File No. 793.94/317.
[Untitled]
Peking, April 27, 1915—8 p.m.
At the conference yesterday Japanese Minister communicated the revised demands.
The demands respecting Manchuria and Shantung are unchanged.
In Eastern Mongolia, Japan asks railway and loan preference, opening of treaty ports and admission to agricultural and industrial enterprises in partnership with Chinese.
With respect to Hanyehping Company, Japan insists that the present shareholders be coerced into forming joint company with Japan, but Section 2 of the article is dropped.
Group V is formally withdrawn but the demand is made that matters contained therein shall be separately dealt with in a note to Japan with the exception of Articles 3 and 7 which are postponed. Numerous Japanese advisers are to be engaged whenever any important situation may arise; Article 2 is unchanged; a delegation of Chinese military officials is to visit Japan and arrange with Japanese military authorities regarding the purchase of war supplies and the conduct of arsenals; the railways asked for are to be granted in so far as not already actually contracted for with Great Britain; in Fukien, no foreign Power is to establish a naval base, nor is China to borrow capital “of any other Power” for this purpose. The latter phrase embodied in the note to Japan would of course leave that Power free to act while excluding others.
The so-called withdrawal of Group V is therefore a, mere form, leaving the substance of the demands unaffected.
Japan then offers to return Tsingtau on condition that it be an open port without a Chinese military station; that there be set aside a Japanese and an international settlement; and that the disposal of German public property in Tsingtau be settled by a subsequent conference between China and Japan. From the latter condition the Chinese surmise that the Japanese plan retaining the German forts and barracks as a part of the Japanese settlement.
The return of Tsingtau upon such conditions and with Japan entrenched in the hinterland through ownership of railways and mines and through general industrial preference is not considered by the Chinese as an advantage of more than merely formal value.