The Versailles Treaty, the May Fourth Movement and Chinese Students
The Versailles Treaty, the May Fourth Movement and Chinese Students
Wellington Koo shone at the Versailles Treaty Negotiations
The First World War ended with an armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. November 11th is a holiday in many countries as a result. It is Veterans Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in Canada, Armistice Day in France and Belgium. It’s Independence Day in Poland. November 11th was a ceasefire. The actual peace treaty took months to negotiate at the Versailles Palace outside Paris and became the Versailles Treaty near the end of June 1919. Soldiers returned home and the Chinese Labour Corps was disbanded. Among the Chinese who returned home were educated young Chinese men who had worked as interpreters in Europe.
Yan Yangchu, more commonly known as Jimmy Yen, was one of those translators who returned to China. He had already studied at Hong Kong University and Yale. Working for the YMCA during the war, he helped the Chinese labourers read and write letters. He saw the value of ordinary Chinese people and appreciated their need for education. Upon returning to China, Yan worked to improve literacy among the Chinese masses. He created a one-thousand-character primer to teach basic reading in Chinese villages. He recruited volunteer teachers. One of them was Mao Zedong. They educated at least 5 million students. Yan was then involved in the Rural Reconstruction Movement. It was a nongovernmental organization and nonprofit that worked to improve the situation in rural areas without much in the way of government or foreign funds and did not push for a violent revolution. His work was stopped by the Communists in 1950 and he was labeled a “henchman of American imperialism”. He then lived in Taiwan and in the United States. Only in 1985, once reforms had begun when Mao Zedong died and was replaced by Deng Xiaoping, did the People’s Republic of China finally acknowledge Yan’s immense contributions to Mass Education and Rural Reconstruction and he was invited to return to mainland China. He died in Manhattan, aged 99, in 1990.
Chinese diplomats were heavily involved in the Versailles negotiations. The decisions made there had reverberations throughout China.
China had high hopes for the Versailles Treaty. Since China had participated on the winning side of the war, Chinese expected that German controlled territory would be returned to Chinese control. Japan had ejected the Germans and then occupied Shandong during the war. China expected that province to formally return to Chinese control following the negotiations.
One of China’s negotiators was the diplomat Wellington Koo. He was briefly mentioned during the episode on Chinese Women Overseas, because he was the husband of Oei Hui-lan. She was the beloved daughter of a Chinese tycoon in what is now Indonesia. Wellington Koo, or Koo Vi Kyuin in Chinese, is a fascinating character. Before marrying Oei Hui-lan, he had been married to May Tang. But she died of the so-called Spanish Flu in 1918. That had been a politically important marriage for Wellington as her father was the Republic of China’s first Premier. The Premier had resigned after disagreements with Yuan Shikai, but not before getting Wellington’s government career going.
Wellington Koo was fluent in English. He had begun learning it as a child in Shanghai attending the Anglo-Chinese Junior College at age 11. He remembered riding a bicycle behind a British boy on a sidewalk in the international settlement there. An Indian policeman fined Wellington for the offence of riding on the sidewalk but allowed the British boy to continue riding. The law only applied to Chinese and not to foreigners. Wellington never forgot the feeling that came from a foreigner policing Chinese in their own country and the different treatment given to a Chinese and British boy there for the same behaviour. In 1912, he earned a PhD from Columbia University in international law and diplomacy.
During the negotiations at Versailles. Japan argued that it should keep control of Shandong and other oceanic territories in the Pacific formerly belonging to Germany. Koo shone during his response. He was praised for his eloquence and well reasoned arguments, made in English. The American Secretary of State, the French Premier Clemenceau and Canadian Prime Minister Borden all praised Koo.
Despite efforts of Koo and the other Chinese diplomats, on May 4, 1919, the other powers agreed that the former German rights in Shandong would go to Japan. A major problem was secret agreements signed during the war. The western powers had quietly agreed to Japan’s takeover of Shandong in exchange for its help in the war. Worse yet, and a complete surprise to Wellington Koo and other diplomats, was Duan Qirui’s secret agreements with Japan that had China’s own government in Beijing agree to Japan’s control of Shandong in exchange for financial and military support for the Anhui Clique.
The decision at Versailles to allow Japan to keep control of Shandong caused an uproar in China. Chinese students in France were among the first to learn about and oppose the pro Japanese and anti Chinese agreements at Versailles.
Then 4000 students in Beijing marched on Tiananmen Square with slogans like “do away with the Twenty-One Demands” from Japan and “Don’t sign the Versailles Treaty”. Some demanded the resignation of three Chinese collaborators with Japan and burned their residences. Then the government responded with arrests and beatings.
The next day, more students in Beijing went on strike, joined by students in other cities and, for the first time, workers. In particular, workers and businesspeople in Shanghai, took the lead from there. There was a general strike in Shanghai. Newspapers, chambers of commerce and civil society groups expressed support for the students. Businesses discussed withholding tax payments. Under pressure, the Beijing government released students from prison and fired the three officials accused of collaborating with Japan.
Koo was urged not to sign the Versailles Treaty, which China never did. Koo at times received as many of 7000 telegrams a day from China urging him to resist. This mass action is now called the May 4th Movement.
Today in mainland China, protesters are arrested for far less. It does not take any violence by demonstrators. For example, when people died in late 2022 in an Urumqi apartment fire where emergency exits were locked because of Covid restrictions, there were peaceful demonstrations elsewhere in China. They were mostly protesting anti-Covid restrictions. Since then, one by one, those protesters have been identified, arrested or detained. Why? For disagreeing with a government policy in public and as a small group. Or for mourning the death of fellow citizens.
China was the only country that did not sign the Versailles Treaty. Wellington Koo wanted China to join the League of Nations, but that required signing the Treaty. He found a way around this by having China sign another treaty that made it automatically eligible to join the new League of Nations.
The story ends better for China. Wellington Koo did not relent about Shandong and once he was Chinese Minister to the United States, he continued to pursue the issue. At the Washington Conference in 1922, Japan finally renounced its claims to Shandong and Koo returned to China as a hero.
The May Fourth Movement had been an important turning point in China. It followed opposition to warlord Duan Qirui’s collaboration with Japan (discussed last episode) during which 2000 students had protested in Beijing one year earlier, in 1918. It built on festering anger left over from Yuan Shikai’s acceptance of some of Japan’s Twenty-One Demands. It also was influenced by the Russian Revolution of 1917. The May Fourth Movement built on the New Culture Movement that was popular among Chinese students and intellectuals to reject Mr. Confucius for Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy.
However, many Chinese thinkers were disappointed with American democracy as articulated under Woodrow Wilson, then US President. He had argued for the principal of self-determination by peoples. But it turned out that he only meant that for white nations and not for other nations. The disappointment with the Versailles process and the US decision not to join the League of Nations caused some Chinese to look elsewhere for inspiration. The new Russian communist government offered an alternative model. No Communist Party existed in China yet.
But the seeds of Chinese communism were being planted. Some of those active in the May 4th Movement would be founders of the Chinese Communist Party two years later, in 1921.
Today, May 4th is the Youth Day holiday in mainland China and Literary Day in Taiwan. The May 4th movement was inspiring both for Chinese nationalists and, in retrospect, for Chinese communists.
Of course, traditionalists did not like it. There are many Chinese who preferred traditional values and Confucian principles.
While this was going on, warlords controlling provincial and personal armies were governing provinces. We saw the first provincial armies created as a response to the Taiping Rebellion. With the end of the Qing Dynasty, the rule against governing in your home province ended too. Military leaders like Wang Zhanyuan in Hubei province took advantage of that. He and his army brought order, but at a steep cost for the people and businesses there. Wang was able to leverage more power from Yuan Shikai when he needed support for his new monarchy. Wang then squeezed everyone in the province. He amassed a huge personal fortune while civilian and military governor of the province. He accumulated land, houses, shares in businesses and was one of the richest men in China.
But Wang also squeezed his soldiers and was late paying them. He also preferred younger, cheaper soldiers to the older, more expensive ones. That caused a revolt against him in 1921 and he was forced to leave for Tianjin, where he ended his days as a landlord there.
An underappreciated part of the May Fourth Movement was the role that warlords and provincial officials played in supporting it. It spread rapidly across the country and enjoyed support among students, opinion leaders, businesspeople and workers because it also had the support of a lot of provincial leaders. It was a chance to criticize Duan Qirui, who had taken Japan’s side in exchange for funds for his Anhui Clique, while genuinely being patriotic. These leaders from outside the Anhui Clique wanted China to regain Shandong, but also undermine Duan Qirui...who had betrayed his country in his secret dealings with Japan.
Duan Qirui’s primacy in Beijing did not end because of the May 4th Movement. It was not a mass movement or students or intellectuals who defeated him. He lost power because of other warlords. The May Fourth Movement was proof that many were mobilizing against him and the Anhui Clique.
