RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 24 RICHARD J. SMITH phasized that it would “not be necessary to teach many commanders": 52 but he did encourage Li to establish a "public office" (kung-so) as soon as possible to provide systematic instruction for Chinese soldiers under German supervision.53 The immediate incentive was three-fold: the military demands of Sino-French conflict, the support of other Anhwei Army commanders, and the presence of a core group of capable German instructors,54 Li's initial proposal for a military academy (Wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang) at Tientsin was quite modest. In part because of financial limitations, but also because of military exigency (and perhaps in deference to Chou), Li decided to train about one hundred petty officers and troops (pien-ping) selected from the Anhwei Army and lien-chün units, as well as some civil personnel (wen-yuan) who were "willing to learn about military affairs." The simplified curriculum, taught by German officers with the aid of Chinese interpreters, consisted of astronomy, geography, science, surveying, drafting, mathematics, fortifications, and military drill and operations. Li expected the students to complete their education in one year (it actually took two), after which time they would return to their original units to transmit the newly-acquired information to their comrades.55 In all, about 1,500 "cadets" were probably trained in this fashion from 1885 to 1900. Most served only as instructors, however; few became ranking officers. On the whole they were neither given authority nor esteemed by their older colleagues and superiors.56 In the spring of 1887, Li added a five-year program to the Tientsin Military Academy. In contrast to the short course, this program aimed at producing officers. Stringent requirements were imposed on the applicants, who ranged in age from thirteen to sixteen.57 Forty students were accepted at first. Each had to guarantee to study for five full years without asking for leave, taking the civil service examinations, or getting married. The five-year course of study was comparatively demanding. During the first three years, the students took a foreign language (German or English), arithmetic, algebra, geometry, mechanics, astronomy, natural science, geography, map-making, and, of course, Chinese history and the Classics. During the last two years, they studied gunnery, military drill, fortifications, and other technical subjects. Periodic examinations determined class standing, and provided the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895 25 basis for progress reports to the throne.58 In 1890, a specialized program of instruction in railroad engineering was introduced, although no information exists on the total number of students involved.59 Periodically, students from the Tientsin Military Academy were sent to Port Arthur and Shan-hai-kuan for practical training in infantry, cavalry, and artillery units.60 In addition, cadets at the school occasionally gained actual battle experience, notably in 1891 against rebel forces at Jehol and elsewhere. According to Li Hung-chang, the experiment was quite successful.61 Only one group of Tientsin academy cadets went abroad: In 1889, Li sent Tuan Ch'i-jui, Wu Ting-yüan, Shang Te-ch'üan, Kung Ch'ing-t'ang, and T'eng Yü-tsao to Germany for advanced study. After a year of military academy instruction in Berlin combined with advanced training at the Krupp gunworks in Essen, the students returned to China.62 Like the Tientsin Naval Academy, established by Li in 1880, the Tientsin Military Academy was financed by the shrinking Pei-yang maritime defense account.63 In all, the money was reasonably well-spent, but, as Wang Chia-chien has indicated, the academy suffered from a variety of administrative, financial, and other problems (including difficulties with foreign employees), many of which also plagued the few other military and naval training facilities of the period.64 Nonetheless, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, China appeared to have built a respectable military and naval organization. In fact, when conflict between China and Japan seemed likely, most Westerners gave the strategic edge to China.65 But the illusion of China's superiority on land and sea was quickly shattered by Japan's rapid drive into Korea, Manchuria, and China Proper. Judiciously combining land and sea operations, the Japanese completely overwhelmed the diverse Chinese military forces sent to resist them.66 Throughout the war, reports from British, French, and other foreign observers repeatedly praised the Japanese for their able strategy and tactics, effective training, tight discipline, valor, esprit de corps, and the excellence of their support facilities. No such praise was forthcoming for China.67 The Sino-Japanese War illustrated with striking clarity the bankruptcy of China's "self-strengthening" movement. In almost every respect, Japan's strengths during the conflict were China's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 30 RICHARD J. SMITH they are fierce and they can fight. But Chinese women have bound feet, and are too weak even to bear the weight of their own clothes.98 99 Nowhere was the burst of patriotic sentiment and the impulse to reform more obvious than in military affairs. In the years from 1895 to 1898, a spate of memorials on the question of military change reached Peking. Many dealt with the problem of military education. Chang Chih-tung, in particular, became an ardent advocate of military schools as a means of improving the Chinese army. Chang and others also put forward additional reform proposals touching on a wide range of pressing military problems. A number of officials agitated for the elimination of corruption, incompetence, and nepotism in Chinese military forces. Others suggested revisions in the traditional military examinations. Still others proposed drastic cuts in the Green Standard army and the reinvigoration of the degenerate Eight Banners. Not all of these proposals bore immediate fruit, but together they indicated a heightened awareness on the part of many of the need for basic military reform.100 The Sino-Japanese War had begun to teach its lessons. In the post-war era, the Chinese navy no longer occupied a position of prominence. Limited and largely uncoordinated efforts were still made by various provincial officials to acquire modern vessels and other types of naval material, but only about half of the naval academies established in China prior to 1895 survived past the first decade of the twentieth century. By contrast, Chinese military schools and academies grew rapidly during the late 1890's and especially the early 1900's.101 This demonstrated interest in military education suggests a new attitude toward the profession of arms, inspired by rising Chinese nationalism. To be sure, ingrained prejudices did not disappear overnight—especially since the civil service examinations continued to offer an almost irresistibly attractive alternative to military service. When Li Hung-chang established his long-term officers' training program at the Tientsin Military Academy in 1887, he was fortunate to find enough capable applicants to fill the allotted forty positions; whereas by 1896 Chang Chih-tung's announcement of the first entrance examinations for his newly-founded Hupei Military Academy attracted 4,000 applicants for only 120 positions.102 Chinese military academies, including Li's pioneering Tientsin establishment, eventually came to exert a profound influence on ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 MILITARY EDUCATION in CHINA, 1842-1895 31 Chinese society.103 The new content of military education, which emphasized technical skills and diluted traditional values and loyalties somewhat, created a new professional elite that was significantly different in outlook from even such relatively progressive (and rare) individuals as Chou Sheng-chuan.104 For all his innovativeness, Chou remained bound by the inhibiting institutional structure of the Anhwei Army as well as the limits of his own educational experience within that force. As a result, he was never able to resolve certain fundamental conflicts in his self-image, attitude, and approach toward military affairs and reform.105 One is tempted to see in Chou the tensions of becoming "modern" and remaining "Chinese" suggested by Joseph Levenson, and even a kind of nineteenth-century version of the "red versus expert" dilemma of more recent times. Although Chou obviously admired Western military organization and repeatedly solicited foreign military advice, he was also anxious to demonstrate that the Chinese yung-ying model was in many respects equivalent or superior to the Western model, and he often reacted quite defensively to foreign criticisms.106 Chou admired foreign technology (at one point maintaining that bullets were more important than rations), but he also repeatedly stressed the human factor in warfare, down-playing on occasion foreign advantages in organization and weapons, emphasizing the importance of "will" (chih-ch'i), and periodically suggesting to Li Hung-chang the utility of rapidly recruiting volunteers (i-yung) and employing them as "surprise troops" (ch'i-ping).107 Obsessed with the need for intensive drill, Chou nonetheless continually employed the Sheng-chün in non-military tasks which undoubtedly compromised its fighting effectiveness—work on military agricultural colonies (t'un-t'ien), land reclamation, flood and famine relief work, and so forth.108 Finally, although Chou seems to have considered himself to be a professional soldier, and was anxious to foster positive attitudes toward the military, he, like virtually all of his fellow officers and commanders, esteemed civil status and sought identification with the civil bureaucracy.109 The more genuinely professional education provided by the Tientsin Military Academy after Chou's death helped resolve some of the tensions that seem to have plagued Chou.110 Certainly, it allowed the many Tientsin-trained commanders in Yüan Shih-k'ai's Peiyang Army to accept more readily the modern principle and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 32 RICHARD J. SMITH practice of "interchangeable commanders"--a striking departure from the personalistic command structure of yung-ying armies such as Chou's. Moreover, the Tientsin academy provided a large pool of new talent for modernizing purposes, men whose "careers were grounded in change" and whose "qualifying education and . . . prominence were owed to reform."112 Many Tientsin Military Academy graduates became instructors in other military schools established after 1895;113 several prominent engineers were produced by the academy;114 and of course many of the most famous political and military leaders of the early Republic—including Tuan Ch'i-jui, Feng Juo-chang, Wang Shih-chen, Ts'ao K'un, Chang Huai-chih and many others—were Tientsin Military Academy graduates. In short, significant changes in Chinese military education took place prior to 1895, despite the absence of meaningful reform in either the civil or military examinations and numerous other problems.116 Nonetheless, it took the successive humiliations of the Sino-Japanese War, the "Scramble for Concessions," and the Boxer fiasco to prompt the Ch'ing dynasty into fundamental military reform,117 And even then, "national" policies were often implemented piecemeal at the local level.118 In retrospect, it seems evident that the obstacles to meaningful reform in Chinese military education were less ideological than institutional. To be certain, Confucian critics of new-style training programs could always be found, especially after the establishment of modern military academies in China during the 1880's.120 But the throne's lack of enthusiasm for military reform along Western lines certainly cannot be explained in terms of ideology alone. In the first place, it must be remembered that little if anything in the way of Confucian learning had ever been expected of regular Ch'ing military officers. Paradoxically, it was in the innovative yung-ying armies, about which the throne had very mixed feelings, rather than the Green Standard and Banner forces of the empire, that the inculcation of Confucian virtues received special stress. Moreover, officials such as Chang Chih-tung, and even the pragmatic Li Hung-chang, emphasized the importance of Confucian education not only in their own "personal" armies but also in their new-style military academies.12 Surely, the subordinate officers of Chang and Li were no less "Confucian" than their Green Standard and Banner counterparts. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 36 RICHARD J. SMITH 38 Holcombe, 82-83; LWCK. Memorials, 27: 405. See also Wang Chia-chien, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang ti chuang-she chi ch'i yin-hsiang," Kuo-li T'ai-wan shih-fan ta-hsüeh li-shih hsüeh-pao (April, 1976), 3. 39 LWCK, Letters to the Tsungli Yamen, 4: 39-41. 40 Wang, Huai-chün, 203 and passim; LWCK Memorials, 35; 33b-34, 34b-35. On Wang, see also Bell, 2: 49. 41 On Chou's army, see Japan, Ministry of War, comp. Rimpō heibi ryaku (1882), 3: 45b-46b; Bell, 2: 4, 57-59; Great Britain, War Office, 33/34 (1880), 128-130; FRUS, 1873, part 1, 182-188; CWCK, 1.4: 36b-32; etc. Chou's nien-p'u is included in CWCK. His writings and nien-p'u indicate a rather progressive outlook, including an appreciation not only of Western weapons and military methods, but also of certain aspects of Western science and medicine. 42 CWCK, 2.2: 13a-b; also 1.4; 2b-3, 32-33. 43 Ibid., see also 2.2: 1-8. On the attractiveness of Green Standard rank, consult K. C. Liu, “The Limits of Regional Power in the Late Ch'ing Period: A Reappraisal," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, n.s. 10.2 (July, 1974), 210, and esp. 218. 44 See, for example, CWCK 1.1.2: 24b; 1.4: 2-3, 5-13b, 19-24, 26b-27, 32-33b; 2.2: 1-2b; "supplement," 1: 11-23, 44; etc. 45 See, for example, CWCK, 1.1.2: 16b-17, 23-24, 27-28; 1.4: 3b-4, 10a-b, 27, 30-32; "supplement,” 1: 7-24. 46 CWCK, 1.1.2: 17b-18; 1.4: 30-41; etc. 47 Ibid., 1.4: 33b. 48 Bell, 2: 57; see also Cavendish, 721. 49 Bell, 2: 57, 197; Great Britain, War Office, 33/34 (1880), 129, "The Army of Li Hung-chang"; CWCK, “supplement," 1: 14b, 20, 23b, 35b-37b; see also CWCK, 1.4: 36b-37. 50 CWCK, 1.1: 19b; 1.1.2: 41b-42; 2.2: 22b. 51 Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-tang," 3-4, 23-24, note 18. 52 CWCK, 1.4: 34. 53 CWCK, 1.4: 33b-34; also 1.1.2: 41b-42. 54 See note 40. 55 Knight Biggerstaff, The Earliest Modern Government Schools in China (Ithaca, 1961), 61-62; Cyrus Peake, Nationalism and Education in Modern China (New York, 1932), 10-12; Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang," 7-8. 56 Ibid. (Wang), 7-8. 57 Chinese Times, April 30, 1887. The entrance examination consisted of three parts. The theme for the essay was: "(When the people have been taught patriotism and loyalty) they may easily overcome their enemies." The theme for the discourse was: "Much planning brings success." And the subject for the poetry exercise was: "Though summer has come, nature is still mild and pleasant." Ibid. 58 Biggerstaff, 63; NCH, April 13, 1887; Chinese Times, April 23, 1887, "The Tientsin Military School"; etc. The most complete discussion of the establishment, rise, structure, administration and influence of the Tientsin Military Academy is Wang Chia-chien's, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895 59 Ibid. (Wang), 8. 37 60 Ibid. Wang notes that branch schools of the Tientsin Military Academy were established at Shan-hai-kuan and Wei-hai-wei. 61 Ibid., citing LWCK, Memorials, 74: 25. 62 Ibid., 8-9. 63 Ibid., 7. On Li's financial difficulties, consult Wang, Hual-chin, 275-290; Spector, chapter 7. 64 Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-t'ang," 9-12. The major problems, according to Wang, were: (1) The administrators of the academy were not well suited to their tasks (non-specialists); (2) the foreign instructors were arrogant, overpaid, unappreciative, and remiss in their teaching responsibilities; (3) heavy reliance on interpreters was inefficient and confusing; and (4) both academic and practical training tended to degenerate into formalism. Other problems included capricious grading, reports of cheating, and shortages and lack of standardization in equipment. For problems in China's other military and naval schools, consult Ayers, 108-113, 179-180, and John Rawlinson, China's Struggle for Naval Development (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), passim. 65 Rawlinson, 163, 169; Ernst Presseisen, Before Aggression (Tucson, 1965), 140-141; NCH, September 21, 1894. 66 For a summary of the fighting on land and sea, consult Liu and Smith, "The Military Challenge." ** 67 See, for example, E. Bujac, Précis de quelques campagnes contemporaines (Paris, 1896), vol. 2; N.W.H. Du Boulay, An Epitome of the China-Japanese War, 1894-95 (London, 1896); Lieutenant Sauvage, La guerre Sino-Japonaise 1894-1895 (Paris, 1897); Richard Wallach, "The War in the East," Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute, 21, 4 (1895); T. A. Brassey, ed., The Naval Annual (Portsmouth, 1895); Vladimir (pseudonym for Zenone Volpicelli), The China-Japan War (London, 1896). 68 On the Japanese response to the war, see Donald Keene, "The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 and Its Cultural Effects in Japan," in Donald Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture (Princeton, 1971); also Jeffery Dorwart, The Pigtail War: American Involvement in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (Amherst, Mass., 1975), 94-96. 69 Professor Samuel Chu of Ohio State University is currently studying the Chinese response to the war, and has produced several illuminating but as yet unpublished papers on the subject. For the time being, the best available discussion of Chinese attitudes is Kuo Sung-p'ing, "The Chinese Reaction to Foreign Encroachment" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1953). 70 See Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's critique, cited in Joseph Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 111; consult also Kuo, 49-50, 81-83, etc. 71 Cited in Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China 1840-1928, translated and edited by S. Y. Teng and Jeremy Ingalls (Princeton, Toronto, London and New York, 1956). See also Japanese Imperial General Staff, eds., History of the War between Japan and China (Tokyo, 1904), 1; 30-32. 72 Rawlinson, 190. 73 Liu Feng-han, "Chia-wu chan-cheng shuang-fang ping-li ti fen-hsi," Chung-kuo i-chou, 829 (March 14, 1966) and 830 (March 21, 1966); CJCC, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 38 RICHARD J. SMITH 1: 15-24; Japanese Imperial General Staff, History of the War between Japan and China, 1: 26-29; Vladimir, 255; Wallach, 718. 74 CJCC, 1: 63; Japanese Imperial General Staff, History of the War between Japan and China, 1: 30-32; Rawlinson, 174-177, 180. 75 See, for example, Presseisen, 140-141; Vladimir, 112, 118, 164, 242-243, 260; Wallach, 718-719. 76 Wang Chia-chien, "Ch'ing-chi ti Hai-chün ya-men (1885-1895)," Chung-kuo li-shih hsüen-hui shih-hsien chi-k'an, no. 5; Rawlinson, 186; Vladimir, 281. 77 See, for example, Chang Yin-lin, "Chia-wu Chung-kuo hai-chün chan-chi k'ao," Ch'ing-hua hsüeh-pao, 10.1 (January, 1935); also CJCC, 4: 72-82, 166-244, 245-271, etc. 78 See Dorwart, 112-113; Cavendish, 717. 79 NCH, January 14, 1898; Vladimir, 267-268, 80 NCH, January 14, 1898; Vladimir, 243. 81 For the participation of Tientsin Military Academy graduates in the early stages of the war, consult CJCC, 1: 18. 82 Vladimir, 126, 193, 248. 83 For criticisms of China's officer corps by foreign contemporaries, consult Du Boulay, 8, 11, 160; Bujac, 217; Brassey, 128-129, 139, 143; NCH, October 19, 1894; etc. 84 Cavendish, 722. 85 Vladimir, 124, 153-154, 192, 198-199, 208, 217, 277; also Wallach, 695, 719; CJCC, 1: 236, 256, 276, etc. 86 Wallach, 709, 712-713; Vladimir, 109, 150, 231, 256; Sauvage, 221. 87 Brassey, 139, 88 Cavendish, 721. 89 Brassey, 127. 90 Vladimir, 251-252; Du Boulay, 73. 91 See Rawlinson, 174-185; CJCC, 1: 34, 63-69, 239-245. 92 Rawlinson, 188-190. 93 See ibid., 175-187; Brassey, 90, 92, 99-101, 110, 115, 120, 124, 127; NCH, February 1, February 8, and March 22, 1895. 94 NCH, January 25 and February 1, 1895. 95 See Powell, 71-72; WCSL, 101: 6b-10; Liu Feng-han, Hsin-chien fu-chün (Taipei, 1967), 45-46. 96 Paul Cohen, Between Tradition and Modernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 108, 232. 97 Roswell Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press 1800-1972 (Shanghai, 1933), esp. chapter, 8. 98 Cited in NCH, October 2, 1896. See also Wang Erh-min, Chung-kuo chin-tai ssu-hsiang shih (Taipei, 1977), 122-123, 124. 99 Ayers, 130-136. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 MILITARY EDUCATION IN CHINA, 1842-1895 100 Powell, 56-59; Peake, 20-22; Wang, Huai-ch'in, 363; etc. 39 101 Wang Chia-chien, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-tang," 1, 8; Powell, 235-236. 102 Chinese Times, April 30, 1887; Ayers, 118. 103 See Ernest Young, "Nationalism, Reform and Republican Revolution," in James Crowley, ed., Modern East Asia: Essays in Interpretation (New York, etc., 1971), 160-162; Yoshihiro Hatano, "The New Armies,” in Mary Wright, ed., China in Revolution (New Haven and London, 1968), and Powell, passim. 104 For abundant documentation on the dilution of traditional values and loyalties at the Tientsin Military Academy, see Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-tang," 9, 11-12, 19-20, and notes, Li Hung-chang had pointed out the need to study the Classics and History "in order to strengthen the root," but Wang claims that the students tended to adopt a foreign-worship mentality, ignored China's legendary heroes, and (in the words of a contemporary critic) neither discussed the virtues of integrity (chih) and duty (i), nor knew of honesty (lien) and shame (ch'ih). Cf. Chou Sheng-ch'uan's army song (Sheng-chün hsün-yung ko), CWCK, "supplement," 1: 50-52b. 105 The evidence, contained in CWCK, remains to be gathered systematically, but even a brief glance at Chou's nien-p'u and his extensive writings suggests these conflicts. 106 CWCK, 1.4: 30-47b, esp. 33b and 37. 107 Ibid., 1.1: 20a-b; 1.1.1: 10a-b; 1.1.2: 15b, 19b-20, 23b (on bullets and rations), 40b-41; etc. 108 CWCK, "introductory chuan (Chou's nien-p'u)" 31b-56 passim. Ironically, after Chou's death, the Sheng-chün was employed in work on the grounds of the Tientsin Military Academy. Chinese Times, May 28, 1887. 109 For Chou's concern with positive attitudes toward the military, see CWCK, "supplement," 1: 20b-21, 22b-23, 50-52b. For Chou's esteem for civil status, see CWCK, "introductory chuan," 57n. Cf. sources cited in note 72. 110 These tensions were not, of course, fully resolved — but neither were such tensions in the West. See Barnett, "The Education of Military Elites," esp. 21, 27, etc. On the emphasis on technical education at the Tientsin Military Academy, see the sources cited in note 104. 111 Ernest Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai (Ann Arbor, 1977), 58-59. 112 Ibid., 56. 113 Powell, 160. 114 Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-tang," 8; Biggerstaff, 63. 115 Young, Yuan Shih-k'ai, 56-64; Powell, 79-81; Jerome Ch'en, "Defining Chinese Warlords and Their Factions," Bulletin of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, 31.3 (1966), and especially Wang, "Pei-yang wu-pei hsüeh-tang," 12-19, which discusses the careers of over 60 individuals from the academy. Young, 56, notes that of thirty "leading military participants" singled out by Liu Feng-han for "their subsequent prominence in the early republic," twenty-five had attended the Tientsin Military Academy before joining Yuan Shih-k'ai at Hsiao-chan (in the period 1895-1899). See Liu Feng-han, Hsin-chien lu-chün, 113-125. ================================================================================