The New International Encyclopædia/Far Eastern Question

FAR EASTERN QUESTION. The name commonly given to the complex problem of modern international politics growing out of the acquisition of interests in farther Asia and the Pacific by the Western Powers, with the rivalries consequent thereon, and the close contact of Oriental and Occidental peoples. Ever since the Portuguese mariners of Prince Henry the Navigator entered upon the quest of an eastward route to the Indies, and Columbus and his successors began their explorations to the westward, there may be said to have been a Far Eastern Question in embryo, but it remained for the rapid expansion of the world powers in the closing years of the nineteenth century to make it one of the most vital questions in world politics. For many years previously the European Powers had been chiefly concerned with the Eastern Question (q.v.) which had to do with Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire, and the western gates to Asia. The expansion of Russia across Asia to the Pacific; the spread of British commercial interests throughout the farther East; the growing ambition of Germany to establish trade supremacy in the East as an outlet for her capital and industry; and the rise of French colonies and protectorates in the Indo-Chinese Peninsula, brought into this distant part of the world the old rivalries of Europe. The decline of the Chinese Empire, which seemed destined to become an easy prey for the European nations. increased the eagerness of the Powers. Still the potentiality of resistance and endurance supposed to be latent in the ancient empire acted as a restraining influence, till the war between Japan and China in 1894-95 revealed China's weakness and showed the advent of a new power to be reckoned with in that part of the world. The Chinese-Japanese War, therefore, marked a distinct epoch in the development of the Far Eastern Question. When the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) became known, Russia, taking a lesson from the treatment she had received at the hands of the Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, sought successfully to deprive Japan of some of the fruits of conquest and to gain advantages for herself. Stepping in as friend and protector of China, Russia was able a little later to secure as her reward the possession of the southern part of the Liao-tung Peninsula, with its two valuable harbors of Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan. Great Britain obtained Wei-hai-wei as an offset to Russia's acquisition, with right to possession so long as Russia held Port Arthur and Ta lien-wan. Germany, which had coöperated with Russia in the repression of Japan, obtained, as compensation for the murder of two missionaries, the port of Kiao-chau and important concessions for operations in Shan-tung Province.

In 1898 the fortunes of war established the United States, which had already annexed the Hawaiian Islands, in the Philippines. The United States has always advocated the preservation of the integrity of China, and the administration of President McKinley secured from the Powers interested in the East a nominal guaranty of the so-called ‘open door’ policy in China, that is, of equal rights of trade for all nations, without regard to spheres of influence. The value of this guaranty unless the demand for its observance is backed up by force is open to question.

In 1900 the Boxer movement involved China in a war with the Western Powers, which seemed for a while to threaten the integrity of the Empire. The situation at the close of the century may be thus briefly summed up: (1) Russia aiming at the possession or control of Manchuria, partly because of its value as a populous province, but more especially as insuring a direct outlet for the great Siberian railway system to the open sea; (2) Germany seeking to exploit for the benefit of her own trade and capital the rich Shan-tung and Yellow River country; (3) Great Britain endeavoring with halting and uncertain diplomacy to strengthen her position in the Yang-tse Valley, with a view to retaining her valuable commerce and a sphere of intluence in case of partition, and to establishing ultimate connection by railway with Burma and India, holding, at the same time, to the open-door policy for all China as best; (4) France in the south leaning on the strong arm of Russia for support in her designs for colonial aggrandizement, and striving through shrewd diplomacy and the acquisition of railway concessions to connect with the Russian railways from the north, cutting across the British sphere on the upper Yang-tse; (5) off the Chinese coast, Japan, watchful, ambitious, and aggressive, determined to hold its own with the European Powers, desirous of a position on the mainland in case of partition of China, but preferring to join Great Britain and the United States in a policy looking toward the maintenance of the integrity of China and the open door; (6) the United States, with commercial interests in the East second only to those of Great Britain, averse to seizing territory, and while declining to unite with any other Power, seeking independently the same end as Japan. Its Oriental policy, under the new conditions, can hardly be said to be determined.

The politics of China, like those of the whole Asiatic continent, are turning more and more upon railways. Already southern transcontinental lines are projected, and in the near future the question of the Far East promises to merge with that of the Nearer East and with the general issues of world politics. The anti-foreign outbreak of 1900, which brought the Powers together on common ground for a few weeks, only served to show how far they are from agreement and common action in Oriental affairs. The various phases and details of the question may be profitably studied in the following works, all of which are reliable in their facts and of practical value: Reinsch, World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century us Influenced by the Oriental Situation (New York, 1900), a useful manual with good lists of references; Norman, Peoples and Politics of the Far East (New York, 1897); Curzon, Problems of the Far East (2 vols., New York, 1896); Beresford, The Break-Up of China (New York, 1899); Colquhoun, China in Transformation (New York, 1898); id., Overland to China (New York, 1900); Leroy-Beaulieu, The Awakening of the East, trans. from the French (New York, 1900); Vladimir (pseud.), The China-Japan War (London); id., Russia on the Pacific and the Siberian Railway (London, 1899); Conant, The United States in the Orient (Boston, 1900). More detailed accounts of some of the events bearing upon this question, the general issues of which are here stated, will be found in the articles Chinese Empire and Japan.