court in August 1889, and he was appointed Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei so as to take charge of its implementation. An additional stipulation was added by the Court: the great trunk line was to be built without recourse to foreign loans.65
62. Memorial reprinted as document no. 12 in Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Haifangdang. NCH (9 Nov. 1888) listed the names of the principal shareholders as Chen Ch'eng-teh, Wu Kwang-tsi, Yueh Hien-t❜ang and Chih Teh-t'ang.
63. These memorials are summarized in Lei, Li nianpu, pp. 379–81. See also Wu Duo, “Jin-Tong tielu di zhengyi,” in Ziqiang Yundong (Taibei: Zhengzhong, 1956), pp. 135-89.
64. Ibid., pp. 379-81, 388–89.
65. Ibid., pp. 392–93, 398.
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Li Hongzhang, acutely skeptical about the prospects for developing the North-South line without foreign loans, as late as October 1889 was trying to persuade Zhang to first complete the Tianjin-Tongzhou line as one that could be completed rapidly and for which the financing arrangements had already been made, but it is clear that Li's political opponents were determined to take railway development out of his hands and to pursue it in ways they felt were more suitable.6
The hostile atmosphere surrounding the railway and the harsh scrutiny it was exposed to during this railway debate led to problems Wu encountered in spring 1889 regarding the railway. The first of these was an accident on the Tanggu-Tianjin portion of the line on 25 March in which over fifteen people were killed. Wu held a judicial inquiry and fixed the blame upon a foreign engineer and a station master who had given an improper signal. Wu arranged to pay for the burials of those killed and to recompense their relations, while altering procedures to guard against future tragedies of that type. Nonetheless, the timing was bad, given the anti-Li sentiment among many Chinese officials then considering the Tianjin-Tongzhou proposal. Li strongly reprimanded Wu and his assistants, a move viewed in the English- language press as a major setback for Wu.67
The second problem Wu encountered in spring 1889 was a major controversy that erupted over the company's construction of a bridge over the Bei He in Tianjin designed to facilitate transportation between the railway terminus at the north bank of the river and the foreign concessions on the south bank. Finding an appropriate site proved difficult. Initially Wu planned to construct the bridge at a site where the British Settlement and the French Concession met. Although Kinder thought this was a good site, the French Minister to China, P. Ristelheuber, objected that the bridge might impede French gunboats from reaching the concession should that measure be necessary. Unwilling to be embroiled with a controversy with France over this issue, Wu agreed to find a new site. Two subsequent locations were vetoed by local officials, one because it was feared there would not be adequate room for grain-carrying junks from the south, and one because salt-dryers objected.“
The site finally chosen led directly into the French Concession and turned out to be a poor choice. It was immediately opposed by Hu Yufen (d. 1906), the Daotai for the municipality of Tianjin. Located on a narrow curve in the river, it was subject to silting and flooding in the spring. As construction was underway in spring 1889 flooding occurred, necessitating partial blocking of the river while repairs were undertaken. Unfortunately this occurred just as
68
66. Ibid., p. 399.
67. NCH, 12 Apr. 1889; Hong Kong Telegraph, 23 Apr. 1889.
68. Kinder, “Railways and Coal Mines," pp. 294–95. The agreement between the Company (signed by Wu and Yan) and Ristelheuber in July 1887 is reprinted as appendix to Li Hongzhang's memorial of 30 July 1888 (GX 14/6/22), document no. 9, Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Haifangdang. On the search for alternative locations see NCH, 20 Apr. 1889.
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grain-laden boats from the south were entering the river from the Grand Canal carrying their cargo north. A fracas occurred, with the junkmasters claiming that they could not maneuver their vessels past the construction site. Although the railway company arranged to have the ships towed past the site, and although the company claimed that there was ample clearance, the Grain Commissioner, Liu Hanfang, joined Hu Yufen in demanding that the bridge be torn down. Li Hongzhang gave in and ordered the demolition of the bridge. The company refused to do it, so Li finally ordered the director of Tianjin's West Arsenal to demolish the bridge, which was done in May 1889.69
This episode was a terrible blow to the railway company and to Wu personally. First of all, the company lost £8,000 or Tls 40,000, not a small sum.70 More than the actual cost, however, were the ramifications in terms of the ability of the company to function autonomously. Wu was prevented from making a rational choice for the bridge's site because of pressure from the French and then for fear of arousing too much local opposition. Finally, in the face of the junkowners' opposition (reflecting their fear of economic displacement) and the opposition of two powerful officials, the Tianjin Daotai and the Grain Commissioner, Li did not strongly defend the company, partly because of the heat being generated by the national railroad debate.
The English-language press was quick to point out what a bad light the episode placed the railway company in. As the Hong Kong Telegraph noted, “it shows that the Board of Directors are mere puppets in the hands of others, that the traffic of the line may at any time be suppressed at the bidding of conspirators, and that the undertaking is like a house built on ice which is never secure against changes of weather." Surely Westerners exaggerated by ascribing the incident to the Chinese need to save “face,” but there is certainly a strong element of truth in the observation above, which Li himself recognized.
With the Imperial edict in August approving Zhang Zhidong's plan, the company was forced to stop work on the Tongzhou line and instead focus on the northern extension of the railroad towards Linxi and ultimately Shanhaiguan. The indefatigable Tang Tingshu began a trip south to promote the exploitation of the Linxi coal fields north of Tangshan in expectation of construction north, but it is difficult to see this as more than an effort to salvage something out of the mess. Similarly, Tang seems to have hoped that the Kaiping-Tianjin line could be expanded south to Shandong and the Yangzi Valley, and many rumors were generated about possible railway development through 1889. But there is no gainsaying that the cancellation of the Tianjin-Tongzhou line was a blow to the company's investors and
69. Li memorial of 30 July 1888; Li to Pan Junde, 9 May 1889 (GX 15/4/10), Li, Quanji, "Dian'gao," 11:17.
70. Kinder, “Railways and Coal Mines," p. 295.
71. Hong Kong Telegraph, 30 Apr. 1889.
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probably scared off many who might have been potential investors in it and other railway projects.72
In December 1889 Wu received word that his mother had died, and he left Tianjin for Hong Kong. He stayed away for three years, ostensively to observe the conventional mourning period following the death of one's parent. While not questioning the sincerity of his grief, I am sure that the setbacks described above also played a role in his lengthy absence from North China.73 The northern extension of the line had a different economic character from the earlier railway development. The Imperial Railway Company of North China was formed as a state-sponsored enterprise. There was little effort to involve merchants in the company's affairs. Initially, Li appointed Wu Nan'gao to take charge of the northern extension. The Court's plan was to construct the railway from Shanhaiguan into the Northeast (Manchuria) all the way to Hunchun at the far eastern tip of China, via Jilin (Kirin) and with a branch line south to Yingkou. Li estimated that the total project would cost Tls 30 million and suggested that the first part of the line be constructed before the furthermost parts, but Prince Chun wanted the entire line worked on as one project.7
74
Financing the line was a problem. Li finally obtained the Naval Yamen's permission to negotiate a large loan with Austrian bankers who had promised his son Jingfang a 4.5% interest rate, but subsequent negotiations fell through due to mishandling by Li's subordinate, Chen Jitong.75 Following the collapse of these negotiations, Li memorialized to assume the direct management of the Guandong line and negotiated with the Board of Finance for funding. According to the arrangement he worked out with the Board's President, Weng Tonghe, each province was to contribute Tls 800,000 in installments towards the railroad project, and initially the Board of Finance provided Li with Tls 1,200,000.76
The funding for the railway always seemed to be in jeopardy. The Board of Finance gave it grudgingly and the provinces seemingly did not contribute their portions. In 1893 the railway's funds were diverted to other causes, the first being a "loan" of Tls 2 million to the Board of Finance to use for preparations for the Empress Dowager's sixtieth birthday celebrations in 1894, and the second was the use of railway funds for flood control on the Yongding
72. Ibid., 24 Sept., 15 Oct. 1889. Li tried to get approval to split the responsibility for the Lu-Han line and take charge of the northern segment, from Lugouqiao to Zhengding, using Zhou Fu as director. See Lei, Li nianpu, pp. 390, 393.
73. Wu Zhiyong boshi aisi lu. Circumstantial evidence indicates that Wu planned a short stay in the South. The Hong Kong Telegraph of 31 Dec. 1889, noting his return to the Colony, wrote that he planned to spend New Year with friends and relatives in South China and would return to Tianjin in the spring.
74. Li to Prince Chun, 17 Apr. 1890 (GX 16/xun2/28), Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 12:16.
75. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,” pp. 98–106; Lei, Li nianpu, pp. 406, 419.
76. Li to Prince Qing, 21 Mar. 1891 (GX 17/2/12), Li, Quanji, “Haijun han'gao," 4:13–14.; Lei, Li nianpu, p. 420.
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River, urgently required so that the area surrounding the capital be in perfect order in time for Cixi's birthday." By 1894 it was necessary to take a Tls 200,000 loan from the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to proceed with work past Shanhaiguan.78
Meanwhile, the southern portion of the railway, from Tangshan to Tianjin, remained under the control of the China Railway Company, but the company's affairs deteriorated rapidly after the abandonment of the plan to build the Jin-Tong line. The leading figure in this phase of the railway was Zhang Yi (Zhang Yanmou). Zhang was from a family of hereditary bondservants of Prince Chun, and he used his relationship to the Prince in an effort to gain control of the Kaiping mines and the railway. Later under his inept management, the Kaiping mines passed into British hands. In the latter part of 1889 a power struggle had emerged between Zhang on the one hand, and Wu Tingfang, Wu Nan'gao and the other major investors on the other, for control of the southern portion of the line.79
The power struggle between Zhang Yi and Wu broke out in earnest with Tang Tingshu's death in October 1892. When Tang was alive, his deputy Wu Nan'gao represented his interests in the railway, but the latter was not powerful enough to deal with Zhang on his own. It is probably not a coincidence that Wu Tingfang was back up in Tianjin within two weeks of Tang's death.80
From the time of Wu's return all the way until the outbreak of the Sino- Japanese War in August 1894, the struggle for control of the railway continued, with Zhang Yi enlisting support from Li's relatives and Wu attempting to obtain Li's support against them.81
That this struggle reflected two different modes of management is clear. Wu viewed Zhang Yi as an inept manager and later blamed him for the loss of the Kaiping mines to Britain.82 In addition to the nepotistic practices
77. Li memorial, 30 June 1891 (GX 17/5/24), Li, Quanji, “Dianzou,” 12:7–9. On the diversion of funds for Cixi's birthday see Li to Prince Qing, 5 May 1893 (GX 19/3/20), ibid., “Dian’gao,” 14:30; Lei, Li nianpu, p. 448. On diversion of funds for the Yongding repairs, see Li to Zhou [Fu], 14 Nov. 1893 (GX 19/10/7), Li, Quanji, “Dian’gao,” 15:6; Lei, Li Nianpu, pp. 455, 457. On Cixi's birthday plans, see Shen Yunlong, “Cixi liuxun wanshou qingdian zhi sheme,” in his Jindai zhengzhi renwu shuping (Jindai Zhongguo shiliao congkan, vols. 2, 20) (Taibei: Wenhai, 1966), pp. 195–201. 78. On the loan see Zhang Guohui, “Lun waiguo ziben,” p. 62.
79. Rosenbaum, “China's First Railway,' pp. 107~10. On Zhang Yi see Wang Xi, Zhong-Ying Kaiping kuangquan jiaoshe (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1962), p. 40; Morrison, Correspondence 1:107–9; Wei Zichu, Diguozhuyi yu Kailuan meikuang, “Daoyan,” p. 6. 80. NCH, 4 Nov. 1892, dispatch of 22 Oct. from Tianjin, noted his return "at the Viceroy's request." Tang Tingshu died on 8 October.
81. NCH, 5 and 19 May, 2 June 1893. On 16 June the NCH reported that Zhang Jingqing (Li Hongzhang's grandson on the female side of the house) was director of the Imperial (northern segment) Railways, and Li Shutang (also a relation) its assistant director. For the Commercial (southern segment) Railway, Zhang Yi was director (as well as chief manager of the Kaiping Mines), and Wu Tingfang was assistant director general of both segments of the line, in order to "keep an eye on the economy of both departments."
82. In his eulogy of his friend Chen Aiting, who had served as managing director of the Kaiping mines from 1897 to 1899 after his long service as Qing Consul-General in Havana, Wu wrote to the
20
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indicated above and diversion of funds for non-productive purposes, the Guandong Railway exhibited many examples of officials siphoning off funds and became subject to the criticism of numerous censors in 1895.8
83
Wu was still engaged in his fight to take control of the Kaiping line when the Sino-Japanese War broke out, and with it the demise of Li Hongzhang's mufu. Eventually, Wu sold off his shares in the railway company at a loss and severed his connection with the railway entirely.
In some respects, railway development before the Sino-Japanese War under Li Hongzhang was a successful self-strengthening enterprise, as argued by Li Guoqi in his monograph on early railway construction in China. The Kaiping- Tianjin line was constructed with economy and efficiency, due in no small measure to Wu's good management. The foreign loans were at reasonable interest rates, free of the sorts of onerous conditions that characterized many foreign railway loans after the Sino-Japanese War, and were well used.84
From this point of view the railway enterprise was indeed successful, but as I have indicated in my discussion of Wu's experiences, the railways did not live up to their promise for the bourgeoisie, either in terms of their profitability or in terms of their role in the economic development of China.
To present the problem as simply a conflict between merchants and officials for control of modern enterprises does not tell the entire story. There was a vast difference between officials such as Wu and Zhou Fu, on the one hand, and Zhang Yi on the other. What the above suggests is that Wu, Zhou and the other investors represented the more enlightened practices of the modern bourgeoisie in their management of the railway. They had to contend with a host of problems confronting and ultimately defeating them. In part this opposition included bureaucrats hoping to exploit the new enterprise, but it also included vested interests in traditional modes of transportation represented by the junkmasters of Tianjin and their supporters among Li's subordinates. This opposition was compounded by fear of increased vulnerability to foreign attack that the improved communications between. the coast and the capital could bring. When one adds to this picture the pressures brought to bear by the French over the railway bridge in Tianjin, one can easily see how Wu and the investors he represented were squeezed from both sides. Dependent upon Li's patronage, Wu and the other modern managers were highly vulnerable and unable to function effectively under the guandu shangban structure. It is easy to see why Wu Tingfang left the railway enterprise depressed about the possibilities for economic transformation of China under existing circumstances.
NCH: "If he [Chen] had been in charge of the Mining Company during the Boxer trouble, I am sure Mr. Chang Yen-mow would not have been in the unpleasant predicament in which he finds himself today. Mr. Oi-ting [i.e., Chen] would have steered the mining ship clear of the dangerous rocks and brought her to haven in safety.” NCH, 25 Aug. 1905, p. 437.
83. See Edict to Wang Wenshao, 12 Dec. 1895 (GX 21/10/26), Qingji waijiao shiliao 118:34 84. Li Guoqi, Zaoqi tielu.
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Wu Tingfang, along with most of Qing officialdom, was profoundly shocked by the overwhelming defeat suffered by China in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894. Li Hongzhang's entire program of self-strengthening was exposed as inadequate, and the Qing Navy, to which Li had devoted so much care, was virtually destroyed. Wu's despair was increased by direct contact with the Japanese through negotiations he undertook for Li, first as attaché for an abortive peace mission and then as an assistant in the talks that resulted in the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
After the Japanese army took Luda (Port Arthur) in late November 1894, they responded to American mediation efforts by offering to meet with fully accredited Qing envoys. Ito Hirobumi and Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu (1844-97) were determined to avoid foreign involvement in the negotiations until after China had been forced to accept Japan's terms, and they did not expect negotiations to be successful at that time but made the offer for the sake of appearances.
85
In December 1894 the Qing Court appointed Zhang Yinhuan and Shao Youlian (d. 1901) as envoys. Zhang Yinhuan had become an important figure in the central government after his return from the United States in 1890 and was serving as Vice-President in the Board of Finance and Minister in the Zongli Yamen. Shao Youlian had most recently served as Governor of Hunan Province and briefly as Governor of Taiwan. He had a reputation as an expert on Russian affairs, having served as assistant to Chonghou in St. Petersburg in 1884.86
The appointment of Zhang and Shao was correctly interpreted by Mutsu as an indication that the Qing Court was only lukewarm in the peace mission's goals. In Mutsu's words, "the fact that China entrusted the vital task of peace negotiations to men like Chang [Zhang] and Shao led us to suspect that she had not yet frankly acknowledged her defeat to herself or become sufficiently sincere in her desire to terminate the hostilities."87 Li Hongzhang was engaged in lateral negotiations with the European powers for their intervention. Hence, the envoys' credentials empowered them to discuss but not to sign a treaty.
Ito and Mutsu were anxious to avoid revealing the Japanese peace terms before China had been forced to its knees for fear of provoking European intervention, and so they used the issue of the envoys' credentials to reject the Zhang-Shao mission.88 Before the mission had left Shanghai, its members
85. Mutsu Munemitsu, Kenkenroku: A Diplomatic Record of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–95, ed. and trans. with historical notes by Gordon Mark Berger (Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1982), pp. 146–51.
86. Zhang to Zongli Yamen, 9 Dec. 1894 (GX 20/11/13), Qingji waijiao shiliao 101:21; Li to Zongli Yamen, 5 Jan. 1895 (GX 20/12/10), Li, Quanji, “Dian’gao,” 19:32. On Shao Youlian see Qing shi liezhuan (Taibei: Zhonghua, 1962), 63:8–9a.
87. Mutsu, Kenkenroku, pp. 152–53.
88. Ibid., p. 153.
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were informed that Japan would find their credentials unacceptable, and that in particular, Japan found Shao Youlian unacceptable because when he had been Governor of Taiwan he had supposedly issued a proclamation offering rewards for the heads of captured Japanese soldiers. This was not the "sincerely repentant" attitude which Japan wanted China to exhibit.89
Ito and Mutsu not only refused to accept Zhang and Shao's credentials, but they also insulted them by forbidding them the right to send coded telegrams to the Qing Court on the grounds that Hiroshima (where they were meeting) was an important military site, and the envoys might take advantage of their diplomatic status to cable military intelligence to China. They refused to allow them to have the Court issue new credentials, and finally declared that the status of the envoys was too lowly and that only an envoy of the status of Prince Gong or Li Hongzhang would do.90
Although Wu expected the talks to fail, they were nonetheless a painful and humiliating experience for him. Ito and Mutsu constantly rebuked the Qing envoys as "very hazy about procedures in international law," and took every opportunity to denounce the ignorance and duplicity of the peace mission. Ito frequently appealed to Wu as an enlightened person who surely understood the weakness of China's position in international law. These asides to Wu must have embarrassed him, and how much further humiliated he must have been to see Ito's scornful laughter as Zhang and Shao, when all else had failed, humbly accept the Japanese rebukes and beg for mercy! Wu would not join in these humble apologetics but continued to maintain the propriety of their mission."1
When the abortive meeting broke up, Ito asked Wu to remain behind for a private talk in which he asked Wu why he had not seen to it that the envoys had proper credentials. Wu, who certainly understood that this issue was only a pretext to avoid negotiations at that time, could only reply that he had been in Tianjin and was not involved in the preparations for the mission. Ito then came to the point: unless China appointed an envoy of the status of Li Hongzhang or Prince Gong, China could expect Japan to occupy Beijing itself.92
Zhang and Shao sent Wu back once again to plead with Ito, but the Prime Minister was brusque and irritable, accusing the envoys and the Qing Court with insincerity. Wu stiffly denied this and said (once again) that any deficiency in the credentials could be easily rectified by cabled edict. Ito replied that
89. Ibid.; concerning the envoys' credentials see Qingji waijiao shiliao 103:3–4; Shanghai Daotai Shen to Li, 26 Dec. 1894 (GX 20/11/30) Li, Quanji, “Dian'gao,” 19:27. See also Charles Denby, China and Her People: Being the Observations, Reminiscences, and Conclusions of an American Diplomat (Boston: Page, 1906), 2:134–36.
90. Based on the Chinese version of the discussions, “Zhongguo gouhe shiji huitan jiyao,” in Zhong-Ri zhanzheng, ed. Zhongguo shixue hui (Shao Xunzheng et al.) (Shanghai: Xinzhishi, 1955), 7:75-89. See also Mutsu, Kenkenroku, pp. 154–58.
91. Ibid.
92. Zhang Yinhuan, memo to Zongli Yamen, 17 Feb. 1895 (GX 21/1/23), Qingji waijiao shiliao 106:15–18. See also Mutsu, Kenkenroku, pp. 160–63.
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such "irregular" procedures would only bring forth ridicule from the western powers. Japan had to take warning, said Ito, from the "cart ahead" and be very cautious in dealing with China, as when the Court's refusal to honor treaties signed with Britain and France in 1858 led to the foreign occupation of Beijing in 1860. China was acting, said Ito, as though it wanted to buy something without having the money. Wu replied that Japan had not announced the “price.” “We didn't know your intentions,” he stated. “Since they couldn't be kept a secret forever, why didn't you announce them earlier and allow us to resolve our differences." Ito only replied with an ominous harangue:
Your country has always viewed Japan as a small impoverished country, but you are really ignorant about us. Since the war began we have not had to borrow from foreign countries to meet our military expenses. Instead, we borrowed 100,000,000 yen from our own merchants, and can count on borrowing several tens of millions more. We have many times more military supplies on hand than you. Right now our forces are taking Weihaiwei. The military situation is taking a decisive turn, and you would do well to seek early peace talks.9
Ito was referring to the great naval battle of Weihaiwei. In this two-week battle, Japan delivered the coup de grace to the Qing Navy. It ended on 13 February following the suicides of Admiral Ding Ruchang and Zhang Wenxuan (Li Hongzhang's son-in-law), and with them the last hopes for Li and the Court.94
Wu seems to have felt Ito's scorn and ridicule very deeply and to have been angered by Japan's contemptuous treatment of the Zhang-Shao mission. In view of the utter failure of Li's modern army and navy, the entire self- strengthening program seemed miniscule and laughable indeed. And what of Wu's own role in these projects? Wu certainly must have reflected on his fate in comparison to that of Ito. Since they had both been students in London some twenty years ago, Ito had become the foremost architect of Japan's transformation and one of a handful of truly powerful people in that country. By contrast, Wu had spent fourteen years as Li's subordinate, performing tasks that must have seemed in hindsight ineffective, or at worst, meaningless.
Having no options left, Li left for Shimonoseki on 15 March, accompanied by Wu, Luo Fenglu, Ma Jianzhong and a large retinue for talks that were disastrous for China. The treaty that Li was forced to accept on 17 April gave Taiwan and southern Manchuria to Japan, called for an enormous indemnity of Tls 200 million and gave Japan the right to manufacture goods in China.
93. Based on the Chinese records, Zhang Yinhuan memo to Zongli Yamen, 17 Feb. 1895. 94. On the battle of Weihaiwei see Zhang Yinlin, "Jiawu Zhongguo haijun zhan jikao,” in Diyici Zhong- Ri zhanzheng (Taibei: Zhengzhong, 1957), pp. 269–77. See also John L. Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development, 1839–1895 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 188–90.
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The negotiations were marked by an attempt to assassinate Li Hongzhang and by continuous harping on Japan's successes in self-strengthening in contrast to China's abysmal failures.95
Li and his entourage returned to Tianjin in disgrace. Unwilling to face the Court, Li sent the draft treaty to Beijing with John W. Foster (1836–1917), an American statesman who served (ineffectually) as an adviser both to the Zhang-Shao mission and later to the Chinese delegation at the Shimonoseki talks. At the last minute Wu too found his courage wanting and declined to accompany Foster as his interpreter, explaining to him that the feeling against Li was so strong that it would “prejudice” the presentation of the treaty to the Court if Wu, Li's secretary, were to be his interpreter.
96
Although the Tripartite Intervention of 23 April forced Japan to relinquish its claim to southern Manchuria, Taiwan was lost to Japan. On 3 May Wu and Lianfang, a Manchu expert on Russian and French affairs who was on Li's staff, were appointed plenipotentiaries to the exchange of treaties ceremony at Yentai. Last ditch efforts to reopen negotiations over Taiwan failed, and the exchange of treaties took place on 8 May. Taiwan was transferred formally on 2 June. These events ended what was a most dismal episode in Wu's life and his nation's history,97
After reporting the exchange of treaties to the Throne, Wu returned to Tianjin. Li's satrapy was in disarray and Li was repeatedly denounced by censors demanding that he be punished. Ever since the outbreak of the war there had been a steady flight of underlings from Li's mufu in search of new patrons. Wu's personal code of honor would not permit him to abandon Li and he steadfastly defended Li to his critics.98
But Wu's loyalty to Li was not without its toll. In July 1895 he unburdened his soul to H. B. Bristow, British Consul in Tianjin, in a long (and for Bristow somewhat shocking) diatribe against Li and what he symbolized to Wu. Wu asked Bristow, who was complaining against the pro-Russian policies towards which the Court was now tending, if there was any hope of China reforming. Bristow said, “no hope whatever,” and Wu replied that he agreed completely with him, and that therefore "Foreign Powers should unite and force China to reform." When Bristow noted that this would lead to "the extinction of China as a nation," Wu replied with great pessimism: "I do not care.
+
95. My summary is based on the Chinese-language records in Cai Erkang, “Zhong-Dong zhanji benmo," in Zhong-Ri zhanzheng 5:351–437. See also Wang Xinzhong, “Zhong-Ri Maguan yihe,” in Diyici Zhong-Ri zhanzheng, pp. 278–315; Mutsu, Kenkenroku, pp. 164–202.
96. On Foster see Dictionary of American Biography 3: 551–52. On his pro-Japanese bias see Huang Jiamo, Meiguo yu Taiwan: Yiqibasi zhi yibajiuwu (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1966), pp. 413–22. On Li and Wu's refusal to go to Beijing see John W. Foster, Diplomatic Memoirs (Boston: Houghton, 1909), 2:148–49; Lei, Li nianpu, p. 514.
97. Shilu, 3 May 1895 (GX 21/4/9); Li to Zongli Yamen, 9 May 1895 (GX 21/4/14), Qingji waijiao shiliao 111:24; Wu to Zongli Yamen, same date, ibid., 111:25–26. On Lianfang see Lei, Li nianpu, p. 357.
98. Fu Bingchang, Fangwen jilu, p. 63b.
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Anything is better than this. I would infinitely rather see China a second India than that she should go on as she is, disgraced, powerless and with no hope of amendment.” To Bristow's comment that British public opinion admired Japan as a “plucky little boy who boldly attacks a big one" and felt disgust "at the pusillanimity of the Chinese," Wu responded with an outburst against the ministers of the Zongli Yamen as a set of “old women” who had not even known where Burma (Myanmar) was when they had "given [it] away." He said that when Li had returned from Shimonoseki he had urged him to go to Beijing and face his enemies directly, but Li had refused to go out of fear of making himself “too cheap.” Bristow readily agreed and said that Li's refusal to go to Beijing when so much was at stake was “typical,” for "everything in China must be sacrificed to ‘face.”” “Perish China but save my 'face'!", Bristow exclaimed, “and the man who says this is the greatest man in China. What hope is there for the country?" To which Wu replied, "Well, that is China, as you know. Why do not foreign nations compel her to reform?"99
This extraordinary exchange indicates the depth of Wu's despair as well as his cultural marginality. Loyal to Li in a Chinese context, he expressed his true feelings to an Englishman. As Ito had recognized, Wu's background and education set him apart from the milieu in which he operated. Like Bristow, he too could feel disgust at China's performance and by Li's "cowardice" (as well as his own) in refusing to go to Beijing. Like other westernized Chinese in Hong Kong at the same time, Wu thought China needed more western influence in order to reform, even if that meant outright colonization, paradoxical as that seems.100
Roads to Reform
Depressing as the war was to Wu, it proved to be the major turning point in his career as a Qing official. The reform movement that quickly emerged at a national level following the military debacle provided a framework for Wu's advancement and eventual entrance into the diplomatic corps. His close association with Li Hongzhang made possible his rise in status.
Upon returning to Tianjin after reporting the exchange of ratified treaties at Yentai, Wu continued as Li's assistant. Wu's main work in the summer of 1895 was negotiating the terms for a new German concession in Tianjin. These arrangements were completed by October 1895.101
99. Bristow to O'Connor, 19 July 1895, nos.218–22, FO 17/1237. I am grateful to Arthur L. Rosenbaum for first calling my attention to this document.
100. Edward J. M. Rhoads, China's Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895–1913 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 42.
101. Bristow to O'Connor, 24 July 1895 (confidential no. 47), encl. in O'Connor to Salisbury, 30 July 1895, nos. 197–99, FO 17/1237; Guo Tingyi, Jindai Zhongguo shishi rizhi (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 1963), 2:936.
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While working on these negotiations, Wu was also meeting with Sheng Xuanhuai to plan a new style school in Tianjin. Sheng, appointed Customs Daotai for Tianjin in 1892, was a powerful figure in Li's administration. By early September Sheng petitioned Wang Wenshao, who had been appointed to Li's posts as Governor-General of Zhili and Superintendent of Trade for the Northern Ports, to establish a “Sino-Western Academy” in Tianjin with Wu Tingfang as its director, Cai Shaoji as Wu's assistant, and with Charles D. Tenney as chief instructor. This school was later known as the Beiyang College and sometimes as the Tianjin Technical College.102
During the summer of 1895, Li Hongzhang had been subject to a variety of criticisms by officials who felt that he should be dismissed from his posts and censored for his handling of the Shimonoseki negotiations. These criticisms reached a peak on 28 August when sixty-eight officials memorialized the Emperor to dismiss Li. On the same day, Li was ordered to come to Beijing where, in audience with the Emperor, the latter upbraided him for mishandling the negotiations with Japan. Li stayed in Beijing and by mid- October was ordered to take charge of negotiations with Baron Hayashi, the Japanese Minister to China, for the retrocession of Liaodong. 103
In Beijing with Li Hongzhang and accompanying him in his meetings with the Zongli Yamen ministers about the negotiations with Japan, Wu drafted a detailed letter to three high officials proposing a number of reforms.104 The officials were Li Hongzao (1820–97), Weng Tonghe and Zhang Yinhuan. All three were at that time ministers in the Zongli Yamen. Li was a venerable statesman who had been influential in the Court before 1884 and again in the aftermath of the war. Weng, while a major foe of Li Hongzhang, was nonetheless an energetic promoter of young reformers after 1894. He had known about Wu since 1880 and later supported some of Wu's proposals. In particular, Weng was close to Zhang Yinhuan during this period, and Zhang became Wu's patron.'
105
Wu's letter presented a nine-point program for reforms couched in reasonable terms designed to appeal to officials deeply convinced of China's need to reform. Wu's major focus was on the need to elevate the status of foreign affairs experts and to reform the examination system so as to permit
102. Guo Tingyi, Shishi rizhi 2:931, 932; Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization, p. 69; NCH, 11 Dec. 1896, p. 999.
103. Lei, Li nianpu, pp. 534, 536.
104. Wu Tingfang, “Shang shufu shu," in Huangchao xu’ai wenbian (n.p., 1902; reprint, Taibei: Xuesheng, 1965), 3:4b-9. On Wu's official rounds with Li Hongzhang see Li Zongtong and Liu Fenghan, Li Hongzao xiansheng nianpu (Taibei: Shangwu, 1969), 2:737.
199
105. On Li Hongzao see Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644–1912) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943–44), pp. 861–62. On Weng's support for reformers see Ho Ping-ti [He Bingdi] "Weng T'ung-ho and the ‘One Hundred Days of Reform,' Far Eastern Quarterly 10 (1950–51): 125–35; Hsiao Kung-ch'uan, “Weng T’ung-ho and the Reform Movement of 1898,” Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s., 1 (1957): 111–243. For information on Weng and Zhang's close relations during this time see Jin Liang, comp., Jinshi renwu zhi (1934; reprint, Taibei: Guomin, 1955), pp. 298–99.
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foreign-trained persons easier entrance into the bureaucracy. Because of the prevailing ignorance of foreign matters (yangwu) among most Qing officials, Wu felt that China had repeatedly been worsted in negotiations and had been unable to accomplish its goals of self-strengthening. The Emperor should issue an edict, Wu proposed, directing all officials to treat the study of foreign affairs with seriousness and respect, and to seek out those with experience in foreign affairs and put their talents to immediate use by bypassing the normal mechanisms for recruitment and promotion. But Wu was careful to distinguish between valid experts and the stereotypical “menials” of foreign firms towards whom contempt was frequently expressed, warning: "if we use men who were once employed as menials in foreign firms, they will merely know a little of foreign languages without understanding the fundamentals; hence, they will be the object of foreign ridicule.”106
Next to the study of foreign matters, Wu emphasized military reforms, including naval development and use of foreign military advisers to teach strategy. He scored Qing officers as arrogant, ignorant and stubborn.
Wu's third point was to exploit differences and rivalries among the foreign powers in an updated version of the ancient "using barbarians to control barbarians" tactic. More specifically, he advocated forming secret alliances with Great Britain, Germany and the United States in order to control the greater danger posed by Japan, Russia and France. But he emphasized that there were mere devices and could not be substituted for basic reforms.
Wu's remaining six points were specific proposals for self-strengthening projects. Echoing his earlier ridicule of the Zongli Yamen for its geographical ignorance, he devoted an entire point to the need for accurate mapping of the Empire and for obtaining accurate maps of all the foreign nations. In other points he considered the importance of an extensive railway system, the desirability of a modern postal system, revision of the tariff system to end the limit of 5% ad valorem that had been imposed in all of the unequal treaties, implementing a stamp tax to raise revenues for the new projects, and finally, encouraging the development of private Chinese banking to aid in merchant investment in self-strengthening projects while reducing the power and influence of foreign banks in China.107
Although Wu's proposals were similar to those being discussed in many letters and memorials at that time, his letter was distinct in taking as its main theme the need to elevate foreign affairs experts. Given his long experience as one such expert under Li, this gave his letter a certain personal stamp as well as a certain authority. Although a number of Li's subordinates had been, or were about to be, criticized for corrupt practices, Wu escaped such condemnation. His record was “clean” in that regard, and he was spoken highly of by a number of Chinese and European figures.108
106. Wu Tingfang, "Shang shufu shu."
107. Ibid.
108. Including Russian minister Cassini. See Jin Liang, Jinshi renwu zhi, p. 265.
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Although the tone and the context differed, it is worth noting that there was a basic consistency between the views expressed in Wu's letter to Li, Weng and Zhang and those expressed in his outburst to Bristow a few months earlier. In both cases, Wu felt China should reform along British patterns of development. More significantly, Wu's letter advocated an alliance with Britain directed at the latter's principal rival Russia, which Wu saw as in league with Japan to take over chunks of Chinese territory. This view was remarkable in view of the strong feeling among most high officials in favor of alliance with Russia against Japan. Even reformers such as Liang Qichao declared in 1895 that "those who speak of alliance with Russia should also speak of Poland; those who speak of alliance with England should also speak of India." Thus Wu's pro-British stance set him apart from the dominant trend in Chinese foreign policy at that time.109
In February 1896 Li Hongzhang was ordered by Cixi to represent the Qing Emperor at the coronation of Czar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg. Li did not return to China until October 1896, and during his stay in Russia he negotiated a secret treaty that provided for Russian assistance to develop railways and fortify Chinese defenses in the Northeast against Japan.
In Li's absence, Zhang Yinhuan was appointed to succeed Li in the talks with Japan for a new commercial treaty, as had been called for in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and Wu served as Zhang's principal secretary in these negotiations. There was wide agreement that these were thankless negotiations. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, Japan had secured the right to construct and operate factories on Chinese soil, as well as to establish Japanese concessions in the treaty ports. In a supplemental treaty of inland navigation, Japan obtained rights to conduct trade through the interior of China. In these various agreements, Japan succeeded in obtaining status equivalent to that of the European powers in China and indicated its intention to expand its economic activities in China.
The negotiations with Baron Hayashi were difficult. He refused to yield to Zhang and Wu's desire to add clauses granting reciprocal rights for Chinese subjects residing in Japan. But the major issue over which they were stalemated for some time was over whether or not China could levy import duties on Japanese goods manufactured in China. Finally Hayashi agreed that China could do so, with the understanding that these goods would then be exempt from local transit taxes, or lijin. The treaty was finally signed by Zhang Yinhuan on 21 July 1896.110
On 23 November 1896 Wu was appointed Minister to the United States, Spain and Peru upon Li Hongzhang's recommendation. On the same day, Li's
109. Cited in Wang Shuhuai, Wairen yu Wuxu Bianfa (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Jindaishi yangjiusuo, 1965), pp. 157–58.
110. The reports on the negotiations and the treaty materials are in Qingji waijiao shiliao 120:3–6; 121:18–40, 122:1–17; J. V. A. MacMurray, Treaties and Agreements with or Concerning China, 1894– 1919 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1921), 1:68–74; 91–92.
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protégé Luo Fenglu was appointed Minister to Great Britain, Italy and Belgium, Huang Zunxian to Germany, and Yang Ru to Russia, Holland and Austria.111
This marked the first time that foreign-trained Chinese were appointed to high ranking diplomatic posts. A little over a year since his pessimistic outburst to Bristow, Wu was experiencing a gratifying rise in fortune and recognition of his talents. With the development of the national level reform movement, Wu began to develop a more optimistic view of the possibilities for reform.
Wu's newly found optimism developed in the same crucible of despair that had given rise to anti-dynastic nationalism. Wu's relationship with his brother-in-law He Qi illustrates the divergence of these two paths. He Qi was also deeply affected by the war and was providing clandestine support for the Revive China Society (Xing Zhong Hui) in Hong Kong led by his former student at the Hong Kong Medical College, Sun Yixian. He Qi, his brother He Shantian and other overseas Chinese also began to show considerable interest in officially sponsored self-strengthening enterprises immediately after the war. 112
Upon Wu's urging, He Qi left his post on the Hong Kong Legislative Council with a six-month leave of absence, much as Wu had done earlier in 1882. At first it was reported that He would serve as Councillor of Legation under Wu in Washington, D.C., but then Wu arranged for He to serve as adviser and secretary for foreign affairs under Sheng Xuanhuai, who had recently been appointed as Director-General of Railways and given charge of directing the great trunk line from Beijing to Guangzhou that Zhang Zhidong had initially proposed. Sheng had received support at the highest levels for his plans. Based in Shanghai, He Qi's job would be to attract funds from Chinese capitalists for the railway and Sheng's banking projects. (Wu's relationship with Sheng on these projects will be discussed in subsequent chapters.)113
He Qi enthusiastically departed for Shanghai amidst great ceremony. Three weeks later, however, he was back in Hong Kong, having resigned from his post under Sheng in disgust at the corruption he observed. The corrupt activities, he felt, made “honour and honesty” impossible for an official, concluding:
the fortunate and less scrupulous among them amass fabulous wealth, while those endowed with a little more conscience have to be content
111. Edict, 23 Nov. 1896 (GX 22/10/19), Shilu 396:3602. For the rumor, unconfirmed by any official documents, that Wu and Luo were switched because Wu had been born in Singapore, see Shi Zhizhi [Alfred Sze], Shi Zhizhu xiansheng zaonian huiyilu (Taibei, 1954), pp. 12-13.
112. Rhoads, China's Republican Revolution, pp. 38–42. On overseas Chinese interest in investment see Qingji waijiao shiliao 119:21; NCH, 10 Jan., 7 Feb., 27 Mar., 12 June, 24 July, 28 Aug., 30 Oct. 1896.
113 Guo Tingyi, Shishi rizhi, pp. 959, 960–61, 962; Sheng to Wu, 12 Feb. 1897 (Gx 23/1/11); Wu to Sheng, 27 Feb. 1897 (GX 23/1/26), in Sheng Xuanhuai, Yuzhai cun'gao (Shanghai, 1939; reprint, Taibei: Wenhai, 1963), 91:3, 6, 7.
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with a mere competency, and the upright mandarin, if such has an existence, is forced to retire after a short experimental career.114
Wu had obviously lost his scruples a long time ago, and from then on the views between him and He Qi became more and more divergent. Wu remained committed to the existing dynasty and its elite, and even when it failed to meet his expectations, as it did repeatedly in the years to come, he did not seriously consider revolution as a viable alternative.
From Wu's vantage point early in 1897, things looked promising indeed. He arrived in Hong Kong en route to Washington and was hailed by the same Chinese leaders who had utterly rejected him fifteen years ago. At an official banquet held in his honor, the Governor of Hong Kong applauded him, as a leading Chinese toasted Wu by comparing him to Ito Hirobumi, declaring, “I do not see any reason why you should not . . . become some day the Premier of China."115 In one sense, Wu had already arrived.
(New
114. Lord Charles Beresford, The Breakup of China: With an Account of Its Present Commerce. . York: Harper, 1899), p. 226. See also Fu Bingchang, Fangwen jilu, pp. 11b–12. 115. Hong Kong Weekly Press and Overland Trade Report, 11 Mar. 1897. Wu's address to the banquet is reprinted in part in Huazi Ribao, 10 Mar. 1897.
4
Promise and Disappointment in America
1897-1902
Eighteen Ninety-eight
Wu's stay in America coincided with events of tremendous import for China. The dramatic rise of the reform movement, its sudden collapse and the Court's support of the Boxer movement resulted in foreign invasion and the prospect of the Empire's breakup into several colonial spheres. Although Wu's term of office was three years, these events forced him to stay on in Washington, D.C., until summer 1902.
Wu began his stay in America with considerable expectations that he would be able to effectively improve China's international position. In part Wu's expectations derived from his self-confidence as a diplomat and his faith in his counterparts in the western world. His background was well suited to the world of diplomacy. In contrast to his predecessors in Washington, Wu had impressive command of English. His public speeches reveal fluency and sensitivity to nuance. As an American magazine noted in 1900, Wu was “more than a match for the wiliest reporter."1 Moreover, Wu viewed his training as a barrister as a great asset. Attention to fine points and details, fluency in debate and ease in devising tactics to win a case were all qualities of enormous value to a diplomat.2 The professional elitism of the diplomat was well suited to Wu's temperament and outlook. In later years he was fond of telling his nephew, Fu Bingchang: "A first-rate diplomat can find a solution before the problem has arisen; a second-rate diplomat can find a solution after a problem has arisen; but a person who can do neither is simply not a diplomat.” This statement accurately sums up Wu's conviction that any problem was capable of resolution by professional diplomats.
1. "His Excellency Wu Ting-fang," World's Work 1 (Dec. 1900): 177.
2. Wu's own analogy. See New York Times (hereafter cited as NYT), 16 Dec. 1900, p. 2.
3. Fu Bingchang, Fangwen jilu, pp. 19b–21.'
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Wu's hopes for the future were also pinned to the reform movement in China. The Kiaochow Incident of November 1897 and the scramble for concessions that followed proved a powerful stimulus to the reform movement. Deeply affected by the crisis, the Guangxu Emperor issued an edict on 17 December exhorting all officials, whether of high status or low, to present their plans for reform, especially plans for military regeneration.* Wu responded immediately by drafting several memorials for the Court's appraisal. Wu's most important memorial dealt with the missionary crisis, and its contents reveal to us his outlook on the world situation and something of his expectations for the future.5 In this memorial, Wu contrasted the missionary enterprise with western commerce. One of China's gravest errors, he said, had been the signing of treaties that permitted missionaries to travel freely in the interior while restricting western businessmen to the treaty ports. Wu's opposition to the missionaries was expressed in rationalist terms. While the historical trend in the West itself was towards secularism and skepticism, the missionaries who came to China were, in his view, religious fanatics. They disrupted the social order by stirring up gullible converts to a fever pitch of religiosity. Wherever the missionaries penetrated, their converts subverted the populace and resisted local authorities, arousing the righteous indignation of the masses who then directed their anger at the missionaries in spontaneous, unpredictable outbursts.
The key to preventing the incidents, in Wu's view, was to end the system of extraterritoriality. Foreigners defended the system with two arguments: first, since merchants and other foreigners were restricted to the treaty ports and foreign concessions, they should be subject only to the authority of their own consuls; second, by western standards Chinese legal punishments were too severe and foreigners would not willingly submit to them.
Wu felt that both these objections could be dealt with reasonably, following the example set by Japan in renegotiating its treaties with the western powers. Wu's first suggestion was that the Zongli Yamen make public all existing commercial agreements with the various foreign nations and then adopt a uniform standard for commercial relations with all nations. This proposal would have forced the Court to make public the secret arrangements that Li Hongzhang had concluded with Russia the year before and would prevent other nations—such as Germany-from pressuring the Court for similar secret concessions.
After this step, which was directed against the Russian presence in Manchuria and North China, Wu then proposed that the Court announce the opening of all China to trade and residence of every foreign nation on an equal basis, according to a pre-arranged timetable. Such a step would end the necessity for treaty ports and foreign concessions, and it should be possible
4. Edict of 17 Dec. 1897 (GX 23/111/24), reprinted in Wuxu Bianfa 2:6–7.
5. Wu Tingfang, “Jiaoan diqi neizhi wuquan. . . .” 10 Feb. 1898 (GX 24/1/20), Qingji waijiao shiliao 129:13-16.
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to do away with them completely in one or two decades. Pointing to the recent war in which treaty ports and concessions were neutral and thus spared from hostilities, Wu suggested that the new policy would reduce the danger of war among the powers in China. Again citing the example of Japan, he stated that in actuality the Court stood little to lose by this gesture, for most foreign merchants would remain in the coastal cities rather than venture into the interior, where poor transportation made trade uncertain and unprofitable. Wu was confident that the foreign nations would respond favorably to the plan and see in it the Court's determination to turn over a new leaf and dedicate itself to modernization.
For Wu, opening China to foreign commerce was more than a mere tactic to control missionaries. He saw the development of international trade as a prerequisite for China's progress. Provided that China's new treaties with the western powers follow Japan's in granting the Court the right to levy protective tariffs, Wu felt that foreign trade was a potential stimulus to the domestic economy. On the importance of commerce in nation building, he wrote:
In studying the various western nations, whether their governing principles date one hundred, several hundred or a thousand years back, commerce is always the basis upon which the nation is established. I have never heard of commerce ruining a nation or of a nation being seized in its name.6
In presenting the western missionary enterprise as out of step and reactionary in a western context, Wu was proposing "commerce” as a progressive alternative. By opening China to western commerce, the nation was to be opened to the most enlightened influences in the western world itself. In Wu's schema, the Christian missionaries were equated with indigenous heterodox religions as emotionalist, while commerce was equated with the rationalist orthodoxy in China and viewed as a progressive force in history. While Christian missionaries were seen as socially disruptive, Wu envisaged commerce as potentially beneficial to the people and a universal basis of nation building; hence, a new basis for social stability.
In addition to opening the nation to western commerce, Wu also proposed dealing with Westerners' objections to the severity of Chinese law. He reminded the Court that the Qing code itself was the product of many centuries and reflected the necessities of differing historical circumstances. He conceded that it would be undesirable to impose western standards upon the Chinese codes in an arbitrary fashion, but he felt that a compromise solution could be negotiated together with western authorities in China. If China were to reexamine its codes and reduce the severity of punishments in each category of criminal behavior, western jurists in China might also provide stiffer sentences in their courts, thereby minimizing the vast discrepancies between the two legal systems in practice.
6. Ibid.,
p.
15.
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As the first step, Wu resurrected the 1877 proposal for the establishment of a commercial code based upon western law. Again he expressed his conviction that this modest, almost symbolic beginning would be viewed by the western powers as evidence of the Court's dedication to major legal reforms, with the result that a new era in Sino-Western relations would be ushered in and China would assume its rightful place as an equal nation.
Wu's memorial was marked by his pragmatism. The core of the missionary problem lay in the loss of sovereignty, and every other issue diminished in significance next to that situation. If law reforms were necessary in order to abolish extraterritoriality, then law reform it would be. The pragmatism embodied in Wu's approach enabled him to circumvent every issue of principle other than the central one of sovereignty. Wu thus dispensed with problems such as the intrinsic merits or defects in the Qing code, the symbolic nature of punishments, the role of law in upholding the traditional social order, or any other knotty issue implied by legal reform.
Wu's memorial also illustrates his profound absorption of British standards and values. The opening of China to international trade was in part a stratagem to cope with the menace posed by Russia and its new ally in China, Germany. At the same time that Britain was beginning to sound out the United States about the possibility of maintaining an "open door" in China to halt the trend towards the disintegration of the Empire into rival spheres of influence, Wu was proposing that the Court seize that very initiative and do so itself. In this respect Wu saw Britain and China in harmony against the threat posed by Russian policies.
More significantly, Wu was expressing the nineteenth-century British conviction that laissez-faire economic policies, in which free rein is given to a vigorous merchantry, constituted the basis of Britain's rise to power and the major source of its wealth. Wu's outlook was characterized by his conviction that British-style imperialism, seeking trade but rejecting territorial acquisitions in China, would contribute to China's economic development. With the precedent of Hong Kong's expansion through Sino-Western commerce in mind, Wu assumed that China's economy would likewise expand through increased trade as Chinese merchants and shippers would develop the capital necessary for industrialization.
Implicit in Wu's outlook was the assumption that relations between China and western imperialism were fundamentally compatible. This assumption led him to minimize the disruptive effects of imperialism in China. In discussing China's situation, he asked why it was that a tiny European nation like Switzerland was able to maintain its independence in the midst of powerful neighbors, while enormous China should be subject to repeated aggression. Wu's explanation was in the “natural human feelings" of curiosity and jealousy in facing a deep, dark mystery. Since nations like Switzerland had opened themselves to foreign commerce, they had nothing to fear. Hence China's solution lay in opening up the nation and dispelling the mystery. Although other nationalists a few years hence would see western imperialism as the product of external forces of enormous magnitude, such as nationalism or
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finance capital, Wu was able to dispense with the problem, in effect, by discussing it in these psychological terms.
The assumption that Sino-Western relations were fundamentally harmonious also led Wu to minimize the profound differences between China and the western world. This tendency is reflected in Wu's pragmatic approach to legal reforms, with his conviction that great discrepancies in the two legal systems could be minimized in practice, as it is also to be found in his implicit linking of Confucian rationalism with the progressive forces of "commerce" in the West.
Wu's memorial is also noteworthy in its assumption that the progressive forces of "commerce" in the West outweigh the reactionary ones symbolized by the missionaries. Wu's assumptions of Sino-Western harmony led him to the view that in the western world there was a group of rational, pragmatic policy makers who were the counterparts to China's rational, pragmatic elite. As men of the same stripe, they should all be willing to negotiate their differences on a basis of equality and mutual trust. All China had to do, in effect, was to evince its determination to turn over a new leaf by symbolic declarations calling for law reform and the opening of China to international commerce. Wu's enlightened counterparts would then be ready, so he believed, to negotiate the abolition of their privileged status in China. Patience and flexibility could, it seems, solve almost any problem. Wu's memorial on the missionary problem expressed his deeply held conviction that negotiation by skilled diplomats such as himself would meet with a positive response from his western counterparts, and that a new era of equality in Sino-Western relations would soon be forthcoming.
Yet the key to the solution lay in Beijing and the reform movement among high officials. Wu's memorial was carefully considered. In spite of its far- reaching implications, the immediate changes proposed in the memorial were quite moderate. If only one or two provinces such as Guangdong or Jiangsu were at first opened to international trade, probably little change would immediately result. Likewise, in the case of legal reforms, the project to establish a commercial code was least disruptive to the entire corpus of Qing law, for it was one for which the traditional code was clearly least adaptable.
At a meeting of the Zongli Yamen on 25 March 1898, Weng Tonghe proposed that China follow Wu's plan by voluntarily opening its major ports to all nations on an equal basis and providing naval facilities to accommodate foreign shipping. In turn, China could then bargain with the foreign powers and obtain their pledges to respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. This plan was especially attractive in view of Great Britain's decision in February 1898 to demand control over Weihaiwei. After a fierce debate, however, Weng's proposal was dropped and the pro-Russian policy of the Court continued to hold sway. For the time being at least, Wu's views on foreign policy would not be implemented, but at least they were being listened to."
7. Guo Tingyi, Shishi rizhi 2:994.
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On 25 April Wu was ordered to proceed with the project to establish a commercial code. He was to take charge of the investigation of the various western and Japanese codes, to compile the composite code based on the best features of each and to present his proposals to the Zongli Yamen for its consideration. At last, the plan first proposed for Wu by Li Hongzhang in 1877 was supported by the Emperor himself.
8
In addition to his memorial on the missionary crisis, Wu wrote three other memorials in spring 1898. In one, he proposed that western principles of military organization be used in troop training, that advanced weaponry be purchased from Europe and America, and that the nation's military strength be developed on a national basis rather than on a regional basis, with troop levels evenly distributed at all frontiers. Wu's memorial was referred to the Grand Council for its consideration, along with others written during the same period on military reform.9
In another memorial, Wu proposed a stamp tax to be levied on books, deeds, contracts, leases, receipts and banking transactions, similar to the type used in The Netherlands and in British colonies such as Hong Kong. Wu saw the tax as an easy way to provide direct funds for self-strengthening projects. Prior to his departure from China in 1896, Wu had discussed this plan with Weng Tonghe, who supported it when it arose for consideration at a meeting of the Zongli Yamen. The plan was approved by the Yamen and then by the Emperor, but circumstances prevented its immediate implementation.10
Wu's fourth memorial of spring 1898 proposed that an informal alliance of friendship and goodwill be formed with the United States. In this memorial, Wu wrote that America had been relatively friendly to China and had not been aggressive in promoting its commercial interests in Asia. The United States, he continued, was loosely allied with Britain but had observed international law by refusing to annex overseas territories and not joining the European powers in demands on China. If a crisis were to arise in China's relations with the European powers, Wu suggested that American arbitration would serve China's interests. Additional benefits for China could come in the form of technical personnel and machinery to replace that which had previously been supplied by Germany. Wu said he had spoken with high- ranking American military figures who expressed sympathy with China's plight and were willing to provide technical assistance.11
8. Decree, 25 Apr. 1898 (GX 24/int.3/5), Shilu 417:3800a.
9. Decree, 14 Apr. 1898 (GX 24/3/24), ibid. 416:3794b; Guangxu chao donghua lu, ed. Zhu Shoupeng, rev. Zhang Jinglu (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1958) (hereafter cited as DHL), 4:4070. See also Ralph Powell, The Rise of Chinese Military Power, 1895–1912 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 91-93.
10. Wu Tingfang, “Choukuan weijian.
1 June 1898 (GX 24/4/13), Qingji waijiao shiliao
131:13-15; Decree, 1 June 1898, Shilu 418:3810b.
11. Wu Tingfang, “Chaoting jiecai yidi; dang yi Meiguo weiyi,” 10 Feb. 1898 (GX 24/1/20), Qingji waijiao shiliao 129:16–17; Decree, 13 Apr. 1898 (GX 24/3/23), Shilu 416:3794a.
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Wu's memorial had been written in support of his policy of promoting American railway investments in China. Before leaving China early in 1897, Wu had joined with Sheng Xuanhuai, Director-General of Railways and an old colleague of his from Li's mufu, in declaring his preference for American capital and technicians to develop the Lu-Han, or Beijing-Hankou Railway. Wu and Sheng saw America as a relatively weak and friendly power among the imperialist giants. As a somewhat independent power, America might prove less objectionable to Russia, they hoped, than would Britain.12
While in Shanghai en route to America, Wu had met several times with the representatives of an American syndicate, the American China Development Company, in a vain attempt to persuade them to abandon their demand for control of the railway's management.13 The negotiations with the American syndicate failed, in the end, largely because Wu and Sheng were unable to obtain the backing either of Li Hongzhang, who was following a pro-Russian foreign policy, or Zhang Zhidong, who was afraid that Russia would be antagonized by the American contract unless China could demonstrate that control lay firmly in its own hands.14 The Lu-Han contract was finally signed with a Belgian syndicate. Belgium was loosely allied with the Franco-Russian bloc, but Wu and Sheng hoped that China would retain control of the line, although ultimately it did not.15
Upon Wu's departure for America, Sheng instructed him to undertake discreet negotiations with the American China Development Company for the financing of the southern part of the North-South trunk line, from Hankou south to Guangzhou (Yue-Han). Wu's first year in Washington was in part spent in fitful and largely fruitless negotiations with the company's major promoters, Clarence Cary and W. D. Washburn. As Wu later reminisced:
It was only after nearly twelve months of hard work, of careful explanation and much persuasion, that I succeeded in finding a capitalist who was prepared to discuss the matter and make the loan.1
16
By January 1898 Wu's negotiations with the company had begun to take shape, and he cabled Sheng urging him to obtain Imperial approval for the
12. See Zongli Yamen's memorial with Sheng's statement appended establishing the railway enterprise, 20 Oct. 1896 (GX 22/9/14), Qingji waijiao shiliao 123:6–13; on Wu's views see Reed to Rockhill, 24 Dec. 1896, U.S. Dept. of State, “CD: Tientsin, 1877–1896.”
13. Sheng to Zongli Yamen, 8 Jan. 1897 (GX 22/12/6); Sheng to Zhang Zhidong, 11 Jan. 1897 (GX 22/12/9); Sheng to Zongli Yamen, 14 Jan. 1897 (GX 22/12/12), Sheng Xuanhuai, Yuzhai cun'gao 25:29-30.
14. On Li Hongzhang's railway policies see Thomas J. McCormick, The China Market: America's Quest for Informal Empire, 1893–1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), pp. 80-81; Marilyn Blatt Young, The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895-1901 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 56ff. On Zhang's attitude see Zhang to Sheng, 19 Jan. 1897 (GX 22/12/17), Yuzhai cun'gao 25:22; Michael H. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895–1911 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 40-41.
15. Texts of the agreements in Qingji waijiao shiliao 125:16–21.
16. Wu Tingfang, America Through the Spectacles, pp. 71–72.
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American venture. Sheng and the railway's two sponsors, Zhang Zhidong and Wang Wenshao, Governor-General of Zhili, memorialized to request that Wu be permitted to negotiate a loan of £4 million with American financiers. Since this marked the first instance in which negotiations of this type were to be conducted in a foreign capital rather than with the ministers of the Zongli Yamen in Beijing, both Zhang and Sheng praised Wu's accomplishments and assured the Court that he would take special pains to obtain the contract, since as a Cantonese he was both knowledgeable about the West and also had a vested interest in seeing the line linking Guangdong with North China.17
Wu sent Sheng and Zhang a draft agreement in mid-March, providing very generous terms for the American China Development Company, including the concession to supervise the railway's construction and to operate it during the first fifty-year loan period.18 The draft was unfavorably received by Zhang and the Zongli Yamen. When Wu reported that the American syndicate would not abandon its demand to construct and manage the line, Zhang favored dropping negotiations with them, much to the dismay of Wu and Sheng. Wu sent cable after cable to Sheng urging him to persuade Zhang to agree to the company's terms, especially in view of the crisis brewing between the United States and Spain over Cuba, which might have had a bad effect upon the prospects for American investment in China. Wu's persistence is an index of his strong desire to prevent the entire North-South trunk line from falling under Russian domination.19
In spite of Zhang's opposition, the Qing Court finally accepted Wu's draft contract, and it was signed on 14 April 1898. The American syndicate undertook to float market bonds totaling £4 million, issued at 5% interest, and was granted the right to supervise the line's construction, to operate it during the first fifty-year period, and to receive 20% of its profits. The syndicate also secured generous side benefits enabling it to construct branch lines, mines and other enterprises, and also an option to finance the Lu-Han line if the Belgian contract were subsequently invalidated.2
20
Wu's success with the railway contract occurred as the reform movement gathered momentum, peaking in the "One Hundred Days of Reform” of summer 1898. Wu was not closely associated with Kang Youwei's clique. He was considerably older than many of them and did not share their background of classical studies and civil service as a path of official advancement. Wu had tried to recruit Liang Qichao to serve on his staff before leaving China in December
17. Zhang Zhidong memorial, 26 Jan. 1898 (Gx 24/1/5), Zhang Wenxianggong quanji (1937; reprint, Taibei: Wenhai, 1963) (hereafter cited as Zhang Zhidong, Quanji), “Zougao,” 47:3–5; Sheng Xuanhuai memoral, 26 Jan. 1898, Yuzhai cun'gao 2:9–11.
18. Wu to Sheng, 14 Mar. 1898 (GX 24/2/22), Sheng, Yuzhai cun’gao 69:40.
19. Zhang to Sheng, 30 Mar. 1898 (GX 24/3/9), ibid. 31:21–22; Wang Wenshao et al. to Zongli Yamen, 31 Mar. 1898 (GX 24/3/10), China, Foreign Ministry, Waijiao dang’an, “Cables received.” On the question of a kickback, see Chapter 5, pp.162–63.
20. Text of the contract in MacMurray, Treaties and Agreements 1:146–52. See also William R. Braisted, "The United States and the America China Development Company,” Far Eastern Quarterly 11 (Feb. 1952): 149–65; Marilyn B. Young, Rhetoric of Empire, p. 90.
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1896. Liang at first had accepted and even received 1,000 taels as advance travel funds, but then changed his mind, presumably because Wu was unwilling to hire his radical comrades as well. Their association came to an end at that time.2
Although Wu was not a part of the reformers' clique, he nevertheless sympathized with them. While legal reform was not greatly emphasized by Kang and Liang, it was a part of their reform program,22 and they were responsive to the needs and problems of overseas Chinese, an issue that touched directly upon Wu's position as Minister abroad and about which he had strong personal feelings.23 On 2 August Wu received a telegraphic edict. ordering him to speed up his investigations of western and Japanese law codes and to send his draft to the Zongli Yamen as soon as possible.24 Here indeed was concrete evidence of the Court's desire to embark upon a program of legal reform. Soon after, on 21 August, the Court took special notice of the talents of Wu and his colleague Luo Fenglu, along with the Qing Minister to France, Qingchang. As persons expert in the English and French languages and literatures, they were requested to compile selected translations from the most important works in those languages and send them to the Zongli Yamen.25 Here was proof that the Court was approaching foreign-trained officials in a more open-minded fashion.
The coup of 21 September and the failure of the reform movement were a severe blow to Wu. Whatever mistakes in judgment the young reformers had made, they had been on the right path. Wu's relationship with the Court, which had just begun to flourish, was broken off. Wu's disappointment over these events in China was followed by a series of distressing events in the United States: the extension of the Chinese Exclusion Laws to Hawaii in 1898 and to the Philippines in 1899, and the rise of anti-Chinese hysteria during the Boxer Uprising in 1900. These developments led Wu to a drastic reappraisal of China and its relations with the western world.
Chinese Exclusion
The Exclusion Laws aroused especially bitter feelings in Wu. During the years Wu spent in the United States, he received continuous reports from Chinese in America about all manner of abuses, ranging from insults to mob
21. Ding Wenjiang, Liang Rengong xiansheng nianpu changbian chugao (Taibei: Shijie, 1958), 1:32– 33. Liang's letter to Wu is reprinted in Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi wenji (Shanghai, 1933; reprint, Taibei: Zhonghua, 1960), 3:4–8. Liang later went to Hunan with three Cantonese assistants whose radicalism soon was cause for concern for Zhang Zhidong and other reform-minded officials. See Daniel H. Bays, China Enters the Twentieth Century: Chang Chih-tung and the Issues of a New Age, 1895– 1909 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978), pp. 39–41.
22. See, e.g., Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi wenji 1:93–94; Kang Youwei's “Sixth Letter to the Emperor," in Wuxu Bianfa 2:200.
23. Liang's letter to Wu, cited in n. 20.
24. Decree, 2 Aug. 1898 (GX 24/6/15), Shilu 421:3845a.
25. Decree, 21 Aug. 1898 (GX 24/7/5), ibid. 423:3857a.
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violence. Indeed, he himself had been subject to abuse. Soon after his arrival in the United States, Wu's carriage was chased on three separate occasions by youthful crowds in New York. He was pelted with rocks and garbage while the mob shouted abuses at him, and no policeman would come to his aid.26
Wu requested that the New York City police post warnings in the area where these incidents had occurred threatening to arrest persons who molested Chinese. "If such a thing had happened in China," he wrote the Secretary of State, "the offenders would have been punished on the spot, and proclamations at once posted all along the route warning others against a repetition of the offense."27
Herein, for Wu, lay the significant point. While anti-Chinese incidents in themselves may have been understandable, as anti-foreign incidents in China were, the vast discrepancy between the Chinese methods for handling them and those in America could not be ignored, for it reflected the unequal status of China in its relations with the western nations. When foreigners in China were assaulted, their governments threatened the Court with punitive measures and then blackmailed it into granting enormous concessions. By contrast, high Chinese officials in the United States were subjected to indignities such as no foreign official in China would have silently endured, only to be told by the Secretary of State that the Federal Government was "powerless, under our complex systems of government, to guard against such things." The Secretary of State expressed his regrets over the incident and asked Wu to inform him of future trips to New York, so that the authorities there might be notified and urged to take “proper precautions” against a similar occurrence. Yet while Wu himself might be guarded against such an incident, presumably through a police escort, he could not claim satisfaction for the Chinese in America as a group.
28
Chinese in the United States had also been subjected to considerable harassment in the enforcement of the Exclusion Laws. Soon after his arrival in Washington Wu received reports from outraged Chinese in Seattle and Denver, and later Portland, Oregon, of wholesale raids by immigration inspectors upon Chinese ghettos. Acting without warrants, the inspectors entered Chinese homes and business establishments, at times herding the Chinese off to jail while the searches were conducted. Those Chinese who could not immediately produce their registration papers were subject to deportation, but the Chinese residents claimed that such raids actually netted few illegal immigrants.29
26. Wu to Sherman, 8 July 1897, “NFCL”; Sherman to Wu, 8 July 1897, no. 7; 17 July (unofficial); 21 Aug. 1897, no. 3, U.S. Dept. of State, “Notes to Foreign Legations: China," M-92 (U.S. National Archives) (hereafter cited as “NTFL”).
27. Wu to Sherman, 1 Sept. 1897, “NFCL.”
28. Sherman to Wu, 27 Sept. 1897, no. 16, “NTFL.”
29. On the Seattle incident see cable from Seattle Chung Wah Hoi Kuan [Zhonghua Huiguan] to Wu, 29 Sept. 1897, in “NFCL”; on the Denver incident see Wu to Sherman, 30 Nov. 1897, no. 40, ibid.; on the Portland incident see cable from Jong Wah Association [Zhonghua Huiguan] in Portland to Wu, 8 Jan. 1899, ibid.
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Wu complained bitterly against such incidents, arguing that the enforcement of the Exclusion Laws in this fashion was contrary both to the spirit and the letter of Sino-American treaties. What especially rankled Wu was the way that these incidents revealed China's unequal status in the family of nations.3o Even though Wu complained that these incidents amounted to "cruel persecution" of the Chinese populace in America, the Secretary of the Treasury invariably supported his subordinates against Wu's charges.31
A major setback for Wu occurred in summer 1898 when both houses of Congress passed a joint resolution to apply the Chinese Exclusion Laws to Hawaii. After cabling the Qing Court with an urgent plea to reestablish its consulate in Honolulu,32 Wu prepared a major brief urging Congress to reconsider its resolution. The brief included petitions from the Chinese in Hawaii and a long memorandum in which he predicted that the extension of the laws to the islands would result in “uncalled-for discrimination and manifest injustice. "33
Wu's actions were ignored, however. In October 1898 the Attorney General ruled to implement the Congressional joint resolution, even though Wu's brief and memorandum were at that very time still under consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Wu wrote to Secretary of State John Hay (1838-1905) protesting this and other rulings by the Attorney General on Chinese exclusion. Wu was insulted that he had not even been consulted on these rulings and protested the entire way the Exclusion Laws were being implemented. Hay was notified that Wu would direct his government to renegotiate the Sino-American treaty when it was due to expire in 1904.35
Hay sought to mollify Wu. After consulting with the Attorney General and the Treasury Department, under whose jurisdiction lay immigration matters, Hay proposed that certain cases be brought forth for judicial decision. But Wu refused to be party to such a suit or even recognize the validity of any domestic tribunal, even if it were the U.S. Supreme Court, in deciding matters that in his opinion could be settled only through negotiation. Wu's position was that the United States was bound to its treaty obligations, no matter what the American Congress or Supreme Court decided.36
A major weapon used by the imperialist nations in China was the insistence that China honor its treaties no matter what difficulties were encountered in their enforcement. The Qing Government had thereby been forced to
30. Wu to Sherman, 4 Jan. 1898, no. 51, ibid.
31. Wu to Hay, 23 Jan. 1899, no. 119, ibid.; Sherman to Wu, 12 Nov., no. 25; 19 Jan. 1898, no. 39; Hay to Wu, 13 Apr. 1899, no. 96; 15 Apr. 1899, no. 97, “NTFL.”
32. Wu Tingfang memorial, 15 Sept. 1898 (GX 24/7/30), Qingji waijiao shiliao 134:20; Shilu 425:3889b.
33. Wu to Hay, 12 Dec. 1898, no. 110, “NFCL.”
34. Hay to Wu, 16 Nov., 14 Dec. 1898, nos. 68, 70, “NTFL.”
35. Wu to Hay, 7 Nov. 1898, no. 108, “NFCL.”
36. Wu to Hay, 25 Jan. 1899, no. 130, ibid.
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suppress anti-missionary and anti-foreign uprisings at the cost of unpopularity, unrest and loss of political legitimacy. As Wu saw it, the situation in America was similar, for the anti-Chinese movement could be likened to Chinese anti- foreignism. If relations between the two nations were to be conducted on a basis of equality, the American Government should certainly, in his estimation, deal more effectively and sternly with anti-Chinese sentiment.37
An even greater blow to Wu was the extension of the Exclusion Laws to the Philippines. On 26 September 1898, the commander of American forces in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, Major General Otis, had promulgated a law implementing Chinese exclusion in the islands, although the news was not made public in the United States. Due in part to a mix-up over the establishment of a Chinese Consulate in Manila, Wu was not officially informed of the new application of the laws for several months, but unofficial reports trickled through to him.
In early February 1899 Wu wrote Hay inquiring about American policy with respect to Chinese immigration to the Philippines. Wu cited the large Chinese population in the islands, its long history there, the degree of intermarriage with the Philippine population, and the interlocking commercial interests between China, especially Fujian Province, and the Philippines, as reasons why the Exclusion Laws should not be applied there.38
Secretary of State John Hay may have been caught unawares by Otis's extension of the Exclusion Laws to the Philippines, for he replied to Wu's note by stating that the subject was having the "most careful consideration" by the American Government, and that a “definite response" on the matter must await the end of American military occupation and the decision of the Philippine Commission. Soon after, Hay notified Wu that the Secretary of War had cabled Otis informing him of the Chinese Government's anxiety for the safety of the Chinese in the Philippines, with instructions to extend them "all practicable protection,” in accord with Wu's request.
39
This response apparently convinced Wu that the matter of Chinese immigration to the Philippines was as yet undecided. But in July 1899 Wu was shocked to receive a cable from the Chinese Consul in Manila informing him that the Exclusion Laws were being enforced there. When his inquiry on the matter brought forth no answer, Wu visited Acting Secretary of State Adee in person to ask whether the application of the laws in the Philippines was American policy or General Otis's temporary policy. For the first time Wu was officially informed that the Exclusion Laws had been in effect for nearly a year, and that both the War and Treasury Departments concurred that the application of the laws was "incident to the military administration of the Philippine Islands during a state of hostilities therein and therefore without prejudice to the future action of Congress.
37. Ibid.; Hay to Wu, 23 Jan. 1899, no. 79, “NTFL.”
38. Wu to Hay, 3 Feb. 1899, no. 122, “NFCL.”
"940
39. Hay to Wu, 6 and 11 Feb. 1899, nos. 86, 87, “NTFL.”
40. Adee to Wu, 18 Aug. 1899, unnumbered, ibid.
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Wu told Hay that the news of the extension of the laws there was "not a little surprise." Hay replied by suggesting that Wu's surprise might be due to the fact that Otis's "military measures" had "worked without friction or hardship." Hay further stated that as of July Otis had reported that "past difficulties existing between Chinese consuls and different Chinese ports were being harmonized, and that any change from existing methods was not recommended.”41
Outraged, Wu launched a formal protest on 12 September disagreeing with Hay's contention that the laws were working smoothly. He noted that his previous inquiry of February 1899 had been answered in such a way as to leave the impression that the matter would remain unsettled until the Philippine Commission had made its report. In this “most earnest and solemn protest," Wu disputed the need for Chinese exclusion from the islands as a military measure, argued that it represented a departure from the President's policy of leaving the status of newly acquired possessions unchanged until Congress determined their relationship to the United States, and stated that the laws would result in a great injustice to a “numerous body” of Chinese.42 As the New York Times commented, Wu's note was couched in the "most dignified and courteous terms, but . . . so pointed that no doubt is left as to the deep umbrage the Chinese Government feels over the administration of General Otis. "43
Wu began to use his public-speaking occasions to get his views on Chinese exclusion and its application to the Philippines known to the American public. In mid-October Wu addressed the International Commercial Congress meeting in Philadelphia and spoke almost entirely about the issue. In this and subsequent talks, Wu held out the promise of expanded trade between China and the United States but suggested that it hinged upon reciprocity between the two nations. Unless the United States treated China fairly in repealing the exclusion legislation, especially as applied in the Philippines, commercial relations between China and the United States were not likely to improve.1
44
During the same conference Wu rose to a point of privilege to challenge a speaker who suggested that the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Laws would result in the immediate flooding of the United States with all 400 million Chinese. While Wu may have been willing even a year earlier to recognize the economic arguments against “cheap Chinese labor" in America, he also knew that Denis Kearney and other anti-Chinese politicians would not be able to arouse such antipathy towards the Chinese had not they also been called "heathen" and "yellow."45 Defending the Chinese laborers, he said:
41. Wu to Hay, 1 Sept. 1899, unnumbered, “NFCL”; Hay to Wu, 4 Sept. 1899, unnumbered, "NTFL."
42. Wu to Hay, 12 Sept. 1899, no. 148, “NFCL.”
43. NYT, 19 Sept. 1899, p.
4.
44. Ibid., 19 Oct. 1899, p. 7.
45. Ibid., 25 Feb. 1899, p. 6.
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These men do not rob you. They work day and night and make faithful servants. I admit that they want to make a few dollars and go home, but is not that just what you Americans who come to China want?46
Although Wu began to become well known to the American public, he could not claim satisfaction. In an address delivered to the American Asiatic Association at its annual banquet in January 1900, Wu first publicly discussed the possibility of a boycott of American goods:
If you want to have a share of China's trade, a good deal depends on the kind of treatment you extend to my country, and especially in your new possessions....
... I should not be surprised if some of my countrymen, in view of the exclusion, should boycott some American goods, but I hope this may not occur.'
47
Wu's aim in this and other addresses was to reach the commercial community in hopes that it would exert pressure on Congress. Likewise, Wu continued to use diplomatic protests in an effort to influence Congress. In May 1900 Wu filed his third and most vigorous protest over the application of the Exclusion Laws to the Philippines. Hay sent Wu's protest along with his earlier notes to Congress for its consideration when the Philippines question arose, but Wu lost the battle to reverse Otis's decision.48
There was little else to alleviate Wu's distress. Even the “Open Door" notes were not the definitive statement from the United States that he had hoped for, and Wu's expectations for a positive, active American role in China were not materializing. The difficulties Wu was having with the American China Development Company over the Yue-Han railway concession are illustrative. After several delays the company finally succeeded in surveying a small portion of the proposed route, only to inform Sheng and Wu that the loan agreement would have to be renegotiated before work could proceed. The company's vacillation and inability to fulfill its commitments was symptomatic of the relative weakness of American capital during that period.49 Clearly, Wu had been as overly sanguine about the prospects for American investment in China as he had been about the prospects for an expanded American political role in Asia.
46. Ibid., 19 Oct. 1899, p. 7.
47. "China: The Greatest Potential Market in One World,” Journal of the American Asiatic Association 1 (1900): 73–74. See also this in ibid., pp. 13-14.
48. Wu to Hay, 7 May 1900, no. 180, “NFCL”; Hay to Wu, 24 May 1900, no. 141, “NTFL.” Wu's protests are printed as Senate Document no. 397, 56th Congress, 1st session, "Papers Relative to the Status of Chinese in the Philippine Islands, 23 May 1900.”
49. A point made by McCormick, The China Market, as indicative of the entire period, and by Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door, pp. 42–44.
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The hostile reaction of the American public to the Boxer crisis in summer 1900 profoundly shook Wu. Wu worked in concert with a coalition of high Qing officials in South and Central China who did their best to maintain open communication with the foreign powers in an effort to prevent a total collapse of dynastic power.50 Fortunately, the United States proved most willing to accept the quasi-fiction that the fighting was caused by rebellious subjects who had induced a state of "virtual anarchy" in Beijing, as expressed in the American circular telegram of 3 July 1900, the second "Open Door" note.5
51
Wu quickly perceived that the only way to prevent the foreign occupation of Beijing was to assure the foreign powers that their diplomats were safe. The fate of the foreign diplomats was the subject of intense speculation in the American press. In view of the confusion reigning and the unwillingness of the American public to believe information that Wu received from China asserting that the ministers were safe, he decided to seek proof in terms that the American public would accept. He wrote to Sheng Xuanhuai asking him to devise means to get a ciphered message from the State Department to U.S. Minister Conger in Beijing, and then to get Conger's reply transmitted to Washington.52 At the same time, Wu wrote a strongly worded memorial to the Throne urging it to protect the foreign ministers and other foreigners in China.53
Wu's efforts brought results on 20 July when he received Conger's ciphered reply dated 16 July. Conger's telegram said that the ministers were under siege but with the exception of German Minister Ketteler, they were all alive. Conger urged "quick relief” to “prevent general massacre."54 On the same day a letter from the Qing Emperor to President McKinley arrived, written in response to Wu's memorial. Expressing regret for the present situation, the message stated the hope that America would take the initiative in helping China out of the dilemma it was now in.55
Wu hoped that Conger's telegram and the Emperor's letter were evidence that the Qing Court had the situation in hand. Maybe it would be possible to prevent a foreign occupation after all. But the reaction of American officials and the press was that of disbelief. It was widely believed that the cables had been manufactured by Wu and the Qing Minister to London, Luo Fenglu. To
50. The activities of these officials are best described in Chester C. Tan, The Boxer Catastrophe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Marilyn B. Young, Rhetoric of Empire, pp. 137–71.
51. Reprinted in U.S. Dept. of State, “United States Foreign Relations, 1900,” Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901), p. 299 (hereafter cited as “U.S. Foreign Relations, 1900”).
52. Ibid., p. 155; Wu to Hay, 11 July 1900, John Hay, Papers (Library of Congress).
53. Transmitted via Liu Kunyi and Yuan Shikai. See Yuan Shikai, Yangshouyuan zouyi jiyao (Taibei: Wenhai, 1966), 5:12.
54. Conger to Hay, 16 July 1900, “U.S. Foreign Relations, 1900,” p. 156.
55. Ibid.,
pp. 293-94.
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settle the matter, Hay asked Wu to send a second dispatch to Conger in cipher asking him to reply with his sister's name as proof the cable was genuine.56
During the sixteen-day waiting period for Conger's reply, Wu worked feverishly to prevent the foreign occupation of Beijing. Hay and McKinley expressed their willingness to cooperate with anti-Boxer forces in China, if the latter could act decisively. In a letter from President McKinley to the Qing Emperor of 23 July, the U.S. Government set forth a three-point course of action for the Court to follow: (1) state whether the ministers were alive and their condition; (2) put them in immediate and free communication with their governments and remove all danger to them; and (3) place the Imperial authorities in communication with the relief expedition and cooperate with it for "the liberation of the legations, the protection of foreigners, and the restoration of order."57
Although Wu tried to mobilize support for the first two points, the situation in China either hinged upon Li Hongzhang or Yuan Shikai, both of whom were unwilling to take decisive steps. Yuan had long since rejected Sheng Xuanhuai's suggestion that he use his troops to rescue the the Emperor and Empress Dowager and restore order, while Li Hongzhang vacillated, in Sheng's opinion, because he was afraid of arousing Russian and German suspicions by working too closely with the Americans.58
After the Americans rejected Sheng's plan to arrange a cease-fire in exchange for the safe arrival of the ministers in Tianjin, Liu Kunyi cabled Li Hongzhang, Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong, Sheng and others suggesting they all memorialize the Court to implement the three points. Yuan and Sheng did, but Li would not. In response to Wu's urgent requests, Li continued to evade the issue.59
Without Li's support, the Zongli Yamen would not press for free communication from the foreign ministers to their governments. Not until 5 August were the foreign diplomats permitted to send ciphered telegrams. The one-week delay dashed Wu's hopes of avoiding the foreign occupation of the capital. Conger's telegram dated 21 July arrived immediately, but it was too late to halt the advance of the relief expedition, now nearing Beijing.60
The relief expedition reached Beijing on 14 August, thereby ending the siege and ushering in a new era for China. As is well known, the Court fled to Xi'an while many parts of North China were occupied by foreign troops. In the weeks following the entrance of the eight nations' troops to the capital, there was much uncertainty about the direction China was to take in its relations with the powers and in its own internal politics.
56. Ibid., p. 156.
57. Ibid., pp. 294–95. Transmitted via Liu Kunyi and Yuan Shikai. See Wu to Liu, 25 July 1900 (GX 26/6/29), Sheng Xuanhuai, Yuzhai cun'gao 37:38; Yuan Shikai, Yangshouyuan, 6:1.
58. Sheng to Liu Kunyi, 29 July 1900 (GX 26/7/4), Sheng, Yuzhai cun'gao 38:10; Tan, Boxer Catastrophe, pp. 88–89.
59. Yuan to Sheng, 23 July 1900 (GX 26/6/27), Yuzhai cun 'gao 37:30; Wu to Li Hongzhang, 29, 30 and 31 July (GX 26/7/4, 5, 6,) Li, Quanji, “Dian’gao,” 24:7; Li to Wu, 29 July 1900, ibid. 24:6.
60. Wu to Li, 2 Aug. 1900 (GX 26/7/8), ibid. 14:17; Hay to Goodnow, 1 Aug. 1900, “U.S. Foreign Relations, 1900,” pp. 260–61; Conger to Hay, 21 July 1900, ibid., p. 156.
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We know something of Wu's concerns during this period as the result of an interesting interview he had with Acting U.S. Secretary of State Hill. As its contents are revealing, it is worth citing a substantial portion of this document here:
Mr. Wu said he hoped that when negotiations were begun the treatment visited upon his pro-foreign friends in China would not be overlooked and that punishment for it would be demanded. He said that Chang Yen Hoon [Zhang Yinhuan], an ex-minister to the United States, a very intelligent man and a great friend of foreigners and for many years a member of the Tsung-li Yamen [Zongli Yamen] ... [had been exiled and executed,] also Hsu Chen Ching [Xu Jingzhen] had been executed. He said that the punishment of those ordering their execution ought to be insisted upon by the foreign governments in the course of the negotiations.
Mr. Hill asked the Minister who were responsible for these executions. He replied that undoubtedly the Empress Dowager and Prince Tuan [Prince Duan, Zaiyi] were in a sense responsible, but that Li Ping Hung [Li Bingheng] had impeached these two members of the Tsung-li- yamen as too friendly to foreigners and their deaths were ordered on this account. Mr. Hill asked the Minister if he thought it would be possible to punish the Empress Dowager and Prince Tuan for these acts. To this the Minister replied that the Empress Dowager might not be punished in person but that Prince Tuan ought to be; that the families of the beheaded ought to be compensated and the dead restored to their rank and dignity by posthumous declaration.
Mr. Hill asked the Minister if it was true that Prince Tuan had been appointed Grand Secretary. To this the Minister replied he could hardly believe it; it is the highest office in the Empire but a sinecure. Mr. Hill asked; "Why do you doubt it?" The Minister replied: "No prince of the royal blood has held that place. I think Prince Tuan may have been appointed a member of the Privy Council, which is more important. I fear he has been."
Mr. Hill asked the Minister if this would not increase the difficulty of negotiations. To this the Minister replied: “Yes, you must put the screws on." When Mr. Hill asked what it meant to put the screws on, the Minister said: "The punishment of the guilty must be absolutely insisted upon." He said that he thought the Empress Dowager ought to be brought back to Peking, but the Powers were behaving in such a way as to render it difficult if not impossible. She is now going further away and is, no doubt, afraid to come back. Every effort, he said, ought to be made to get the Imperial Court to come back to Peking. Mr. Hill asked what would be the most effective means of accomplishing this. He replied an assertion that the Empire would be dismembered if the Court did not come back, and that a return alone would save the Empire from loss of territory. He thought if “the screws were put on" the Imperial Government could be brought back and that was the essential beginning of the rehabilitation of the Emperor's authority.61
61. "Interview of Acting Secretary Hill with the Chinese Minister, 25 Sept. 1900," William McKinley, Papers (Library of Congress).
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Thus Wu, while anxious to assert China's national interests in its relations with the United States and the other foreign powers, nonetheless felt that they could play a positive role in China by forcing reform upon the state. Much as he had earlier expressed to British Consul Bristow in 1895 (see Chapter 3), Wu still looked to the West for help in reforming China so that it might achieve its just position of equality in its relations with the West.
In spite of the privately held views expressed in this interview, Wu's public statements revealed yet a different aspect of his outlook. With the recovery of Beijing on 14 August most of the drama ended for the American public. The press coverage frequently had a vindictive tone, and the Chinese were described as barbarous, depraved and insincere people. Wu had been brought into the public's view during the crisis and had been subjected to personal attacks in the press.
Wu was especially upset by charges that he and Luo Fenglu had not acted in good faith. The Beijing correspondent for The Times, George E. Morrison, who had been imprisoned in the legation quarters, angrily charged that Wu and Luo had manufactured "bogus edicts" to "throw dust" into the eyes of the public and western policy makers. These charges were readily believed by outraged Westerners in China and by the more vindictive sectors of the American public.
62
These charges evoked strong denials from Wu. In an interview in the New York Times in September, Wu reaffirmed the authenticity of the messages he received from China. Although he understood that Morrison's confinement had colored his attitude towards the Chinese Government, he thought that "as a gentleman, he ought to be careful in his statements and not to disseminate baseless gossip to the injury of others."63
In an article entitled “A Plea for Fair Treatment," Wu wrote of his dismay at the willingness of the American public to accept the fantastic and gruesome rumors that appeared in the press, when a “sober second thought should have questioned their authenticity." Any Chinese statements that the ministers were alive were merely discounted. "The prevailing opinion throughout Europe and America," wrote Wu, "seemed to be that all Chinese, whether high or low, were incapable of speaking the truth." He said he had been especially grieved to find that people familiar with China, who should have known better, made matters worse. One missionary, in fact, was reported to have stated that the entire legation had been killed and that Wu's “deceit and cunning" were to blame for the massacre, for he “knew of the impending disaster, but was too cunning to tell it." Such base accusations, Wu wrote, could only help those who want further international war in China [i.e., Russia]. He urged the public to “show a little forbearance in dealing with the Chinese," and to try to see things from the Chinese perspective instead of "judging Chinese ideas and doings by the Western standard."64
62. NCH, 3 Oct. 1900, pp. 699, 701.
63. NYT, 12 Sept. 1900, p. 7.
64. Wu Tingfang, “A Plea for Fair Treatment,” (dated 17 Aug.) Century Magazine 60 (Oct. 1900): 951-54.
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The crisis also provided ample vindication for Wu. The State Department officials with whom Wu had dealt on a daily basis believed that he was acting in honorable fashion. On 29 July for example, Hay had written to President McKinley that Wu was "greatly perturbed in spirit, but seems to be acting squarely with us. He admits there are many things to explain. He does not attempt to account for the silence of the Legations, but believes the ministers except Ketteler, are alive. "65
Hay's trust was echoed by others. When the Morrison charges where publicized in late August and September, the New York Sun defended Wu against the “libel” and said that his actions during the summer had "strengthened, not weakened . . . confidence in his honorable character and diplomatic good faith. Mr. Wu has been under about as fierce a light as ever beat upon a Chinese gentleman. There have been times when appearances were against him; but from every trial his personal sincerity and personal trustworthiness have emerged unstained." And an official in the State Department told the press that Wu was “held in high esteem” by the U.S. Government. "No one can throw discredit upon Minister Wu and injure him here in Washington," he said, “and I believe that the American people appreciate the sterling qualities of the Minister of China and will back him up against any attack."66
Praise such as this enabled Wu to emerge from the Boxer crisis, surprisingly, in a stronger position vis-à-vis the American public. After a short respite Wu launched into the fray once more, embarking on a new round of speaking engagements to present the Chinese “case" to the American public and to blast the activities of the missionaries. The most extensive of Wu's speeches was an address delivered to the American Academy of Political and Social Science in November 1900 entitled "Causes of the Unpopularity of the Foreigner in China."67
In this talk he reiterated many of his earlier criticisms of the press coverage of the crisis and his indignation at Morrison's charges of deceit, but he attacked the missionaries and foreigners in China more directly than before. Wu described the callousness of foreign visitors who came to China for the sole purpose of acquiring fortunes, as well as the system of indemnities and privileged status that foreign gunboats had wrested from the Chinese, then rhetorically asked, “But supposing you were in the position of the Chinese people, would you, after such an experience, bear no ill-feeling but still entertain friendly sentiments, towards those who had thus treated you?”
Wu prefaced his remarks on the missionaries by stating that most of them were "respectable and honorable" people, having rendered China great services by their works in medicine, education and philanthropy. But some,
65. Hay to McKinley, 29 July 1900, Hay, Papers. For an expression of Wu's gratitude to Hay see Wu to Hay, 3 Aug. 1900, in “U.S. Foreign Relations, 1900,” p. 282.
66. New York Sun, 13 Sept. 1900, quoted in NCH, 7 Nov. 1900, pp. 1000–1001. Ibid., 12 Sept. 1900, quoted in NCH, 7 Nov. 1900, p. 1001.
67. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 17, no. 1 (Jan. 1901): 1–14.
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he said, had been "indiscreet" because of their "excessive zeal," interfering with justice in Chinese courts and showing their contempt for Chinese traditions and customs. The display of contempt aroused the resentment of the people, and even if the Chinese did not show their feelings and retaliate, "their feeling against the offender is none the less strong."
Americans in China, Wu advised, should show more consideration and remember that "foreign ways are not always the best." Foreigners should try to understand the Chinese and their customs, remembering that "true politeness is the same in China as in Europe or America.” Although Chinese etiquette may seem complicated, “at the bottom of it lies a tenderness for the feelings of others." If foreigners refrain from treating Chinese as inferiors but "show their friendly feeling," it will "no doubt be reciprocated." Wu concluded his brief by asking foreigners in China to be more cosmopolitan and not judge China by western standards. "They should take account of both our good and our bad points, and give us credit for the former while making due allowance for the latter.” Only in this way could both sides profit from past "mistakes."
Speeches such as this received a good deal of publicity, especially as Wu continued to criticize the missionaries and charge that Christianity as a doctrine was obviously so "noble and grand that no weak and frail mortal, at least in our generation has been able to attain it. I am afraid that it has become a dead letter." Outraged clergymen took to pulpit and press to denounce Wu. As a non-Christian, one said, Wu was not qualified to judge Christian doctrine. The outcry over this aspect of Wu's speaking was so strong that Wu found it necessary to publicly reply and qualify his criticisms of the missionaries.68
Wu's views on the missionaries reflect the changes occurring in his world view as a result of his experiences in the United States. Even before the Boxer crisis Wu was becoming more critical of Anglo-Saxon culture than he had previously been.
As early as April 1899 in his first address to the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Wu had criticized missionaries and Westerners in general for ignoring China's good points and historical achievements.69 Considering the demise of other ancient civilizations-Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman-the endurance of Chinese civilization, he asserted, was surely a case of the “survival of the fittest.” In the Sino-Western encounter, two different social forces were meeting. Rather than seeing China being “neutralized” in the process (as western missionaries assumed), Wu said he expected to see a fusion of the two forces. Wu's goal was not the "westernization" of China but rather a mutual process of cultural fusion leading to the evolution of the entire world towards greater cosmopolitanism.
68. NYT, 16 Dec. 1900, p. 2; 29 Dec. 1900, p. 2; 28 Jan. 1901, p. 2; R. E. Speer, “Confucian Propaganda of Wu,” Missionary Review 24 (May 1901): 370–73.
69. Literary Digest 18 (22 Apr. 1899): 447–48.
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Many of Wu's arguments revolved around the criticism that the western nations and their peoples had failed to live up to the ideals of their own civilization in their actions in China. This failure, for Wu, was clear evidence that Confucian and Mencian ethics constituted a superior basis of social and political behavior. Possession of advanced weaponry could not in itself constitute the basis of civilization, he insisted. Rather the proof of civilization was found in policies respecting the rights of other peoples and nations and in social behavior stressing tolerance and mutual respect. It would be better, he concluded, "to live among the people who practise the tenets of Confucius and Mencius than among a people who do not practise what they believe. The aphorism of Tennyson should be changed so as to read: 'Better fifty years in Cathay than a cycle in Europe.""70
Wu was not challenging the ideals of western civilization per se but rather developing the pragmatic argument that social and political behavior is the touchstone by which civilizations and cultures should be evaluated. Indeed, he soon came to the view that great civilizations differed little in their ideals of ethics and morality. Wu's particular distillation of Chinese and Christian ethics led him to the conclusion that the doctrine of reciprocity, the “Golden Rule," lay at the core of both Chinese and western civilization." The social arrangements developed by different cultures were significant in that they were the actual mechanisms that either facilitate or retard the individual's attempt to live by the “Golden Rule.” As Wu began to develop these ideas, the more clear it seemed to him that China was by far the superior in this respect. Here was the area of China's greatest contribution to the evolution of world civilization.
This view became the basis of Wu's subsequent attacks upon the missionaries. In an article published in The Journal in May 1900,72 Wu compared the teachings of Confucius to those of Christ, much to Christ's disadvantage. Wu's major point was that Christian doctrines requiring the turning of the cheek were so lofty as to be beyond the reach of all but saints. Wu wholeheartedly agreed with the rhetorical question posed by Confucius, "If we requite our enemy with kindness, how, indeed, can we reward our friend?" The Confucian exhortation to require justice with justice and favors with favors, he said, was far more practical and within the grasp of all.
As evidence of Christianity's impracticality, Wu cited the medieval persecutions of non-Christians in Europe, a record that, he said, had "filled me with horror." By contrast he equated China's Confucian mainstream with tolerance and pacifism. Until the Christian missionaries came to China, he declared, “Jews, Mohammedans, and Buddhists have lived... peaceably side by side." Only when the missionaries told the Chinese to destroy their “idols”
70. Ibid.
71. This idea is most fully developed in Wu's “Mutual Helpfulness Between China and the United States,” North American Review 172 (July 1900): 1–12.
72. Literary Digest 20 (26 May 1900): 640-41.
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did trouble occur, especially since the Chinese could all see that Catholics too had their own “idols."
Christians, he continued, claim that an afterlife in heaven is the reward for the righteous but also insist that only Christians may be saved. As Wu saw it, if there is a heaven, there surely were "many ladders" to it, and if there were rewards to come, surely all good people would receive them. The Christian view was, he said, “too narrow.” “I am broader than that doctrine,” he wrote, "My religion comprehends all.” Finally, Wu concluded, Confucian doctrines were superior to Christianity because they offered no reward in a future life but exhorted people to do their best with no thought of reward. "That seems to me the higher view,” he summed up.
Throughout his stay in the United States, Wu continued to reflect upon these matters and develop some themes further. Wu did not develop these ideas systematically and ignored obviously troublesome or contradictory implications. In his comparisons between Chinese and western cultures, Wu was attracted to the vision of Confucius as a transcendent, charismatic figure somewhat analogous to that of Christ in western cultures, but superior to the latter because of his refusal to speculate on matters other than the practical affairs of this world. In this fashion Wu was drawn to the doctrines of Kang Youwei and his followers. Like them, Wu declared that "Confucius was a reformer himself in his day and generation," his teachings consistent with modern reform and progress.73 In an address entitled "The Teachings of Confucius" delivered to the Society for Ethical Culture in New York in December 1900, Wu pronounced Confucius to be a "model man” who "practiced what he preached" by taking an active part in public affairs and "conscientiously" discharging his duties "both as a private citizen and as a public official."74
The "teachings” of Confucius, for Wu, could be conveniently summed up in the Five Cardinal Relations (wulun), which "comprise all conceivable positions in which a man may find himself in society,” or even further distilled into the principle of filial piety (xiao), which for Wu was the “pivotal point" of the Confucian system. In summing up, Wu told his audience, “You see, the advice of parents is always good, and if you obey it, you will find it works well, and brings you happiness.'
Wu developed a highly select orthodox vision of China's past, stretching back in an unbroken line to Confucius and Mencius and even further to the legendary culture heroes, Emperors Yao and Shun. As Wu saw it, this constituted the mainstream of Chinese civilization, and he dismissed other traditions or contradictory evidence as insignificant. Hence he asserted that Buddhism and Taoism were supported only through "superstition and ignorance," and thus “their influence grows weaker and weaker as the people
73. Address at Founder's Day ceremonies at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1 Nov. 1900, NYT, 2 Nov. 1900,
p.
1.
74. Wu, “The Teachings of Confucius,” reprinted in Chautauquan 42 (Dec. 1906): 342–46.
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become more intelligent." Also, "militarism” was linked to the First Qin Emperor and legalist doctrine; the Chinese "rejection" of militarism and legalism, as Wu saw it, had been a decisive factor in shaping Chinese civilization.75 As Wu presented it, Confucianism was “dominant in the national life,” lying at the “foundation of the social and political and national life” of the country, and binding “the diverse elements of the empire into a homogeneous whole."76 Here were to be found the social principles that had produced the tolerance, generosity, rationalism and pacifism that characterized Chinese culture for Wu and that would, he hoped, become the basis of the future monoculture of the world."
Wu was also attracted to Kang Youwei's historical schematization, in which a universal civilization had been born in China in antiquity and transmitted to the West, where certain facets were developed further while impeded in China by the monarchical despotism of the Qin-Han period. As an example of this, Wu asserted that the Emperors Yao and Shun had established the principle of political succession based upon merit rather than heredity, only to have it reborn, so to speak, in the United States due to the personal example of its first president, George Washington, whom he eulogized as a great nation builder who established himself as a moral example to posterity through his "entire subordination of personal ambition to public welfare," having stepped aside upon setting the nation in order.78
These views shaped Wu's outlook on Chinese law reform. In an address on the subject of "Chinese Jurisprudence,” delivered before the New York State Bar Association at its annual convention in January 1901,79 Wu equated "common law" with the Liji (Book of rites). “Common law,” for Wu, was in fact reducible to the Five Cardinal Relations and the principle of filial piety, or as he called them, the "patriarchal” and “fraternal" principles. By contrast, "statute law" consisted of the laws in the Da Qing Luli (Qing Dynasty code of laws). While acknowledging that in some cases the code's provisions “would not be tolerated by the people of a free country, nor approved by lawyers," Wu generally spoke approvingly of it and emphasized the way it upheld the "common law," namely, the principle of filial piety and the Five Cardinal Relations.
Wu defended the system of the administration of justice while acknowledging its deficiencies. The lack of a jury system, deprivation of the rights of defendants and witnesses during a trial, and the use of torture to obtain confessions were all regretfully noted, but Wu stressed the importance
75. NYT, 2 Nov. 1900, p. 1.
76. Wu, "The Teachings of Confucius,” p. 343.
77. Compare Wu's views with those of the May Fourth generation of social conservatives as described in Laurence A. Schneider, Ku Chich-kang and China's New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).
78. NYT, 23 Feb. 1900, p. 9; America Through the Spectacles, pp. 146–47.
79. Wu, “Chinese Jurisprudence,” Proceedings of the New York State Bar Association, 24th Annual Meeting, Jan. 15–16, 1901 (Albany, N.Y., 1901), pp. 135-63.
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of judicial leniency as a major feature of China's juridical tradition, reinforced by the heavy punishments meted to officials who had wrongly convicted a person. The rights of the defendant were also safeguarded to some degree, he asserted, by legal secretaries who made sure the magistrate's decisions were in accord with precedent, thereby constituting a check upon the magistrate's arbitrary powers. Summing up this defense of Chinese juridical traditions, he said:
The laws and practices of China . . . have now been enforced for many centuries. Generations of Chinese have lived, moved, worked and died under them. Time has proved that they are adapted to the needs and genius of the people. True it is that now and then they see a miscarriage of justice, but they believe that this is due to the incompetency or corruption of the presiding officer, and not to any defect or imperfection in their system.
In characteristically pragmatic fashion, however, Wu asserted that the introduction of the West into China had altered the situation largely because of the difficulties arising from trials involving Chinese and foreigners, where the discrepancies between Chinese and western codes were readily apparent. When foreigners received lighter sentences than their Chinese counterparts would have for the same offenses, the indignation of the masses was aroused. In view of this situation, law reform was necessary so as to “suit the requirements and circumstances of the present day," ensuring equal treatment of foreigners and Chinese, but not because of any intrinsic defects in the Qing code. But Wu was most elusive about what ultimately proved to be an insurmountable problem: how to reform the “statute” laws to meet western standards while keeping intact the "common law," namely, the Five Cardinal Relations and the principle of filial piety.
Of course, as a diplomat Wu was making every effort to present China to the U.S. public in the most favorable light, yet there is reason to believe that his experiences in the United States brought him to a critical reevaluation of Anglo-Saxon culture and its role in world development. In 1897 and 1898, Wu seemed hopeful that the progressive forces in China and the West alike were on the rise and that a new era of equality, rationality and decency in Sino-Western relations was at hand. The failure of the 1898 reform movement was a severe blow to these hopes, but it did not significantly alter his perceptions of China and the western world. The strength of American xenophobia, as revealed in the Chinese exclusion debates and in the reaction to the Boxers, was a more serious blow, for it necessitated Wu's strategic reassessment of the world situation. Whereas earlier he had assumed that the progressive forces (the forces of “commerce”) were dominant in the western world, he probably now had to conclude that they were not so dominant as he had hoped. Both China and the West had their enlightened progressive forces, and they both had their reactionary forces. No longer could he view the West as enjoying a monopoly on progress.
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In reacting to American xenophobia, Wu became increasingly interested in the progressive aspects of Chinese culture, as he saw them. For Wu these were epitomized by Confucianism. Not only was Confucius a dynamic figure who had founded an ideology that had served as the basis for Chinese society much as Christianity had done for Europe, but more significantly, Confucian doctrine preaching harmony and ordered social relations had brought contentment and happiness to China as Christian doctrine could not. As Wu later wrote in his America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat:
I am sometimes almost tempted to say that Asia will have to civilize the West over again. I am not bitter or sarcastic, but I do contend that there are yet many things that the white races have to learn from their colored brethren. In India, in China, and in Japan there are institutions which have a stability unknown outside Asia. Religion has apparently little influence on Western civilization; it is the corner-stone of society in all Asiatic civilizations. The result is that the colored races place morality in the place assigned by their more practical white confreres to economic propositions. We think, as we contemplate the West, that white people do not understand comfort because they have no leisure to enjoy contentment; they measure life by accumulation, we by morality. Family ties are stronger with the so-called colored races than they are among the more irresponsible white races; consequently the social sense is keener among the former and much individual suffering is avoided.80
In looking at American society, Wu asked himself what should be the goal of progress. While industrialization was bringing increased material prosperity to the United States, it was also bringing alienation and the disintegration of a sense of community based upon shared values. Wu felt that this was resulting in a lowering of the quality of life in the United States:
From a material point of view we have certainly progressed, but do the "civilized" people in the West live longer than the so-called semi-civilized races? Are they happier than others? I should like to hear their answers. Is it not a fact that Americans are more liable to catch cold than Asiatics; with the slightest epidemic are they not more easily infected than Asiatics? If so, why? . . . Again, can Americans say they are happier than the Chinese? From personal observation I have formed the opinion that the Chinese are more contented than Americans, on the whole happier; and certainly one meets more old people in China than in America. . . . In China no man is without friends, or if he is, it is his own fault. "Virtue is never friendless," said Confucius, and as society is constituted in China, this is literally true. If this is not so in America, I fear there is something wrong with that boasted civilization, and that their material triumphs over the physical forces of nature have been paid dearly for by the loss of insight into her profound spiritualities.81
80. American Through the Spectacles, pp. 181-82.
81. Ibid., pp. 164–65.
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Wu's criticisms of American society were echoed by friends of his such as Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who expressed interest in Confucian doctrine,82 and social purity reformers such as J. H. Kellogg (1852–1945), the noted popularizer of diet, hygiene and temperance reforms. It is worth noting here that Wu was much influenced by the ideas of Kellogg and the social purity reformers, who linked diet and hygiene to the problems of civilization. According to David J. Pivar, their dietary and hygienic reforms were a defense against civilization's decline, a way to maintain an agrarian life-style under attack by the forces of urbanization and industrialization, and a way to protect Christian doctrine from attack by Darwinian teachings.83 Wu became an advocate of vegetarianism and other “modern” hygienic practices as a way of cultivating superior morality in individuals and ultimately, in nations.84
Wu's criticism of American society was probably strengthened by these ideas. We thus see a schism in Wu's attitude towards the West. On the one hand he looked towards Britain and the United States for help in exerting political (and military) pressure to force reforms upon the Qing Government. The object of the reforms was to make China a strong and viable nation in the modern world. But while these reforms would presumably alter the political system and the economic structure to some degree, Wu was most emphatic in rejecting Christianity, which he perceived as the ideological base of western society, and in his insistence that Confucian values as manifested in the social structure were valid and should be retained as China entered the modern age. He thus saw no fundamental incompatibility between these values and the requirements of modernization.
While Wu advocated reforms in China, then, he hoped that China would not follow the American path, pursuing wealth and meeting discontent. It was still important to link up with the progressive forces in the West, such as the world-wide pacifist movement supported by people such as Andrew Carnegie, but now more than ever before, it was important to convince enlightened Westerners of the superiority of Confucian principles of social organization. One may indeed say that what began as a defense against Christian missionizing ended as another form of missionizing.
82. On Carnegie's friendship with Wu, see Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 912-13. Wu spoke several times at Carnegie Institute functions and solicited Carnegie for funds for educational development in China. Following the 1911 revolution, he appealed to Carnegie for assistance in obtaining U.S. recognition for the Republic, and Carnegie did so appeal to the U.S. Department of State. See Wu to Carnegie, 15 Jan. 1903, no. 93; 2 Mar. 1904, no. 163; 10 Nov. 1911, no. 199, 13 Dec. 1911, no. 201, Andrew Carnegie, Papers (Library of Congress).
83. David J. Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973). Wu was especially influenced by Kellogg's The Living Temple (Battle Creek, Mich., 1903) and Mary Newton Foote Henderson's The Aristocracy of Health. . . . (Washington, D.C.; Colton, 1904). On Kellogg see also Gerald Carson, The Cornflake Crusade (New York: Rinehart, 1957). 84. Wu's America Through the Spectacles, Yanshou xinfa (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1918) and “How I Expect to Live Long," Ladies' Home Journal 26 (Nov. 1909): 17.
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Disastrous as the Boxer crisis was, it provided an opportunity for Wu to develop personal contacts with State Department officials and key American political figures of a much closer type than might have been possible under other circumstances. Wu's strategy in the post-Boxer period was to exploit these personal contacts as fully as possible for China's diplomatic objectives.
Wu's major activities were directed towards the Congressional debate of 1902 on Chinese exclusion. Through a campaign of strong diplomatic notes, appeals to the American public, and finally direct appeals to President Theodore Roosevelt, Wu hoped that the Exclusion Laws might be repealed, at least in Hawaii and the Philippines.
Late in 1900 Wu began challenging the Treasury Department's management of immigration matters in a series of bitter notes over specific wrongdoings, and in one instance he requested that Roosevelt personally intervene on behalf of a Chinese student who had been denied entrance to the United States. Wu's feud with the Treasury Department reached a peak early in 1902, provoked by a statement by Terence V. Powderley, Commissioner-General of Immigration, in which Powderley declared that only "those sturdy men" of Scotland, Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia would be permitted to enter America, and that "whatever is done, the Chinese will be kept out." In a sharply worded note, Wu denied that Powderley could possibly be fair or impartial in matters concerning Chinese immigrants.85
In 1901 Wu had publicly refused to be seated at a banquet table with Major General Otis, who had implemented the Exclusion Laws in the Philippines in 1899 under the guise of military necessity. Wu's act brought forth critical comments from the New York Times and other newspapers, but it accomplished its purpose of keeping the issue before the American public and policy makers.86
In December 1901 Wu requested and received a private audience with President Roosevelt and made special mention of abuses in the administration of the laws. Roosevelt asked Wu to furnish examples of specific instances, and Wu replied by drafting a memorandum listing several cases of injustices in the administration, including the famous case of Fei Chi Ho and Kong Xiangxi (H. H. Kung, 1881-1967) which had become something of a cause célèbre in China and America.87
Wu followed this up with a fifty-eight page memorandum in which he formally declared China's intention to renegotiate the Sino-American treaty due to expire in 1904. Wu proposed that the U.S. Congress send a commission
85. Wu to Hay, 30 Nov. 1900, no. 199, 10 Jan. 1902, “NFCL”; Hay to Wu, 5 Dec. 1900, “NTFL.”
86. NYT, 9 Feb. 1901, p. 8.
87. Wu to Hay, 9 Dec. 1901, no. 218; to Adee, 27 Aug., 1 Oct. 1902, “NFCL”; Adee to Wu, 2 Oct., no. 242; 9 Oct. 1902, no. 243, “NTFL.” On Kong and Fei see Luella Miner, ed., Two Heroes of Cathay: An Autobiography and a Sketch (New York: Revell, 1903), pp. 223–38.
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to areas with large Chinese populations, especially Hawaii and the Philippines, and personally investigate the impact of Chinese exclusion legislation in those areas. This note and Wu's subsequent notes on the matter were sent to Congress.88
The congressional debate on Chinese exclusion began in February 1902 with the introduction of new legislation calling for the complete exclusion of all Chinese persons, whether laborer or not, and all persons of Chinese descent, from the United States and its territories. The debate that ensued was fierce, and Wu figured prominently behind the scenes marshaling support for the bill's defeat. His diplomatic notes and his public speeches were cited extensively both by witnesses friendly and hostile to the Chinese case,89
To further buttress his case, Wu sent a secret telegraphic memorial to the Qing Foreign Ministry (Waiwu Bu) urging that it notify the American Minister in China, Edwin Conger, to the effect that the Qing Government was following the congressional debate with great interest, and with the hint that should the new legislation be too severe, Chinese merchants would certainly retaliate by boycotting American goods. For the second time in as many years, Wu again raised the possibility of a boycott, which eventually took place in 1905.90
As a result of the opposition to the bill, a compromise measure was adopted in which the existing legislation of the Geary Law of 1892 was basically maintained. Wu wrote a strenuous objection to this bill, charging that its passage would “seriously disturb” relations between China and the United States. Wu wrote that the especially objectionable features of the bill were those that continued the category of the "exempt classes" while denying entrance to other non-laborers, and others that called for the re-registration of all Chinese laborers in the United States and the registration of all non- laborers as well. Wu charged that the registration measures constituted an "unnecessary hardship" that served to rob new immigrants of their treaty rights. "Past experience," he stated, "shows that the Chinese have been arrested by the wholesale, placed in jeopardy, and subjected to molestation and insult.” In conclusion, Wu stated that the bill placed so many restrictions upon the Chinese and the provisions were so strict that "no Chinese having the least respect for himself would submit to such indignities and come to this country.
*91
This note was also forwarded by John Hay to Congress, but the bill was passed in spite of Wu's last-minute exertions. A final appeal to President Roosevelt via Secretary of State Hay likewise was unsuccessful.”
88. Wu to Hay, Dec. 10, 1901, no. 219, “NFCL”; Hay to Wu, 18 Dec. 1901, no. 194, “NTFL.” 89. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Immigration, Chinese Exclusion: Hearings. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902).
90. Wu to Waiwu Bu, 25 Feb. 1902 (GX 28/1/18), Qingji waijiao shiliao 152:19.
91. Wu to Hay, 22 Mar. 1902, no. 140, “NFCL.”
92. Wu to Hay, 29 Apr. 1902, no. 243, ibid.; Hay to Wu, 30 Apr. 1902, “NTFL.”
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The results of the congressional campaign, however disappointing for Wu, could not have been entirely unexpected. Nevertheless, he was certainly dismayed by some of the personal attacks levied upon him.93 All he could do now was to make a direct and personal appeal to the President and other chief policy makers with respect to the treaty negotiations shaping up for 1904.
In May 1902, soon after the new immigration law had been signed by Roosevelt, Wu addressed a note to Hay reiterating his views with the specific request that they be laid before the President.94 Hay complied with Wu's request, and Roosevelt was unquestionably favorably disposed towards them.
Soon after receiving Wu's note, Roosevelt informed the Treasury Department that unless the Department could provide reasons to the contrary, he planned to comply with Wu's views in renegotiating the Sino-American treaty in 1904. The Treasury Department responded with a strong memorandum warning against the abandonment of existing legislation.95 Roosevelt was responsive to this pressure. He let the matter drop for the present but in the following year, 1903, he removed immigration from the control of the Treasury Department and put it under the Department of Commerce and Labor.
Wu seems to have been highly sensitive to both the powers and the constraints upon the executive within the American political system. He sensed in Roosevelt a man who was responsive to a well-reasoned brief, forcefully presented and supported by influential segments of the American public and business elites. In this, he certainly had the measure of the man, for Roosevelt was often inclined to regard with favor self-assertive nationalism in Asians and see in it a reflection of his own doctrine of Darwinist-inspired assertiveness.96 Wu's understanding of Roosevelt's world view was a partial basis for the range, flexibility and passion of his diplomacy.
Unsurprisingly, Wu's last months in the United States were marked by his strongest actions yet on the question of Chinese exclusion. In August 1902 Wu was casually and accidentally informed that General Leonard Wood, commander of American forces occupying Cuba, had proclaimed the Chinese Exclusion Laws to be in force in the island just five days before the American military administration relinquished control on 15 May 1902. This act carried overtones to Wu of the decision taken by American military authorities in the Philippines that had resulted in the exclusion of Chinese from them. Wu wrote an outraged note to Secretary of State John Hay in which he stated that he feared that the new Cuban Government would construe General Wood's act as indicative of American desires and thus continue the measures
93. See, e.g., NYT, 30 Apr. 1902, p. 7.
94. Wu to Hay, 19 May 1902, no. 247, “NFCL.”
95. Hay to Wu, 22 July 1902, no. 234, “NTFL.”
96. Warren I. Cohen, America's Response to China: An Interpretive History of Sino-American Relations (New York: Wiley, 1971), p. 66ff.
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after the American occupation ended. He described Wood's actions as “taken in disregard of diplomatic practice and diplomatic comity,” and asked that the matter be brought to the attention of the President, Theodore Roosevelt. "I have so much confidence in his upright manner and his hatred of injustice," he stated, "as to believe that if the matter is laid before him he will be able to devise some means to have it rectified."97
""
In this belief, however, Wu was mistaken. Roosevelt directed his secretary to say that Wu's protest was "absurd and without any foundation in fact.' After some consideration, the State Department decided to politely acknowledge Wu's note but declined to take steps on what high officials privately referred to as the "Wood-Cuban Chinesenhetze order.”98 A very sarcastic note that Wu had written at the same time in reply to the Secretary of the Treasury was similarly ignored by Hay and his associates, “as it would do no good and would merely prolong a disagreeable wrangle.”99
In these last bitter exchanges we sense something of the limitations inherent in Wu's diplomacy. Wu hoped to be seen as a diplomat functioning in a milieu where all were peers, all members of the same social and professional elite, all dedicated to the same principles. This is indeed the code of conduct to which he had been trained as a barrister in England and a professional man in Hong Kong. And to some degree Wu's views were reciprocated by Hay and Roosevelt and other key members of the American administration with whom he dealt.
But just so far. While Wu himself may have been acceptable to the American elite as a man with whom it could readily do business and with whom it could communicate, Wu could not function in a vacuum and at each point was faced with the fact that he was a representative of a nation that was at a disadvantage-financially, militarily, and in some respects culturally—in its dealings with the imperialist world. American policy makers like Roosevelt and the American public in general were prepared to accept Chinese nationalism only in highly limited terms. Thus by the summer of 1902 when it was clear that Wu would be shortly leaving for China, Hay and Roosevelt preferred to await his successor in the hopes that he would be more amenable than Wu. The bitterness of Wu's final notes on the immigration issue was unseemly in the eyes of Hay and his colleagues; it was “undiplomatic” in the terms with which they were prepared to accept Chinese diplomacy. And so the significance of his bitterness was lost upon them; the entire issue was reduced in their perception to a mere personal wrangle between Wu and General Wood or Wu and the Treasury Department.
On the public level a similar sort of misperception occurred. To the American public, China's modernization was virtually synonymous with its westernization, and Wu could only be understandable in these terms. Two
97. Wu to Adee, 29 Aug. 1902, no. 254, “NFCL.”
98. Adee to Hay, 2 Sept. 1902. Hay, Papers.
99. Minutes by Adee and Hay on Wu to Adee, 20 Aug. 1902.
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cartoons published on the eve of Wu's departure from the United States indicate the degree of this misunderstanding. One published in the Chicago Record-Herald entitled "Scene in China After Wu Ting Fang Introduces American Methods" depicted American elevators, American-style newspapers, and American-style advertisement for "Yellow Dragon Cheroots,” an American- style lunch stand, high-rise buildings, a trolley car and other American-style objects.100 The second cartoon published in the Nashville Banner depicted Wu together with "Uncle Sam." Wu's queue was curled into ringlets spelling "western civilization,” and “Uncle Sam” admonished: “Goodbye, Wu, don't comb the ringlets out of your queue. These cartoons with their misperception of Wu and of China, when coupled with the limitations in the American willingness to come to grips with key issues in Chinese nationalism, were but ominous harbingers of the future.
"101
The weaknesses in Wu's position are more apparent in hindsight than they were to him and many other leading Chinese at that time. On the contrary, the publicity and acclaim Wu received in the American press helped his political position in China. Zhang Zhidong, Liu Kunyi and Yuan Shikai all believed that Wu was at least partly responsible for creating a relatively sympathetic American policy in China, and they were willing to follow Wu's lead in placing special reliance upon the United States to oppose the mushrooming of Russian power in Manchuria.102
By early 1902 various proposals concerning Wu were being discussed by high-level officials in Beijing. In January 1902 Zhang Zhidong memorialized to request that Wu be ordered to return to China and handle diplomatic negotiations shaping up in Shanghai for revision of China's commercial treaties. Zhang cited Wu's long experience in foreign affairs and knowledge of western law as reasons for using his skills in this fashion."
103
Soon after this, on 13 February Liu Kunyi sent a memorial to the Court resurrecting the old plan to amend the Qing law code by adding sections for new areas such as commerce and communications. He asked the Zongli Yamen's successor, the Waiwu Bu, to permit the ministers stationed abroad to collect the relevant portions of foreign legal codes for consideration.104
On 11 March Liu's memorial was approved in a decree calling for the establishment of laws covering railways, mining and commerce. The ministers abroad were ordered to gather relevant codes and statues to send to the Waiwu Bu. Liu Kunyi, Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong were ordered to select people familiar with Chinese and western law to take charge of the
100. Literary Digest 25, no. 5 (2 Aug. 1902): 122.
101. Ibid., p. 123.
102. Liu Kunyi to Zhang Zhidong and Li Hongzhang, 11 Sept. 1900 (GX 26/8/18), Liu Kunyi, Yiji, "Cables," 1:43b; Liu to Grand Council, 24 Dec. 1900 (GX 26/11/3), ibid. 1:53a. See also Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door, pp. 56–58.
103. Zhang Zhidong memorial, 10 Jan. 1902 (GX 27/12/1), Zhang Zhidong, Quanji, “Zougao,” 55:17-20.
104. Liu to Waiwu Bu, 13 Feb. 1902 (GX 28/1/6), Qingji waijiao shiliao 152:6.
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new project. These people were to be sent to Beijing to take charge of a new bureau to compile and edit the documents. 105
On 1 April Yuan Shikai memorialized for permission to have the law project handled by Wu together with Shen Jiaben. Shen, a native of Zhejiang and a jinshi of 1883, had been a secretary in the Xing Bu, or Board of Punishments, for many years and was currently its Junior Vice-President. Yuan proposed that Wu take charge of the translations and evaluations of the various foreign codes in conjunction with a team of Japanese legal specialists who might provide advice when needed. Shen, with his thorough familiarity with the Qing law codes, would presumably take charge of the actual revision.106 By mid-May the law reform project was well under way. On 13 May the Court issued a thoughtful decree appointing Wu and Shen to work together as Co-commissioners for Legal Revisions. The Qing code was to be updated in the light of present "circumstances” and in accord with international standards. The revised version of the code was then to be submitted to the Court for approval and eventual promulgation. This decree authorized the establishment of a new agency, the Bureau for Legal Revisions (Falu Xiuding Guan), to assume charge of the translations and revisions.107
The way was now clear for Wu to return to China and participate in the law reform project and the negotiations for treaty revisions. His prospects were even brighter when Yuan Shikai sent a secret memorial to the Throne on 25 July to recommend Wu as a man of extraordinary talents. Stressing his harmonious relations with the American Government, Yuan wrote that Wu had helped to expedite the return of Tianjin to Chinese authorities and aided in numerous other friendly acts by the United States. Yuan recommended that normal procedures be abandoned and that Wu's talents be put to immediate use.
108
Following Yuan's recommendation, Wu was granted the honorary rank of metropolitan official, fourth grade, in preparation for his return to China.109 He was returning to China in a more advantageous position politically than when he had left in 1897, and could look forward to playing a more significant role in shaping policy in China. This in itself was probably encouraging to him.
Clearly, Wu's experiences in the United States were of great importance to him, not only for the advancement of his career, but also for the new insights it gave him on the question of progress and China's role in the world of the future. While in China he would continue to work for the "opening" of China by reforming its institutions and developing its economy along
105. Decree, 11 Mar. 1902 (GX 28/2/2), Shilu 495:4556; DHL 5:4833.
106. Yuan Shikai memorial, 1 Apr. 1902 (GX 28/2/23), Yuan, Yangshouyuan 14:6-8a. On Shen Jiaben see Qing shi 6:4933.
107. Decree, 13 May 1902 (GX 28/2/23), Shilu 498:4584.
108. Yuan memorial, 25 July 1902 (GX 28/6/21), Yuan, Yangshouyuan 16:3.
109. Decree, 27 July 1902 (GX 28/6/23), Shilu 501:4616a.
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British and American lines, but he was now more than ever prepared to insist on equal terms in dealing with the imperialist world. Convinced as he was of the importance of the Confucian mission in the world, Wu would never again uncritically accept the West as the standard-bearer of culture and civilization.
5
Wu Tingfang and the New Nationalism
1902-1905
Urban Elites and the New Nationalism
The years 1902-5 saw the emergence in China of a modern nationalist movement, based in China's great cities, which developed into a major political force by the end of the decade. Mobilizing at first to counter the Russian domination of Manchuria, the new nationalist movement by 1905 was asserting itself through newly formed organizations in a variety of causes, from the recovery of railway and mining rights to the redress of inequities in U.S. policies towards Chinese immigration. The modern Chinese bourgeoisie played an important role in the development of the new nationalism as leading figures in the politically articulate public that emerged in China's major cities in the early twentieth century.
Many historians have noted the emergence of the new urban public in the first decade of the twentieth century, but there is some disagreement about the nature of this phenomenon. Many historians in the PRC view this group as the newly emergent modern bourgeoisie, born in the aftermath of the Opium War, coming to maturity in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the Chinese treaty ports and bursting upon the political stage after the Boxer episode.' Many western historians, however, are cautious in applying the term "bourgeoisie" to this new social group. Joseph Esherick prefers the term “urban reformist elite” as one that treads neutral ground between "gentry" and "bourgeoisie,” suggesting that this new social grouping was a
1. There are many recent examples of this view. Most useful have been: Zhang Kaiyuan, “Xinhai Geming yu Jiang-Zhe zichan jieji,” in Jinian Xinhai Geming qishi zhounian xueshu taolunhui wenji, ed. Zhonghua Shuju bianji bu (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 1:242–82; Ding Richu, “Xinhai Geming qian de Shanghai zibenjia jieji,” ibid., pp. 281–321; Zhang Guohui, “Xinhai geming qian Zhongguo ziben zhuyi de fazhan,” ibid., pp. 184–218; Fan Baichuan, “Ershi shiji chuqi Zhongguo ziben zhuyi fazhan de gaikuang yu tedian,” Lishi yanjiu, 1983, no. 4: 11–24.
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little bit of both while not really either one.2 In her essay on social change in the late Qing, Marianne Bastid-Bruguiere describes the emergence of a new urban elite in China's major cities by the early twentieth century, composed of propertied people of various sorts: urbanized gentry and landlords, retired officials, compradors, merchants, industrialists and a host of others. This modern elite "displayed many bourgeois characteristics, but they were still too bound by traditional economic and social forms to be called a bourgeoisie. Only during the last five years of the monarchy did a truly bourgeois class begin to emerge, that is, a group of modern or semi-modern entrepreneurs, tradesmen, financiers and industrial leaders, unified by material interests, common political aspirations, a sense of their collective destiny, a common mentality, and specific daily habits."3
Whether one defines this group as bourgeoisie, emergent bourgeoisie, or hybrid elite with bourgeois leanings, it is clear that it played an important role in the late Qing political arena. It was willing to support the Qing state when the latter satisfied its needs and was increasingly critical of it when it could not. “Liberal” rather than “revolutionary,” it supported reforms aimed at greater autonomy, and when these proved impossible during the last years of the ancien régime, its members increasingly were supportive of revolution to depose the Qing rulers.
In this chapter we will examine Wu Tingfang's relationship to this new social and political force. He had close ties to it, and as an official of mercantile background, he exemplified its hybrid nature. His social connections and business interests brought him into close contact with it, and he renewed these contacts during extended leaves from official duty when he resided in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Guangzhou.1 While in office he promoted many of the new elite's goals to the best of his ability. Understanding his role in late Qing politics helps to clarify the relationship between the modern urban elite and the Qing polity.
Earlier, when we examined Wu Tingfang's role in Li Hongzhang's mufu of the 1880s, we noted that the modern foreign affairs officials were one of the key links between the modern bourgeoisie and Qing officialdom. We considered Wu as a member of the first generation of modern foreign affairs officials. As was true for Li Hongzhang's administration, modern foreign affairs officials were also needed by the central government when it set about, as it did after the Boxer catastrophe, to modernize its foreign relations and promote reform. With his background in law, diplomacy and railway
2. Joseph W. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 66–67. See also Ernest P. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai: Liberalism and Dictatorship in Early Republican China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977), pp. 9–13; John H. Fincher, Chinese Democracy: The Self-Government Movement in Local, Provincial and National Politics, 1905–1914 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), pp. 37–46; Edward [J. M.] Rhoads, “Two Cheers for 1911,” Modern China 5, no. 1 (Jan. 1979): 127–36. 3. Bastid-Bruguiere, “Currents of Social Change," pp. 558–59.
4. On the significance of officials' leaves of absence, see Fincher, Chinese Democracy, p. 32.
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management, Wu was able to play an important role in several areas of late Qing politics: in addition to diplomacy, he played a major role in the Qing state's efforts to stimulate commerce and industry and to promote law reform. The positions Wu held from 1902 to 1911 indicate the range of his activities as a high level foreign affairs official:
Co-Commissioner (with Shen Jiaben), Revision of Law Codes, 13 May
1902-12 May 1906;
Co-Commissioner (with Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong, Sheng Xuanhuai and Lu Haihuan [1840–1927]), Revision of Commercial Treaties, 26 Oct. 1902-7 Sept. 1903;
7
Junior Councillor, Foreign Ministry, 28 May–7 Sept. 1903; Senior Vice-President, Board of Commerce, 7 Sept. 1903–14 Jan. 1904; Junior Vice-President, Foreign Ministry, 14 Jan. 1904-10 Feb. 1906; Junior Vice-President, Board of Punishments, 10 Feb.−12 May 1906; Co-Director (with Zhang Bishi [1840-1916]) of the Guangdong Yue-
Han Railway, Apr.-May 1907;
Minister to the U.S., Mexico, Peru and Cuba, 23 Sept. 1907-13 Aug.
1909.5
Wu sought to use his positions to express strongly held nationalist convictions, through his diplomatic activities and reform proposals, and when appropriate, by mobilizing the strength of public opinion, that is, the modern urban elite, in support of specific policies.
In considering Wu's role as a foreign affairs official in the late Qing, it is instructive to compare his career with that of Tang Shaoyi, who might more properly be described as Wu's rival rather than his colleague. Born in 1860 (compared to Wu's 1842), Tang came from a similar social background to Wu. A native of Xiangshan district in Guangdong, Tang was the nephew of Wu's former associate Tang Tingshu and a member of the famous Chinese Education Mission to the United States of the 1870s, where he studied in Connecticut and then at Columbia University and New York University before returning to China when the CEM was ended.
6
In addition to similar social background, Tang and Wu both shared an approach to foreign affairs marked by modern nationalism, as Louis T. Sigel's study of Tang's political career indicates.' But in spite of these similarities, the differences are also noteworthy.
Most important is the fact that Tang Shaoyi was an intimate associate of Yuan Shikai and a cornerstone of Yuan's political power. Tang became part of Yuan's inner circle in the 1880s when Yuan was "Resident General" in
5. Titles and dates of appointment from Shilu.
6. Sigel, "T'ang Shao-yi”.
7. Ibid. See also Lee En-han, “T’ang Shao-yi: Diplomat and Politician of Late Ch'ing China,” Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica 4, part 1 (1973): 53–126.
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Korea and subsequently served as Yuan's major foreign affairs official when the latter was Governor of Shandong (1899–1902), then Customs Daotai at Tianjin when Yuan became Governor-General of Zhili Province in 1902. As Yuan's national political influence expanded, Tang's did too; when Yuan's national power contracted, so did that of Tang. Moreover, Tang developed his own political machine under Yuan's patronage. Known as the Communications clique or sometimes as the "Cantonese clique,” the most important figure in this network was Liang Shiyi. Under Tang's leadership the group took control of railways, telegraphs and other enterprises on behalf of Yuan Shikai. Under the Qing Tang reached his peak of political influence during the years 1905-8. He replaced Wu as Junior Vice-President in the Waiwu Bu in 1906 and then was appointed President of the newly created Ministry of Posts and Communications (Youchuan Bu) in 1906. In this capacity he succeeded in wresting control of railways from Sheng Xuanhuai. In the following year he was appointed Governor of newly created Fengtian Province, a post he held until he and his patron fell from power after the death of the Empress Dowager in 1908.8
By contrast, Wu was a loner. His main patron, Li Hongzhang, had died in 1901. Zhang Yinhuan, who might have served that role, had been driven into exile during the Boxer Uprising, where he died. Similarly, Liu Kunyi, with whom he had had a long relationship, died in 1902. While Wu had good relations (at least initially) with Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong, the two most important regionally based officials of the late Qing period, he was not close to them in the way he had been to Li Hongzhang and Zhang Yinhuan.
Nor did Wu develop a network of intimate subordinates, as did Tang Shaoyi. Of the three foreign trained Chinese who played important roles in Li's mufu, only Wu survived to play an active political role in the twentieth century. (Ma Jianzhong, retired since the Sino-Japanese War, died in 1900, and Luo Fenglu died in 1903 after a lingering illness.) While there is some evidence that Wu tried to recruit able persons to serve under him, he was not powerful enough to dispense patronage.
This suggests that modern foreign affairs officials of bourgeois background could only function effectively when they enjoyed the patronage of powerful officials such as Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong or Yuan Shikai and could not constitute an independent political force within the late Qing political arena. In the sections that follow, we shall see how Wu's role in the late Qing reform movement promoted the goals of the emergent bourgeoisie in China and how in turn the nationalist policies that he and others employed created new political circumstances making it more difficult for him to function as a Qing foreign affairs official. These difficulties led to a gradual loss of influence and great ambivalence towards the Qing regime.
8. On the Communications clique in the late Qing see Stephen R. MacKinnon, “Liang Shih-i and the Communications Clique,” Journal of Asian Studies 29 (1970): 581–602.
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From Shanghai to Beijing, December 1902-September 1903
141
Wu Tingfang returned to China in late December 1902, going directly to Shanghai to assume his duties as Co-Commissioner to Revise the Commercial Treaties. In September 1903 he moved to Beijing to take up his post of Senior Vice-President of the newly-formed Board of Commerce.
In many respects the two cities were poles apart: Shanghai the commercial capital and Beijing the political capital. Shanghai, with its dominating International Settlement and French Concession, was the center of foreign business influence in China and the center for the rise of the modern Chinese business community. The site of modern schools, a large student community also developed in the early twentieth century. Students and intellectuals, some writing from the relative safety of the foreign concessions, published widely on a broad range of modern subjects. Organizations such as the newly founded International Institute-Wu was a member of its advisory council-provided a cosmopolitan setting where the Chinese elite could meet with enlightened Westerners and discuss problems of mutual concern. All of these factors made the city an exciting place with perhaps the most "opened," or modern, atmosphere in China.9
As important as Shanghai was, however, it was Beijing that was to shape Wu's destiny during his first years back in China. With the high walls of the palace dominating the city of offices and officials, the atmosphere provided a sharp contrast to Shanghai, one that Wu was keenly aware of all his life." The dominant political figure was of course the Empress Dowager who ruled through a network of personally loyal key national and regional officials. Upon the death of Ronglu in March 1903, Prince Qing (Yikuang) became the key figure in the central government. While undoubtedly a capable administrator, he was unfortunately also notoriously fond of money and expensive gifts which those seeking his patronage found it necessary to provide, and he consequently amassed a large personal fortune during his years as high official. This weakness established a tone of corruption and decadence that made him a perfect foil for critics of the Qing, and it created an atmosphere that many officials, both traditional as well as foreign trained, found distasteful. It also appeared to verify the already prevalent contemptuous attitudes among Westerners towards Chinese politics."1
9. The Shanghai atmosphere is described in Mary Backus Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), chaps. 2–4. On Wu and the International Institute see NCH, 30 Apr. 1903, pp. 855–59; 14 Aug. 1903, p. 336.
10. Wu believed that Beijing's qi or atmosphere produced a stultifying conservatism. See Wu's Yanshou xinfa, p. 20. See also his warning about Beijing's atmosphere to U.S. Minister Paul Reinsch, in Paul S. Reinsch, An American Diplomat in China (New York: Doubleday, 1922), p. 9. 11. On Prince Qing's reputation see Shen Yunlong, “Zhangwo wanQing zhangbing zhi Yikuang," in his findai zhengzhi renuu shuping 2:70–80. See also Morrison to Bland, 1 Feb. 1902; Morrison to Chirol, 7 July 1902, Morrison, Correspondence 1:177, 198. On Westerners' stereotypes of Chinese political corruption, see Jerome Chen, China and the West: Society and Culture, 1815-1937 (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1979), pp. 42–43.
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Allied with Prince Qing in national politics was the rising figure of Yuan Shikai. From his position as Governor-General of Zhili Yuan began to exert political influence at a national level, at first through trusted subordinates and eventually through his own political positions.12 As part of Yuan's drive to increase his power, in late 1902 he had begun to move against Sheng Xuanhuai. Sheng held, among other positions, those of Director-General of Railways, Director-General of the Imperial Telegraph Administration and Director-General of the CMSNC. Using the pretext of Sheng's retirement to mourn the death of his father, Yuan succeeded in removing Sheng from his position in the telegraph agency, placing his subordinate Wu Zhongxi in charge there, and then used the anti-Sheng bloc of shareholders in the CMSNC headed by Xu Run to unseat Sheng from his position of dominance there. Xu and Yang Shiqi, the latter a trusted intimate of Yuan's, assumed control of the Company until Yuan's fall from power in 1908.13
These dynamics played an important role in Wu Tingfang's political life after his return to China. The support of Yuan Shikai and Prince Qing was an essential ingredient in his career at that stage. As noted above in Chapter 4, Yuan recommended Wu to the Court in April 1902 as a suitable figure to handle law reform together with Shen Jiaben, and then secretly memorialized in July 1902 recommending Wu as an exceptionally talented person who should be suitably entrusted with responsibility by the Court.14
Wu's return to China coincided with Yuan's moves against Sheng Xuanhuai. The sources strongly suggest that Wu was willing to ally with Yuan against Sheng, although earlier Wu had been close to Sheng. In 1896 Wu had arranged for his brother-in-law He Qi to work as Sheng's secretary, although as we noted above in Chapter 3 that did not work out. Selections from published materials from the Sheng Xuanhuai Archives in Shanghai indicate that Wu and Sheng worked closely together in 1898 while negotiating the Yue-Han Railway contract (more on this later in this chapter). They apparently had an understanding that Sheng would recommend Wu to the Court as his replacement after Wu's three-year term in Washington was over, and Sheng also offered to help Wu purchase an office as metropolitan official.15
Whatever the case in 1898, however, by 1902 Wu was in Yuan's corner. He had close ties to Xu Run and the "Cantonese faction” of shareholders in the CMSNC he was a major shareholder in the Company himself—and was presumably not ill-disposed to Yuan's maneuvering against Sheng.
Wu replaced Sheng initially in the negotiations with the United States and Japan to revise their commercial treaties, although within a few months Sheng joined the team of negotiators again. These negotiations proved unexpectedly
12. MacKinnon, Power and Politics, pp. 63–66.
13. Feuerwerker, China's Early Industrialization, pp. 73–76; 120–22.
14. See Chap. 4, nn. 106, 108.
15. Sheng to Wu, 22 May 1898 (GX 24/4/3) and 25 June 1898 (GX 24/5/7), Sheng Xuanhuai, Weikan xin'gao, ed. Beijing Daxue lishixi jindaishijiao yanjiushi (Beijing: Xinhua, 1960), pp. 70, 72.
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difficult. The Chinese negotiators, who ultimately included Zhang Zhidong, Yuan Shikai, Sheng Xuanhuai, Lu Haihuan and Wu, hoped that the U.S. and Japan would be willing to use the just-negotiated Sino-British Commercial Treaty (the Mackay Treaty) as a model. In that treaty, Britain had agreed to permit China to raise the ceiling on import tariffs from 5% to 12.5% so that China could use the extra 7.5% customs revenue to meet the Boxer Indemnity payments. In exchange, China agreed to abolish the internal transit taxes on imported goods (the so-called lijin), which had long been hated by foreign businessmen. In addition, China agreed to open Changsha, Wanxian, Anqing, Huizhou and Jiangmen to British residence and trade.16
Both the U.S. representatives, however, and those of Japan, refused to use the Mackay Treaty as a model. Japan's draft called for a customs increase to only 10% and for the opening of thirteen new treaty ports. Wu was convinced that these demands were unreasonable and a show of diplomatic bluff, and should therefore be firmly rejected. A recent study of Wu's role in the late Qing reform movement by Zhang Cunwu concludes that Wu's assessment was largely correct.17
One of the factors accounting for Japan's stiffened attitude and also for a similar attitude on the part of the United States was the situation in Manchuria. In April 1903 Russia announced a postponement of its scheduled 8 October withdrawal from Manchuria. The U.S. responded by using the Shanghai negotiations to force a test of Russia's intentions. In a hasty and ill-prepared manner, the U.S. demanded that its treaty include the opening of two treaty ports in Manchuria, Mukden (Shenyang) and Dadonggou (Tatungkou), along with Beijing. When China refused to make Beijing a treaty port, the U.S. substituted Harbin, which was administered by Russia and hence not within China's power to "open," and then finally substituted Andong (Antung) for Dadonggou, thereby ending what Michael H. Hunt has termed "the farce of the Americans in search of a treaty port. "18
The demand for Manchurian treaty ports posed a problem for the Chinese negotiators and their superiors in Beijing. Public opinion in Shanghai, Guangzhou and among students and merchants overseas was strongly anti- Russian, with some proposing that China ally with Japan against Russia. But Yuan Shikai, Zhang Zhidong, Prince Qing and other leading officials in charge of foreign relations feared that approval of the Manchurian treaty ports by China would provoke Russia and embroil China in war with its northern neighbor, a war that China would almost certainly lose. They sought to get the United States to agree to a mere verbal assurance that China would
16. For a summary of these negotiations see Stanley F. Wright, China's Struggle for Tariff Autonomy, 1843–1938 (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1938), pp. 353–68.
17. Ibid., p. 382: Zhang Cunwu, “Qingmo zhengzhi gaige yundong zhong de Wu Tingfang,” in Zongtong Jiang Gong shishi zhounian jinian lunwen ji, ed. Zhongyang yanjiuyuan (Taibei, 1976), pp. 935-37.
18. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door, pp. 70–71.
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open the ports after the Russian withdrawal, but the Americans kept trying to force China to make a public stand on the treaty port issue.19
Moreover, the Chinese negotiators preferred to have these ports as "self- opened" ports rather than "treaty" ports, as they wanted to retain Chinese sovereignty in them as a step towards their goal of eventual transformation of the treaty port system. This was also very much part of Wu's outlook as we shall see below. The issue of self-opened ports as opposed to treaty ports was never fully resolved although the United States and Japan eventually did agree to a formula to open the cities after the Russian withdrawal.20
Zhang Cunwu's study cited above notes that it is difficult, given the available sources, to determine precisely what Wu's own role in these negotiations was. This is partly because memorials were issued in both the names of Wu and his fellow commissioner, Lu Haihuan, and the foreign source materials are not helpful on this score, and also because Wu and Lu were obviously not free agents in these negotiations but subject to the guidance of Zhang, Yuan and Prince Qing. Nonetheless, it is clear that Wu played an important role. The negotiations earlier between the Chinese and the British had been impaired by the difficulties in interpretation, with Wen Zongyao (b. 1875) and a host of others, including Zhang Zhidong's key English-language specialists Liang Dunyan and Gu Hongming, assisting in the translation. Wu's ability to handle English and to prepare drafts in Chinese and English made him invaluable in the Sino-American negotiations, as Lu and Sheng acknowledged in requesting that he remain in Shanghai to continue the negotiations in July 1903:
Although the U.S. treaty is progressing smoothly, there are still issues that have to be pressed for in negotiation; as Wu Tingfang has been the original negotiator it is appropriate for him to handle it from start to finish. Moreover, for western language [negotiations] we need Wu Tingfang to manage personally in order to achieve the best results.21
This request was made in response to developments concerning Wu in Beijing. On 22 April 1903, the Court issued an edict acknowledging the importance of economic development as part of an overall plan for national reform. In response to a memorial by Zaizhen, the Court had already agreed to establish a Board of Commerce (Shang Bu); now Zaizhen, Yuan Shikai and Wu Tingfang were ordered to establish a code of commercial law. Following the Court's approval of the new law code, officials would be appointed to establish
19. Ibid., pp. 71–72. On the public's response see Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries, pp. 75–77; Zhang Kaiyuan, “Xinhai Geming yu Jiang-Zhe zichan jieji,” pp. 263–64.
20. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door, pp. 74–76.
21. From Lu Haihuan, 17 June 1903 (GX 29/5/22), “Cables received,” China, Foreign Ministry, Waijiao dang'an, cited in Zhang Cunwu, “Qingmo zhengzhi gaige yundong zhong de Wu Tingfang,” p. 935. See also memorial of Zhang Zhidong, Lu Haihuan and Sheng Xuanhuai of 24 Sept. 1903 (GX 29/8/4), Qingji waijiao shiliao 166:19.
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the new ministry. Zaizhen, Yuan and Wu were instructed to deliberate on the nature of the new ministry and develop guidelines for it.22
This was a very important charge indeed, and one dear to Wu's heart. Zaizhen was the eldest son of Prince Qing. He had headed a special mission to England in 1902 to attend the coronation of King Edward. His brief trip abroad and contact with his foreign educated attachés, Liang Cheng and three other former CEM students, had inspired him to suggest a variety of reforms, of which this proposal was one. Obviously well intentioned and well connected through his father, Zaizhen was nonetheless inexperienced. He was also something of a playboy and his entertainments were later to give fuel to those who disapproved of the Shang Bu.23
Given Zaizhen's inexperience and Yuan Shikai's numerous other duties and responsibilities, it is understandable that Wu Tingfang came to play the major role in shaping the Shang Bu. In spring 1903, while engaged in the negotiations with the Japanese and U.S. treaty representatives, Wu and Zaizhen began a correspondence on the subject of the new ministry, with agreement that it would delay matters too much to wait until the commercial law code was developed before establishing the Board,24
But the question of Wu's own status was unsettled. On 28 May an edict was issued appointing Wu Junior Councillor in the Waiwu Bu. This was a low- ranking appointment that was in fact unsuitable, given Wu's experience and reputation in diplomacy, and which may even be viewed as insulting. Evidence is only circumstantial, but Wu was probably offended at the low level appointment; certainly he did not accept it and refused to go to Beijing and take it up when he was ordered to come to Beijing in June 1903 and continue the treaty negotiations there. Not only did the U.S. object to continuing negotiations in Beijing, but neither was Wu making any efforts to transfer the negotiation site to the capital. On 18 June, just six days after being ordered to come to the capital to continue negotiations there, Wu received a second edict ordering him to continue the negotiations in Shanghai and to proceed to Beijing when they were completed,25
By summer 1903 the negotiations with the U.S. had stalemated over the question of the Manchurian treaty ports. In May Wu and Lu had proposed
22. Shilu 514:4726b; DHL 5:5013–14.
23. Qian Shifu, Qingdai zhiguan nianbiao 4:3015. On the other CEM students in his entourage see NCH, 26 Feb. 1902, p. 392. On Zaizhen's scandalous behavior (“gambling and whoring”) see Hart to Campbell, 11 May, 20 July, 4 Aug. 1902, Sir Robert Hart, The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868–1907, ed. John King Fairbank et al., with an Introduction by I.. K. Little (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 2:1312, 1320, 1323. See also Zaizhen's record of his travels, Zaizhen and Tang Wenzhi, Yingzhao riji (1903; reprint, Taibei: Wenhai, 1971). 24. Wellington Chan, Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise, p. 165.
25. Shilu 515:4737a; 516:4742a, 4745a. Foreign comments ranged from “Wu's ability ignored," (30 May 1903, p. 3) to views that this appointment was necessary for Wu to receive higher appointment in the future (NCH, 28 May 1903, p. 1071; Conger to Hay, 2 June 1903, no. 1302, "MCD."
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that the Court take the initiative in the matter by directly asking Russia if it had objections to opening the treaty ports in Manchuria. If Russia said yes, then the Waiwu Bu could tell the Americans to deal directly with them instead of using China as their buffer, and if Russia said that it did not object, then China could seize the initiative by opening the two ports itself and resolving the situation.26 As the Russians had privately made it very clear to Prince Qing and Lianfang (the latter being Senior Vice-President in the Waiwu Bu) that they did indeed object to the opening of the new treaty ports, the Prince and Lianfang chose to ignore Wu and Lu's suggestion and use a variety of delaying tactics instead. These tactics upset the Americans, some of whom became convinced that Prince Qing and others were in collusion with the Russians. These views were echoed by radical critics in Shanghai, whose publications strongly suggested that Prince Qing had been bribed by the Russians.27
Wu and Lu's plan indicates that they would have liked the Court to be bolder in formulating policy than it proved to be. Similarly, they wanted the Court to be more assertive in moves to restore China's sovereignty in the treaty ports. The incident that brought this issue to the fore was the famous Su Bao Case of 1902, when Zhang Binglin (1868–1936) and Zou Rong (d. 1905), publishers of a violently anti-Manchu newspaper, were arrested in the Shanghai International Settlement. The Qing Government unsuccessfully attempted to have Zhang and Zou extradited and tried under its jurisdiction. On several occasions Wu was approached and asked to help in the negotiations for their extradition, but Wu did not comply.28
Y. C. Wang is certainly correct in suggesting that Wu (and Lu) were reluctant in part because they did not believe extradition was likely and also because they disapproved of harsh measures against radical intellectuals.29 In fact, while Minister to the United States, etc., Wu had managed to find indirect ways to help Liang Qichao escape capture by Qing authorities, and while Wu was certainly not associated with any of the radical groups, he was not unsympathetic to many of their views.30 But it is noteworthy that Wu and Lu responded to the Su Bao Case by memorializing the Court proposing
26. Hunt, Frontier Defense and the Open Door, n. 58, pp. 73-74.
27. See, e.g., Guomin riri bao huibian, 1903–1904, no. 1 (1903). On U.S. belief in Chinese collusion with Russia see Hay to Rockhill, 24 July 1903, William W. Rockhill, Papers (Harvard University). See also Hunt, p. 73.
28. Jin Ding to Duanfang, 16 July 1903 (GX 29/int.5/22); Duanfang to Wei Guangtao, 17 July 1903 (GX 29/int.5/23), Xinhai Geming, ed. Zhongguo shixue hui (Shanghai: Renmin, 1957) 1:425– 26, 466. On the Su Bao Case see Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries, pp. 70–193; Michael Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911 (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1969), pp. 37-42; J. Lust, "The Su-pao Case: An Episode in the Early Nationalist Movement,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 27, part 2 (1964): 408–29; Y. C. Wang, "The Su- Pao Case: A Study of Foreign Pressure, Intellectual Fermentation, and Dynastic Decline,” Monumenta Serica 24 (1965): 102–212.
29. Y. C. Wang, “The Su-Pao Case,” p. 128.
30. Ding Wenjiang, Liang Rengong xiansheng nianpu 1:101.
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reforms in the administration of the Shanghai Mixed Court aimed at the restoration of Chinese sovereignty. In contrast to the radicals, Wu accepted the Qing state as a viable symbol of national sovereignty and would try to use it as a vehicle to protect China's sovereignty as long as possible.31
Having rejected the post of Junior Councillor in the Waiwu Bu, Wu was aiming for a more substantive position in the Shang Bu. Staffing of the new bureau was the subject of much maneuvering by people hoping for an appointment in it. Of these, the most important was Sheng Xuanhuai, who was certainly the most qualified person available in view of his control of railways and long experience in a variety of industrial and commercial enterprises. But he was frozen out of the Shang Bu, it is clear, because of the struggle he was engaged in with Yuan Shikai for control of China's modern industrial sector. The Shang Bu was to be Yuan's tool in the struggle. As Sheng's confidant in Beijing, Tao Xiang, wrote him in July 1903:
On the various matters concerning the establishment of the Shang Bu, it's not necessary to go into detail. I recently heard that its regulations have been considered and they are planning to go ahead with its implementation. There has been a lot of speculation that Prince Qing will appoint Zixu [Wu Tingfang] as [Junior] Vice-President. No matter how much service to a superior [baoxiao] Qujiang [Zhang Yintang] does, he absolutely cannot suddenly rise to the level of Vice-President. Earlier he was given the title of "Special Deputy" [chaiwei]; probably he continued to provide service [baoxiao] some more, then received [the position of] Junior Councillor [in the Waiwu Bu]. It is surmised that Chunyang [Lu Haihuan] is to be President. But as [negotiations for] the commercial treaties are to be under the Shang Bu and the negotiators to be rewarded with positions in the Shang Bu, if Chunyang is to be President and Zixu [Junior] Vice-President, the [position of] Senior Vice-President is still unaccounted for. Perhaps it is destined for [Sheng] Gongbao? I have heard foreigners say that of high officials who thoroughly understand commercial matters, there is only [Sheng] Gongbao. Chunyang is very mild mannered and not too sharp. Zixu is closer but still not first-rate. The edict to continue negotiating the treaties stems from this. To establish the Shang Bu and not make suitable appointments is truly unreasonable.... For the Government to entrust the Shang [Bu] to Wu and not call upon [Sheng] Gongbao will give rise to a lot of suspicion and really raise eyebrows!32
Wu's appointment as Senior Vice-President to the Shang Bu, which was formally made on 7 September, was the result of two phenomena. The first was Wu's own hard work in sketching out in correspondence with Zaizhen
31. Wu and Lu memorial, 29 July 1903 (GX 29/6/4), Qingji waijiao shiliao 173:10–12.
32. Tao Xiang to Sheng Xuanhuai, July 1903 (GX 29/6), Sheng Xuanhuai, Xinhai Geming qianhou: Sheng Xuanhuai dang'an ziliao xuanji zhi yi, ed. Chen Xulu, Gu Tinglung, and Wang Xi (Shanghai: Renmin, 1979), p. 2.
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and Yuan the scope of the Shang Bu's activities and beginning work on the development of a code of commercial law. The second was that he was a suitable substitute for Sheng Xuanhuai, who was not acceptable to Yuan Shikai for reasons outlined above. A combination of his own talents and political connections, then, made possible his move to Beijing in fall 1903 under relatively auspicious circumstances, but as we shall see below, within less than a year he was ready to leave official life altogether.
Beijing and Shanghai, September 1903-September 1904
The Shang Bu was formally established on 26 September 1903 after a summer of deliberation involving a number of high national and regional officials, and reportedly rushed into implementation before all of the issues involved had been fully resolved because of the Empress Dowager's impatience. 33
As conceptualized by Wu, Zaizhen and Yuan Shikai, the Shang Bu had a
very
broad scope, as its organizational structure indicates. It was divided into four main departments as follows:
1. The Department of Trade: management of commerce, commercial schools,
granting monopolies, awarding patents, protection of merchants
2. The Department of Agriculture and Forestry: land utilization, reclamation,
farming, sericulture, pisciculture and forests
3. The Department of Industry: management of all industrial projects,
including railways, steamships, mining and roads
4. The Department of Auditing: handling taxation, revenue, banking, currency, trade and industrial fairs, standardization of weights and measures, arbitrating disputes involving commerce and industry34
This was a very ambitiously designed agency in several ways. As Wellington K. K. Chan has noted, the scope of jurisdiction claimed by the Shang Bu was bound to conflict with several existing bureaus and offices, such as the Board of Finance (Hu Bu), the Maritime Customs (under the Waiwu Bu), the commissioners for the trade of northern and southern ports, commissioners for commercial negotiations, and the directorship of the railway system.
35
In part the grandiose structure reflected Wu's desire to create a truly new and modern agency that could bypass the existing bureaucratic structures and effect a highly centralized reform effort. This intent was also symbolized by the modern regulations Wu implemented. Gatekeepers were prohibited from taking bribes as entrance fees, and the staff was to be paid on a new and higher scale. In fact, as Wellington Chan notes, “the whole tone of the new
33. Wellington Chan, Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise, p. 165.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.,
pp. 166-67.
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ministry, its style, and organization emphasized its new departure from the traditional structure."36
Wu's intent was also shared by Zhang Bishi (Zhang Zhenxun), the other key person to have input into the Court's plans to stimulate economic development. Zhang was an overseas Chinese millionaire who invested in several enterprises in China. In summer 1903 he was received in audience by the Empress Dowager, where he received an honorary title of Vice-President in the Shang Bu in exchange for a contribution of 200,000 taels to develop a commercial school to be run by the new agency. During his audience he presented an outline, which he subsequently fleshed out, for an expanded role for the Shang Bu as the overarching agency to conduct reforms stimulating economic development.37
During fall 1903 the Shang Bu presented a variety of proposals for reforms to the Throne. These included plans to publish a newspaper, to prohibit local officials from harassing merchants, especially overseas Chinese merchants, to establish procedures to handle commercial litigation, to stimulate agriculture by opening up new lands for cultivation, to develop a livestock industry, to establish agronomy schools, and to develop new regulations governing railways and mines.38
Especially important was Wu's work in developing a code of commercial law, which was vitally necessary to the success of the government's efforts. He had done some of the drafting while in Shanghai and circulated these sections to Chen Bi (1852-1928), the Board's Junior Vice-President, for his appraisal.39 The new code, which received Imperial approval on 29 December 1903 and was promulgated early in 1904, contained 131 articles in eleven sections and reflected the influence of Wu's British legal training. The law's first section contained definitions of commercial enterprises, recognizing partnerships, limited partnerships, joint stock companies and limited joint stock companies as the four major categories. The third section spelled out the rights and duties of shareholders, and the fourth and fifth dealt with management and accountability, respectively. The sixth dealt with the managers' meetings, the seventh with shareholders' meetings, the eighth with accounting, and the ninth, tenth and eleventh with company regulations, closure, and sanctions, respectively, 40
36. Ibid., p. 168.
37. Godley, Mandarin-Capitalists from Nanyang, chaps. 4-5. See also Boorman, Biographical Dictionary 1: 90–92.
38. DHL 5:5102–3; 5104–5; 5115; 5122; Zhang Cunwu, “Qingmo zhengzhi gaige yundong zhong de Wu Tingfang,” pp. 938–39. Sir Robert Hart expressed some concern to the Shang Bu officials about the broad range of activities being undertaken, but in general was very enthusiastic about the new board. See Hart to Campbell, 4 Oct. 1903, Hart, The I.G. in Peking, 2:1373. See also letter of 25 Oct. 1903, 2:1376.
39. See Zhang Cunwu, “Qingmo zhengzhi gaige yundong zhong de Wu Tingfang,” p. 940. Wu and Lu Haihuan also proposed establishing patent laws at this time. See Qingji waijiao shiliao 173:9–10. 40. Zhang Cunwu, “Qingmo zhengzhi gaige yundong zhong de Wu Tingfang,” p. 941; Tseng Yu- hao, Modern Chinese Legal and Political Philosophy (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1930), p. 197.
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Although this company law had several drawbacks reflecting the speed with which it was drawn up, it was nonetheless an important accomplishment. It provided the bourgeoisie with a legal framework essential to its continued operation and sanctioned and granted legitimacy to its activities in a way that the traditional legal structure could not. As Fan Baichuan has recently observed, the flourishing of the bourgeoisie during the period 1904-8 was made possible by the fact that it had obtained rights enabling it to function legitimately and with relative freedom. The new law code was an important part of that new status.4
41
In his study of the merchantry and the Qing Government, Wellington Chan writes that the haste with which the Shang Bu was established and the inevitable conflicting claims of jurisdiction that resulted, as well as problems of inadequate funding, led to immediate problems for the new ministry that seriously hampered its effectiveness. (By November 1903 Zaizhen was denounced by a censor for unseemly behavior in a Beijing pleasure house, but he weathered the storm.) But it is also important to remember, as Fan Baichuan reminds us, that the Board's activities were an important factor in the rise of the bourgeoisie from 1904 on.42
A little over two weeks after Wu obtained Imperial approval for the commercial code, on 14 January 1904, he was suddenly transferred to the position of Junior Vice-President in the Waiwu Bu. The reasons for this remain in the realm of speculation. Zhang Cunwu suggests that Wu's demotion may have been due to the deficiencies in the code of commercial law. (In 1906 amendments were added to it, and in 1908 plans were made to have Japanese advisers draft a new one. In 1914 it was scrapped in favor of a new code as impractical and imprecise.) But it seems unlikely to me that these problems in the code should have been so immediately apparent to the
Court.
Rather, I think the explanation for Wu's transfer lies with a combination of other factors having to do with the question of who should control the Shang Bu. The problem arose immediately over the question of staffing the subordinate positions of Senior and Junior Councillor (cheng) and Senior and Junior Secretary (can). On 1 October an edict declared Xu Shichang (1855– 1939) as Senior Councillor and Tang Wenzhi (1865-1954) as Junior Councillor. On the same day, Shaoying was appointed Senior Secretary and Wang Qingmu (1860-1941) Junior Secretary.43
Xu Shichang was, according to Steven R. MacKinnon, probably Yuan Shikai's oldest friend and closest associate. A jinshi of 1886 and compiler of the Hanlin Academy, Xu had also been commander-in-chief of the Newly Created Army (Xinjian Lujun) under Yuan from 1896 to 1898, and an
41. Fan Baichuan, “Ershi shiji chuqi Zhongguo ziben zhuyi fazhan,” pp. 11, 12.
42. Ibid.; Wellington Chan, Merchants, Mandarins, and Modern Enterprise, pp. 165–68. On the denunciation of Zaizhen, see DHL 5:5101.
43. DHL 5:5119; Qian Shifu, Qingdai zhiguan nianbiao 6:3066, 3076.
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important liaison person for Yuan with the Court in Beijing. The position of Senior Councillor in the Shang Bu was an entry level position in the central government for Xu, who soon was appointed grand secretary and member of the Military Reorganization Council. In 1905 he was appointed, in addition, grand councillor, member of the Government Affairs Bureau, and vice- president of the Board of War. His appointment to the post of Senior Councillor of the Shang Bu was due to his intimate relationship with Yuan Shikai and also to his own competence, which was never in question."
44
There is less information available about the other appointees. The Junior Councillor, Tang Wenzhi, a native of Jiangsu Province, was a jinshi of 1892 who had served in the Zongli Yamen from 1896 to 1902, when he accompanied Zaizhen on his tour of Europe as a member of his suite. When Xu Shichang left the Shang Bu in December 1903, Tang moved up to the position of Senior Councillor and remained in that position until February 1906, when he was transferred to the new Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce (Nonggongshang Bu) as its Senior Vice-President before resigning upon his mother's death. He later had a career as a distinguished educational administrator in his native Jiangsu. He seems to have been a perfectly capable staff member.45
As to the other appointees to the lower ranking secretary posts, Shaoying and Wang Qingmu, less is known. Shaoying was a Manchu who was transferred to Junior Councillor in December 1903 when Xu left and Tang moved up. In 1905 he was appointed a member of the Commission to Investigate Constitutions Abroad and served as Senior Vice-President in the new Ministry of Finance (Duzhi Bu) from 1906 until the revolution of 1911.46 Wang Qingmu was a fellow provincial of Tang Wenzhi, and a jinshi of 1890. Along with Tang, with whom he appears to have had a close relationship, Wang had served in a clerical position in the Zongli Yamen for several years before his appointment in the Shang Bu. In December he moved up to Senior Secretary in the Shang Bu and stayed in that position until February 1906, when he moved up to that of Junior Councillor. Later in that year he was appointed Judicial Commissioner of Zhili Province but was forced to resign due to illness. He was active in the railway rights recovery movement in Jiangsu after 1907 as a leader in the company formed to rival the British concession for the Shanghai-Nanjing Line."
47
44. MacKinnon, Power and Politics, pp. 75–76.
45. See C. Y. Tang, “T’ang Wen-chih, Statesman and Educator,” Tien Hsia Monthly 5, no. 1 (Aug. 1937): 19–26. See also Tang Wenzhi, Rujing xiansheng ziding nianpu (reprint, Taibei: Wenhai, 1974.). 46. Qian Shifu, Qingdai zhiguan nianbiao 4:3059–64, 3066–67; Wei Xiumei, Qingji zhiguan biao 2:188.