For centuries, Korea had been a client state of China,
providing tribute and much coal and iron. With Japan’s
growing modern technology, much of it dependent on exactly
that, it saw Korea as a prime target for its growing military
power. Requests and demands that China open Korea to Japanese
trade were rebuffed, and so, Japan used this as an excuse to
go to war with China. The ensuing conflict, the First
Sino-Japanese War, was fought for about nine months between
1894 to 1895, and it resulted in another Chinese defeat. This
gave Japan control of Korea, which it absorbed and colonized,
and Japan also forced China to cede Taiwan to them. Japan
also demanded the same rights within Chinese coastal cities
as the Europeans and Americans had.
In 1876, Korea and Japan had signed a treaty, opening up
trade between the two countries. Huang Zunxian, the Chinese
ambassador to Korea, recommended that Korea maintain friendly
relations with Japan. He felt that Japan would counterbalance
any undesirable influence by Russia. At that time, Japan
wasn’t seen as a threat to the power of China. Japan was also
interested in a cordial relationship with the US to further
balance any possible threat from Russia. However, when the
Americans established relations with Korea, they overlooked
the fact that Korea had a history of being a tributary state
of China, which started back in 1637. The US felt that Korea
should be considered an independent state. The skilled
statesman Li Hongzhang was in charge of the Chinese-Korean
policy and presented a compromise that would satisfy both the
US and China. So, the Japan-Korea Treaty was amended to state
that Korea was "an independent state enjoying the same
sovereign rights as does Japan."
Li Hongzhang spoke with Korean representatives and
recommended that they emulate the Self-strengthening Policy
that China had started and introduce reforms that would help
them relate to other countries from a position of
strength-not overwhelming strength but at least equal
strength. The Chinese then sent over a military unit to train
Korean soldiers in warfare techniques and provided them with
upgraded weapons.
The Japanese were ambivalent about Korea’s interest in
reform. Some were very much in favour of it and wanted to
participate in helping Korea develop, but other Japanese
preferred that Koreans focus on these improvements by
themselves and thus be more passive on the world stage.
Regardless of the differences of opinion in Japan, the Korean
Prince Regent Heungseon Daewongun saw to it that reform
efforts were started.
Korea’s relationships with China and Japan were tested in
1882 when a riot broke out in Korea during a drought. It
started in Imo but inexplicably spread to the Japanese
legation in Korea. Six Japanese were killed, and riots broke
out throughout the city.
Japan then deployed four warships to Korea, and China sent
in 4,500 troops. The two countries were now competing for
control over Korean affairs. As a result of the Imo Incident,
Korea made reparations and penalized the chief perpetrators
of the rebellion, which had resulted in the deaths of
Japanese representatives. When the Koreans blamed Heungseon
Daewongun for the riot, the Chinese interfered by taking him
to China, where he was confined. China wanted the Korean
reforms to move along gradually, while Japan wanted them to
make rapid improvements.
The Japanese dispatched a fleet into the Korean harbors of
Pusan and Chempulpo, but they assured Li Hongzhang that they
had no intention of attacking. They indicated that they
simply wanted to balance off the Chinese forces already in
the country. King GoJong of Korea insisted that the Japanese
depart. However, Japan adamantly refused.
In 1894, tensions between Japan and China reached a
pivotal moment in terms of their relations with Korea. The
First Sino-Japanese War was very short, lasting a little over
eight months. Despite the fact that they had revitalized
their military, China wasn’t ready. In July, the Japanese
vessels Naniwa, Akitsushima, and Yoshino captured and sunk
the Kowshing, a British transport ship subcontracted by China
to carry members of the Green Standard Army and Eight Banners Army into Asan,
Korea.
The Japanese heavily outnumbered the Chinese, and at the
Battle of Seonghwan,
they defeated the Chinese, placing them within fifty miles of
Seoul. The bulk of the Chinese shored up their defences in
northern Korea, sensing that the Japanese would make a strike
there. More Chinese were stationed in northern Korea than at
the prior battle near Asan. Most were guarding the capital
city of Pyongyang. The Japanese separated their forces into
three divisions. Two engaged the Chinese at opposing diagonal
corners of the city walls, and the third division attacked
from the rear. After the Japanese won this battle, the
Chinese pulled out of the north and withdrew toward the mouth
of the Yalu River, which feeds out of the Yellow Sea, near
the Chinese/Korean border.
At the Battle of the
Yalu River, which took place in 1894, the Japanese navy’s
frontal formations proved to be superior to those of the
Chinese. At the end of this one-day battle, China’s Beiyang
fleet withdrew. Chinese troops then moved to defend their own
homeland in Manchuria when they saw the Japanese were moving
toward their shores. However, the Japanese were able to
capture the Chinese outpost of Hushan before moving on land
to capture six towns in Manchuria.
In Port Arthur, the Japanese reported that they saw the
decapitated head of a dead Japanese soldier on display. They
retaliated with an indiscriminate massacre of thousands of
Chinese soldiers and civilians. The estimates of the number
killed i the Port Arthur
Massacre differ vastly.
In the city of Weihaiwei in northeast China, Chinese
soldiers stayed behind the fortification walls when the
Japanese placed the city under siege. The Chinese abandoned
the fort in the bitter cold of January 1895, and the battle
moved to the Yellow Sea. After winning the Battle of Weihaiwei, the
Japanese took over the Liaodong Peninsula, which borders
northwestern Korea.
The ground forces of both parties were engaged in
Manchuria and its environs, and the Japanese conquered six
cities there. They then headed toward the Manchurian capital,
Mukden. The Japanese captured the town of Haicheng on the
Liaodong Peninsula. The Chinese made four attempts to retake
the city but failed every time. As they were anxious to end
the war, the Japanese decided they wanted to take either
Mukden or Beijing, as losing either one would greatly cripple
the Chinese forces.
The Japanese then surprised China and the international
observers by capturing the Pescadores Islands in the Taiwan
Strait. The Japanese wanted control of the Pescadores because
that would be their key to gaining control of Taiwan. Those
islands could have been used by Japan to prevent the arrival
of Chinese reinforcements to Taiwan, as well as open the
gates to gain Taiwan in a subsequent Treaty of Shimonoseki.
The war demonstrated the failure of the Qing dynasty’s
attempts to modernize its military and fend off threats to
its sovereignty, especially when compared with Japan’s
successful Restoration
of the Meiji and led to the Self-Strengthening
Policy. For the first time, regional dominance in East
Asia shifted from China to Japan; the prestige of the Qing
dynasty, along with the classical tradition in China,
suffered a major blow. The humiliating loss of Korea as a
tributary state sparked an unprecedented public outcry.
Within China, the defeat was a catalyst for a series of
political upheavals led by Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei,
culminating in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution.
