Manchuria Manchoukuo

Modern Political Evolution.

This enormous increase in the Chinese population is destined to play a very important part in the political future of Manchuria. But for the last few decades Manchuria has been a frontier territory only partly under the con trol of the Chinese Government and subject to the penetration of foreign Powers, Russia and Japan. Their interests in Manchuria developed in the closing decades of the i9th century when China, politically weak, seemed on the eve of disruption, and when the Great Powers were carving out "spheres of influence" which often, as in Africa, were but the prelude to the declaration of protector ates and ultimate annexation. Such seemed likely to be the fate of Manchuria, which both on account of its intrinsic resources and as the antechamber of China, threatening the imperial capital, Peking, was coveted. For Tsarist Russia, Manchuria was to be the eastern outpost and the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian rail way which was to bind that empire together. But Japan with an overflowing population and with only limited resources had a more vital interest than Russia in Manchuria, which, as a relatively un developed but potentially productive country, promised not only an exportable surplus both of foodstuffs and industrial raw mate rials but a field for Japanese colonization. Manchuria has failed to attract the surplus population of Japan, but as this has been in part absorbed by industrial development within the country itself, Japan has a greater interest in Manchuria as a source of supplies and as a market.

The conflict between Russia and Japan for the control of Man churia first raged over the possession of the Liaotung peninsula, which is not only the southern gateway into Manchuria but commands the seaward approach to Peking. Its possession by a foreign power seemed to China a veritable pistol pointed at her head. The first move was taken by Japan. As the prize of her victory in the Sino-Japanese war of she demanded the cession of the Liaotung peninsula from the mouth of the Yalu to the mouth of the Liao. But Russia, backed by France and Germany, forced her to abandon this claim. Then by means of intrigue and a show of force, Russia (1898) acquired the lease for 25 years of the territory of Kwantung at the very tip of the peninsula, containing the naval station of Port Arthur and what has since become the great commercial entre* of Dairen. Japan returned to the attack and by the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), which registered her victory over Russia in the war of 1904-05, obtained the transfer of the Kwantung lease. Meanwhile Russia had been pushing forward her scheme of railway construction.

She had already built the Chinese Eastern railway (C.E.R.) across northern Manchuria to connect with the line to Vladivostok and when the Russo-Japanese War broke out was engaged in the construction of a branch from it through southern Manchuria to Port Arthur. By the Treaty of Portsmouth Japan became heir not only to the lease of Kwantung but also to the rights of rail way construction in Fengtien, to be vested in the South Man churia Railway Company (S.M.R). Russian interests were thus pushed back into northern Manchuria, into the provinces of Kirin and Heilung-kiang traversed by the Chinese Eastern rail way. Neither of these companies were nominally Government con cerns and the properties of each were held on leases, the S.M.R. on

one of 99 years and the C.E.R. on one of 8o years. China had also the option of purchasing the latter after 36 years, an option which was to fall due in 1932. But investment in the S.M.R. was limited to Chinese and Japanese subjects and in the C.E.R. to Chinese and Russian and in effect the paramount interests were the Japanese and the Russian. In fact the officials of the S.M.R. were appointed by the Japanese Government from the share-holders.

In possession of the arterial railway through South Manchuria and of its seaward terminus in the entrepOt of Dairen, Japan held the chief key to the economic penetration of South Man churia. It became in effect if not in name the Japanese "sphere of influence" in which Japan time and time again claimed a privi leged position. The famous Twenty-One Demands presented to China in 1915 affirmed "the predominant position of Japan in South Manchuria and Eastern (Inner) Mongolia," and on the formation of the banking Consortium in 192o, which was an agreement to pool loans to the Chinese Government equally be tween the four great Powers (Britain, France, the United States, and Japan), Japan secured the exclusion of nearly all South Man churian railways from its scope.

At the Washington Conference of 1921-22 Japan was a party to the Nine Power Treaty which repudiated the policy of "spheres of influence" and re-affirmed the principle of the Open Door. But on the strong representation of Baron Shidehara the original resolution committing the Powers concerned to submit existing concessions, so far as they were judged inconsistent with these declarations, to a board of reference was dropped altogether, and the revision of the 1915 treaties was not pressed. At the conclusion of the Conference Japan voluntarily made certain concessions with regard to her railway monopoly but in essentials her status in South Manchuria was left unchanged by the Wash ington agreements. During the Chinese Civil War, which broke out almost immediately afterwards, Japan continued to exercise a controlling influence in South Manchuria and the presence of Japanese troops in the railway zone was the chief factor in the maintenance of peace in that country. Japan repeatedly de clared that her only military concern in Manchuria was the preser vation of order necessary to safeguard her economic interests and the security of her own shores. What was in effect a condo minium could not but be unstable and must sooner or later be terminated. With China, Japan, and Russia each having holdings in the region, any adjustment of the claims of the three could not but be an uneasy truce. Partition would scarcely be the solution, for the great plain of Manchuria is too clearly a geographic unit to permit of a natural boundary across it. Sooner or later two of the three contestants would have to withdraw and leave one in control. Nor was it clear that even this would be a permanent set tlement of the conflict. The dispossessed would be certain to remember their historic interests and to seek to repossess them. Because of its history and of its geographic location between three strong peoples, the Russians, the Japanese, and the Chinese, Man churia was certain to remain indefinitely a bone of contention.