ABSTRACT
China's defeat by Japan on land and sea during the war of 1894-95 brought serious repercussions. The war aim of the Chinese was to maintain Korea as the last tributary state, but in the process it was lost forever. The Liaodong peninsula, Taiwan, and the Pescadores had to be ceded to the victor. The war indemnity of 200 million ounces of silver put an unbearable financial burden on the defeated. Other commercial concessions were similar to those granted earlier to the Western nations. But in addition, the Treaty of Shimonoseki, as this latest settlement was called, also authorized Japan to operate factories in Chinese cities. Through the most-favored-nation clause this privilege was soon extended to all other treaty powers. Thanks to joint intervention by Russia, France, and Germany, after the signing ofthe treaty the Liaodong peninsula was "saved" from transfer. China paid another thirty million ounces of silver in its place. But the tsarist government waited only three more years before demanding a twenty-five year lease on the territory. Thereafter it changed hands between tsarist Russia and imperial Japan, and then fell again into the hands of Stalin's Soviet Union, for altogether close to sixty years. China did not recover it until 1955.
