Far Eastern Question

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

that problem of international politics which has to do with the maintenance of the equilibrium of the various national spheres of influence in the Far East, especially in China. China, and formerly Japan, have been nations whose commercial importance has been out of all proportion to their political and military power. The consequence has been that there has been a keen rivalry among the Western nations for commercial influence in the Orient, resulting in a pressure of special privileges which the military impotence of China made her unable to resist. Until the World War this rivalry for trade privileges existed between Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and the United States. A partial solution to the problem thus raised was found in an agree agreement whereby the Orient was divided into "spheres of influence," the territory in volved being apportioned out among the rivals, each to have a dominant interest in its own sphere. The exception has been the United States, whose Government has stood for an equal opportunity in the markets of China for all. These spheres of influence were recognized as follows: the Yang-tse Valley and Tibet for Great Britain; Mongolia and Manchuria for Russia; Indo-China for France, and Kiauchau and the Shantung Peninsula for Germany. Since her emergence into the concert of nations as a military and naval power to be reckoned with, Japan has also been granted recognition, and has had Korea assigned to her as her sphere of influence. These influences progressed rapidly, to the point where they amounted to at least partial military occupation, as in the case of Kiauchau by Germany, Korea by Japan, Manchuria by Russia, and Hong-Kong by Great Britain. Inevitably the final result would have been the complete partitioning of China among the rivals, had it not been for the consistent opposition of the United States to such a conclusion. As first enunciated by Anson Burlingame, in 1868, the United States was unalterably opposed to any further undermining of the "right of eminent domain" by China herself. This policy was further elaborated into the "open door" policy by John Hay, after the Boxer troubles, in 1900, which the rival nations made the pretext of a military occupation of the Chinese capital itself. During 1912-1914 President Wilson still further voiced this policy by declaring that the Powers involved must keep "hands off" China, and respect her national entity. Since the World War the superficial aspect of the problem has been somewhat changed by the elimination of Germany and Russia as factors. Kiauchau and the Shantung Peninsula, the German "sphere," were occupied by Japan, as one of the allies opposing Germany, with the declared intention of returning these territories to the Chinese administration. This promise Japan had not, in 1920, fulfilled. The Russian Soviet Government, in September, 1920, voluntarily relinquished the Russian treaty rights in China.