AFTER China’s loss to Japan in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894 CE, a certain Kang Youwei rallied over 1 300 imperial civil examination students and got them to submit a petition to Emperor Guangxu, to oppose the oppressive treaties China signed with the Western nations and Japan.
The petition also called for the need to restore peace in the land and to undertake some political reforms.
Emperor Guangxu eventually supported the petition and in 1898 CE, he placed these reformers in important positions.
The reformers campaigned for the overhaul of traditional government institutions among other changes.
This alarmed the conservatives in the imperial house.
These conservatives included Empress Cixi, mother of Emperor Guangxu, who dethroned and put her son under house arrest.
The reformers fled and at least six of their leaders were executed, including Tan Sitong, who had the option of fleeing, but decided to become a martyr for the reform movement.
That same year, another civilian uprising took place as a result of the West’s blatant defiance of Chinese laws.
The whites took land, defiled temples and divided the Chinese people by making some of them Christian converts.
The civilian uprising was known as Yihetuan which literally means the Righteousness and Harmony Society.
The movement was led by a group of Gongfu or Martial Arts fighters from Shandong province.
The group was very spiritual and had developed strong anti-Christian sentiments because Christianity had been used by the whites as a tool of colonisation and division in China.
The Qing tried to suppress this movement, but its popularity among the common people was overwhelming.
Empress Cixi feared that the group would oust the Imperial family, but also wanted to use this powerful force against the white foreigners.
Cixi decided to recognise the Yihetuan as a patriotic movement because they targeted all their efforts on the de-Westernisation of the Chinese.
When the foreign powers realised that the Qing government was not fighting the Yihetuan which was an obvious threat to the colonial powers, they decided to dispatch troops to quell the Yihetuan movement.
Eight nations, namely, Britain, USA, Russia, Italy, Austria, France, Germany and Japan allied together against China and attacked China from Beijing, where their troops were based in foreign legations.
The Yihetuan comprised strong and skilful Chinese civilians using no lethal weapons like guns.
Thus they were massacred by the foreign powers.
Empress Cixi fled to Xi’an with her son Gangxu and Beijing fell completely into the hands of the foreign powers who committed gruesome killings, arson, and lootings against the Chinese people.
The Qing government then betrayed the Yihetuan by dissociating itself from them in a bid to retain its authority and power.
The Qing called the Yihetuan outlaws and, once again, joined the white forces in suppressing their own people.
In September 1901 CE, the whites forced China to sign the Protocol of 1901 which demanded that the Chinese government pay 450 million to 980 million taels (with interest) of silver as war reparations to the foreign invaders over a period of 39 years.
The Protocol of 1901 also ensured that from then on, the Qing government became a puppet that the Imperialists would use to exploit the Chinese people.
An admirer of Hong Xiuquan, the man who was behind the Taiping heavenly movement that almost ended the rule of the Qing, emerged from the West with strong anti-Qing prospects.
His name was Dr Sun Yat-sen, a Western educated Chinese man who established Chinese revolutionary groups from Hawaii in Honolulu.
He had the zeal of freeing his nation from foreign rule and the rule of the puppet Qing government.
His movements faced great resistance, but his teachings spread rapidly and ended up influencing people from the national army.
This led to the Wuchang uprising of 1911 CE, which led to the ousting of the Qing government.
Emperor Puyi was dethroned and after Dr San Yat-sen’s return to China in December of that year, Dr San Yat-sen was elected interim President of the Republic of China and was inaugurated in January of the following year.
We have seen how Japan was one of the eight nations that attacked China during the Yihetuan period.
To fully understand why Japan, a non-white and fellow Asian nation, would attack China, we must first look at some Japanese history.
Japan was traditionally ruled by Emperors, a period often characterised with selfish warfare at the expense of the nation and its citizens as was also the case in China’s feudal period.
In the mid 1500s, Japanese pirates who were known as Wokou used to threaten and plunder ships in the coastal areas of south east China.
After 10 years of continuous warfare, the Chinese managed to end Japanese piracy in 1565 CE, under the leadership of a commander called Qi Jiguang.
Soon after this, Japan went through a period of reform.
The period between 1600 CE and 1868 CE was called the ‘Tokugawa period’.
It was a period when the Japanese were led by a military ruler called a Shogun and not an emperor as was the case before 1600 CE.
During the Tokugawa period, Japan was characterised by peace and good relations with other countries in the regions.
Neighbouring China was also peaceful and prosperous, owing to the rejuvenation of their leadership by the coming of a dynasty called Qing from Manchu (Manzhou).
This would become the last Imperial dynasty to rule in China.
Owing to political and economic successes of successive Qing Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, the first 140-year period between 1661 CE and 1796 CE of the Qing is remembered as ‘the golden age of the three emperors’.
During this period China and Japan were close, if not best of friends.
Prior to this, Japan and China had always shared a culture, religion and writing, apart from a close geographical relationship.
Buddhas and monks had visited both places and the ancient blacks of Asia left their influence in this region and also Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, India and Nepal.
In all these places, though now inhabited mostly by people with Mongoloid features, you will find countless ancient statues of stone portraying black people.
The attributes of the statues include: wooly hair, locks, broad nostrils and lips, big round eyes and large body stature; the typical phenotype of a black African man.
In Japan, the descendants of the ancient blacks of Asia can still be found among the Ainu people, who still resemble the typical black man of today.
The Tokugawa shogun-nate of Japan was largely democratic and based on values of peace, human life and patriotism.
Japan isolated itself from the international scene and its citizens were pacifists taken to Buddhism.
The era of peace in Japan ended with the influx of the whites in the region and their corrupting of the families of Imperial bloodlines.
The Tokugawa period though peaceful for the population, had ousted the Emperors of Japan from having any notable authority and had become ceremonial figures in the country.
When the whites came with ideas of imperialism and demonstrating their advanced weapons, the Emperors of Japan plotted a way to return into full power.
In this period, the traditional military officers of Japan were known as the ‘Samurai’.
The Samurai used swords, bows, arrows, horses and other primitive weapons and had not incorporated the weapons of the West into their weaponry.
When Japan witnessed the devastation of the Chinese by the British during the Opium War period, the Japanese Emperors and the Samurai saw this as a sign for both military and political reform.
The Samurai argued that if they did not choose an Emperor soon to lead them and acquire advanced weapons from the West, Japan too was at the risk of being defeated and humiliated by the Western nations.
In 1868 CE, the Samurai won their case and an Emperor called Meiji was set as ruler over Japan.
This reform was called the ‘Meiji Restoration’.
The Imperial council became obsessed with ideas of world domination by way of acquiring and using advanced weaponry against weaker nations, as did white nations like Britain.