That Is To Say, American Citizens, British Subjects, Or The
Subjects Of Any Other Power Which Has A Treaty With
China containing "the
most favored nation" clause, must be allowed to enjoy precisely the same
rights in Talienwan, Kiao Chou
And Kwangchowfoo as they would have enjoyed
had not those places been surrendered to Russia, Germany and France
respectively. This principle could only have been enforced by war, in
which England would have needed the assistance of Japan; but Japan was not
yet ready to engage in a contest, for the reason that she still had to
receive $60,000,000 of the war indemnity due from China, and because the
war vessels which she had ordered to be constructed in foreign shipyards
were not yet sufficiently near completion. Being thus constrained to
abandon the hope of maintaining its treaty rights in the ceded parts of
China, the British Foreign Office changed its ground and fell back on the
policy of exacting an equivalent for the advantages gained by Russia,
Germany and France. In the pursuance of this policy it obtained Wei-hai-
Wei, which, as we have said, is one of the two keys to the Gulf of
Pechihli. It is, however, very inferior to Port Arthur; only by the
expenditure of a large sum of money could it be made a naval fortress of
high rank, and, even then, it would require a large garrison for its
protection. This was not all that England gained, however; she secured a
promise from the Pekin government that the valley of the Yangstekiang
should never be alienated to any foreign power except Great Britain. The
limits of the valley, nevertheless, were not defined, and the Pekin
authorities have acted on the hypothesis that the covenant against
alienation did not debar them from giving commercial and industrial
privileges within the basin to the subjects of European powers other than
England. The right to build, for instance, a railway from Pekin to
Hangchow has been conferred upon a syndicate nominally Belgian, in which,
however, it is understood that Russia is deeply interested. On the other
hand, in spite of protests from St. Petersburg, the privilege of extending
to Newchwang in Manchuria the railway which already extends some distance
in a northeasterly direction from Tientsin, has been secured by a British
corporation.
In September, 1898, a palace revolution occurred at Pekin. For some time,
the Emperor Kwangsu had been known to be under the influence of a highly
intelligent and progressive Cantonese named Kang Yu Wei. At the latter's
suggestion, edicts were put forth decreeing important administrative
reforms which would have deprived the mandarins of their opportunities of
embezzlement, and also indicating an intention to reorganize the
educational system of China upon European models. The necessity of such
changes is obvious enough if China is to follow Japan in the path of
progress, but it is equally plain that the advocacy of them would render
the emperor obnoxious to the whole body of mandarins and of the literati.
The unpopularity caused by his proposed innovations proved fatal to
Kwangsu; for the party at court, headed by the Empress-dowager Tsi An,
took advantage of it to arrest and imprison him.
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