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Chapter Eight Chinese Military Modernization and Japan

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Chapter Eight Chinese Military Modernization and Japan chapter eight Chinese Military Modernization and japan Japanese offers to train Chinese at Japanese military academies, and the prospect of Japanese officers and teachers instructing at Chinese military academies were fundamental to launching the Golden Decade era of cooperation in 1897-1898. Japan's fulfillment of its pledges, with military and civilian support from both coun­ tries, gave substance and grounding to the new relationship. On 8 March 1899, for example, just prior to the arrival of Colonel Fuku­ shima Yasumasa at Wuchang, Zhang Zhidong received a gift of about a hundred military books from Japan. His officers particu­ larly welcomed these, it seems, because Zhang's German military advisers and instructors who were skilled at field maneuvers had been resistant to preparing Chinese-language books on military strategy and theory. 1 Also auguring well for the new Sino:Japanese relationship was the reception given the four military students from Zhejiang in the first contingent of provincial Chinese students to travel to Japan. That was in June 1898. From such modest beginnings, a truly impressive flow of Chinese military students developed. Among them were the major military figures Cai E (I882-1916), Sun Chuanfang (1885-1935), Yan Xishan (1883-196o), Li Liejun (1882- 1946), and many of their senior aides. Japanese military schools also produced Chiang Kai-shek who, in 19u, completed nearly four years of military training in Japan. By Chiang's own account, his Japanese experience had a formative influence on his life and thought.2 A glance at the birthdates of the men listed above invites spec­ ulation about an I88os-born generation of Chinese military "greats" molded in Japan. The Yunnan-based anti-Yuan Shikai movement of 1915-I9I6 was likewise led by graduates of Japan's Chinese Military Modernization and Japan Shikan Gakk6 or Military Academy. 3 It is essential to note, how­ ever, that the Yunnan beneficiaries of a Japanese military educa­ tion kept Japan at arms' length, from a visceral suspicion of Japa­ nese motives and intentions.4 Although just one example, this case should allay any simplistic notion of an automatic equation be­ tween military training in Japan and collaboration with Japanese imperialism in China. 5 CHINESE MILITARY TRAINING IN JAPAN Since after the Taiping Rebellion of the mid nineteenth century, China had lacked a national policy or program for military train­ ing. Instead, individual provincial and regional heads like Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong had taken the initiative to obtain imperial approval to establish military schools within their juris­ dictions. Consistent with such an approach, on 2 February 1896, in the wake of China's military defeat by Japan, a memorial from Zhang Zhidong was approved advocating the establishment of mil­ itary schools throughout China, specifying that the method to be followed be German, the premier military model of the day. 6 This directive paradoxically cleared the way for Chinese military coop­ eration with Japan, since Japan had adhered to the German or Prussian model since the early 187os. The Zhejiang initiative of 1898 was followed by the dispatch of 24 military students from Hubei and Hunan provinces by Zhang Zhidong, 20 each by the High Commissioners for Military and Foreign Affairs in North and South China, 8 more from Zhejiang, followed later by military students from almost every province of China.7 Province-based initiatives were encouraged up until China's military recentralization of December 1903. On 29 August 1901, by way of example, a military decree abolished old-style mil­ itary examinations and charged each governor and governor gen­ eral with reorganizing the troops within his jurisdiction and with establishing modern military schools. 8 In Japan, from 1898 to 1903, the one school authorized by Japa­ nese military authorities to extend military preparatory education to Chinese students -which in turn qualified them to take the entrance exam of Shikan Gakko, 9 the foremost Japanese academy .
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