Wei Hai Wei, China, and the Japanese Navy, 1895: By Subramanyam Sridharan

Abstract

The 19^th Century was particularly cataclysmic for China due both to internal and external  circumstances. Great rebellions, like the ‘Taiping’, and even greater assaults by western ‘barbarian’ powers made it very difficult for the Qing dynasty, in total contrast to the military successes of the previous century. But, the greatest debacle was yet to happen in 1894-1895 when the Japanese military defeated China comprehensively both in land and on the sea. As a result, China ceded large parts of Manchuria and Shandong, conceded Taiwan, and lost control of Korea – all to Japan. It was the final sea battle at Wei Hai Wei that decisively sealed the fate of Qing China and set off a chain of events that continues to echo even today. Here we analyze the event, the consequences, and see what lessons are to be learnt. 

Introduction

The massive September 3 military parade in Beijing to commemorate China’s victory in the “People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War” displayed enormous destructive power that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) possesses today. It is in this context that we have to look at the historical reasons for the aggression and resistance involving Japan and China, China’s determination not to let that happen again, and learn appropriate lessons. 

The civilizational enmity between Japan and China extends to nearly two millennia^[1]. The defeat of the Qing military forces  by the Imperial Japanese forces in 1894-95 was not only one of the most decisive events of modern Asia, but also in modern naval warfare history, the reverberations of which have been felt for a very long time, possibly until today. The destruction of the famous Beiyang (‘Northern Ocean’) Fleet of the Qing at Wei Hai Wei in 1895 laid the foundation for a lengthy chain of events. It led to the eventual demise of the Manchu Qing dynasty, gave a quiet confidence to Japan that allowed the Meiji Emperor to build-up the Japanese naval forces that eventually enabled Japan to capture large parts of Asia in WW-II, including the invasion of China in 1931 and its occupation until 1945. The rise of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ensured that China not only accepted the Japanese suzerainty over the Ryukyu Kingdom in c. 1874 itself, but also conceded Taiwan to Japan in c. 1895. During this entire period of over fifty years culminating with the end of WW-II and the drafting of the Pacifist Constitution for Japan, the Chinese military, especially its Navy, remained powerless against the Japanese. The Wei Hai Wei victory also gave the confidence to Japan to take on the other looming threat, Russia, and defeat their navy comprehensively in c. 1905. The consequent ‘Portsmouth Peace Treaty’ recognized the possession of Korea by Japan which Japan formalized in 1910. The investments that Japan made subsequently in its navy enabled it to dramatically destroy the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii in 1941. 

The far east is in turmoil once again less than eighty years after the cessation of WW-II. The players, however, remain the same, from the US-led Western powers to China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan^[2]. Though China was under heavy pressure from the western nations in the 19^th Century, due to wars and occupation, it was also modernizing militarily with the help of the same occupation forces. Across the Yellow Sea, its civilizational enemy, Japan, was also rapidly modernizing with largely American help. A clash was inevitable especially with the feeling of insecurity among the Japanese. If insecurity was a factor, the same remains today. If Korea (Goreyo) was the bone of contention then, Taiwan and the South China Sea play similar roles today. If trade issues led to Opium Wars, occupation and extraction of concessions from China by Western major powers, the same issues are even more acutely preponderant today. The positions taken by various major powers then are a classic case of how self-interests influence a nation-state’s course of actions. For these reasons, it is worthwhile to study the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese First War in which Wei Hai Wei naval battle played the ultimate role. 

A study of the final battle at Wei Hai Wei will be useful for today, even though modern naval warfare has dramatically changed since those final years of the Nineteenth Century, because any outbreak of hostilities in the Far East today will still be naval in character because of the landscape. The 1894-1895 conflict also shows how Taiwan plays a strategic role in the security calculus of the Far East, especially for Japan and China, a fact that continues to remain unchanged. 

In c. 1894, the Qing Navy was considered the best among the Asian nations as it had powerful naval assets in its Beiyang Fleet whose headquarters was Wei Hai Wei. Overall, the Qing Navy, including the Beiyang and the Nanyang (“Southern Ocean”) fleets, had 108 surface ships while IJN had only 56. Yet, the Imperial Japan Navy (IJN) defeated it decisively at Wei Hai Wei which established Japanese Kaigun (Japanese, for ‘navy’) as the prima donna Asian navy. Despite the superior naval assets of the Qing Navy on paper, the IJN defeated them due to superior tactics. Wei Hai Wei also claimed extraordinary shore-based defences but the  IJN was able to overcome them too. Therefore, Japan was able to overcome both the superior offensive and defensive capabilities of the Beiyang Navy.

The decisive defeat led to far-reaching changes such as the collapse of the Manchu Qing dynasty in China, the end of the Chinese suzerainty of Korea, the possession of Taiwan by Japan, the grant of the most-favoured trading nation status to Japan by China, and above all the recognition that IJN received both within Japan and outside. As a result of the decisive victory over its civilizational enemy, China, the IJN grew rapidly and within a decade thereafter, it was able to defeat the Russian Baltic Naval Fleet too (c. 1904-1905) in the Straits of Tsushima. That war was ended by the mediation of the US President Theodore Roosevelt which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. In the years to come, the US began to feel threatened by the rise of a militarized and monarchical Japan leading to US actions such as oil sanctions and asset freezes, which finally led to the attack on Pearl Harbour by the IJN in c. 1941. The naval battle of Wei Hai Wei thus directly influenced the course of violent events for the next five decades in Western Pacific and the Far East. 

Geopolitically and geostrategically, trade disputes leading to war and occupation, punitive trade sanctions, a feeling of insecurity, opportunistic alliances, unbridled militarization especially naval, historical memories of injustice, the need to access resources, and protect sea routes for trade were the reasons for the events that culminated in events in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and leading up to WW-II in the Asian theatre which eventually led to Japan being the sole country subjected to a nuclear attack twice. 

These same reasons continue to exist today with even a sharper focus and with the added prospect of far deadlier WMDs, missiles, naval, space, and cyber power in the hands of players in that same theatre of the Far East.

China in the latter half of the 19^th Century

During this period of study, China had undergone severe stress politically and militarily. It had been attacked and defeated by Britain, France, Russia, and Germany which had also extracted several concessions. The US also resorted to gun-boat diplomacy against China, though on a much smaller scale than the European powers, and extracted concessions for its merchants and missionaries^[3]. 

Domestically, the enormous Taiping (Great Peace) Revolution took a heavy toll on the Qing Emperor. There was much hatred against the Manchu Qing not only because of their string of failures which led to famine and suffering, but also because of the fact that they were not of the Han Chinese stock. In 1874, the Qing Emperor conceded suzerainty over the Ryukyu Kingdom to the Japanese, and also had to pay reparations for incidents involving the Japanese and native Taiwanese even though China was only nominally and tenuously controlling Taiwan. In August 1884, the French completely destroyed the Qing Nanyang navy in a matter of a few hours and Qing lost yet another suzerainty, that of Vietnam. These were precursors to what was eventually to become Qing’s biggest loss, Korea in 1894-95, to its civilizational enemy. The lack of Qing’s naval power determined the course and outcome of the events in all these cases. China has today learnt a big lesson from these humiliating events, building PLAN to be the biggest naval force. Will size alone matter or strategy, seamanship and tactics, as it happened in 1894 and 1895?

In order to consolidate their position, the Qing dynasty launched the ‘Self Strengthening Movement” in c. 1861 to modernize its military through industrialization, following the disastrous Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60) and the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1855). Since the Western colonial powers had attacked it from the sea and since sea-trade was the most important component of overall Chinese trade, the Qing Emperors decided to strengthen their navy, which was at that time only a coastal-navy. 

Impressed by the arsenal of the foreign occupation forces, the idea of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-1895) was to modernize the military with the help of Germany, Britain, and France while preserving the Confucian way of filial, social and political stability. Among the three nations, Germany played a significant role in this movement and the association with the German military continued well into Chiang-Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang Republican rule. The Qing Empire had earlier largely concentrated on the army because of its terrestrial conflicts with the Russians, Mongols, Turks and the Tibetans. The navy had got insufficient attention and whenever it got the attention it was only for brief periods, without any sustained investments. In the history of China, only three dynasties had relied upon navies, and even they did not make persist with the navy beyond their immediate requirements, the Southern Song (CE1167-1280), the Yuan (Kublai Khan’s period CE 1260-1294), and the early Ming (CE 1400-1460). Of these three, it was only Kublai Khan’s navy that tried to formally attack Japan, though unsuccessfully. 

The ‘Self-Strengthening Movement’ within China came to an abrupt end after the Wei Hai Wei disaster. 

Japan in the latter half of the 19^th Century

Commander Matthew Perry of the US Navy forcibly opened the Japanese ports in c. 1854^[4] through the Convention of Kanagawa, after two centuries of isolation during the Shogun rule. Fearful of colonization and religious conversion by the Spanish colonizers who had taken over nearby Philippines in the 16^th Century, the Samurai had shut down all the Japanese ports except two, for such a long time. This forced opening through a show of strength by the American Navy, led to the weakening of the Shogun rule leading eventually to the traditional Imperial house regaining the power. The Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868 led to rapid industrialization^[5] and modernization of kaigun. Japan had avoided colonization of their country by any Western major power, unlike India (whose condition the Japanese studied carefully), by shutting down all their ports for foreign vessels. China also did not allow colonization, but was not as spectacularly successful as Japan in that effort.

Impressed by what technologies that they saw with the Americans^[6], the Shogun took to industrialization with passion and this was sustained by the Emperors who succeeded. Their industrial revolution was spearheaded by their relationship with the US. As Japan rapidly industrialized, it needed resources and also felt an acute need to protect trade routes, leading to the necessity for and creation of a modern Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN)^[7]. As an island nation surrounded by increasingly modernizing and powerful enemies such as China and Russia, and with the increasing presence of the US Navy in Western Pacific as a result of the Monroe Doctrine, Imperial Japan wanted a large and powerful navy. They closely studied the theory of Alfred Thayer Mahan^[8] whose seminal work, ‘Influence of Sea Power upon History’ appeared in 1890. The close connection between Japan and the US germinated such ideas easily among Japan’s powerful elite. 

These three requirements - namely resources, trade-routes, and security - continue to dominate the Japanese security doctrines even today. Today, Japan and the US have a military alliance and the US-Japan-South Korea trilateral relationship is becoming deeply strategic. China and Russia have managed to retain a certain amount of suzerainty in Korea through their creation of North Korea which poses the same security challenges to Japan as Goreyo did in 1894. Taiwan continues to be immensely vital to Japanese security interests as it was then. In those early days, the Japanese Navy followed the French naval doctrine of small, fast, and heavily armed boats to take on large-sized destroyers like those in the Qing navy and this was a decisive factor in its naval victories both at Yalu and later Wei Hai Wei.

Japan-China Naval Battles, 1894-1895

Genesis to the Battles

The 1894-95 war between Japan and China broke over the suzerainty of Korea and the trigger was a violent rebellion against the Korean King who in turn sought Chinese intervention. This caused insecurity in Japan which ordered its naval force, the Combined Fleet, to prevent transfer of Chinese soldiers from mainland China to Korea. Japan’s long-term war objectives were two: it wanted the natural resources of Korea and did not want another foreign power, especially the Chinese, to be so close. Japan was modernizing since 1868 (Meiji restoration) and was confident of its naval prowess. 

The first naval fight, the Battle of Pungdo (Fengdao), took place on July 25, 1894, when IJN sank a Chinese troop carrier of the Beiyang fleet near the Korean port of Pungdo. An analysis of this naval encounter shows that the IJN won because of its unified command, speed, and tactics. The Beiyang Fleet suffered from a lack of all these. The next battle was at the mouth of the Yalu river which delineates the border between the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Liaoning and Korea, draining into the Korean Bay of the Yellow Sea. 

Yalu River Battle

The Yalu River Battle (also known as the Yellow Sea Battle) took place in September 1894 when the Japanese fleet encountered, off the mouth of the Yalu river,  the Beiyang flotilla which was escorting supplies to Chinese soldiers in Korea. The Beiyang fleet suffered extensive damage including to its two prestigious ironclads and retreated to Wei Hai Wei without fighting back. 

After the victory in the Yalu River battle, Japan took over the Liaodong Peninsula and established itself as a power in East Asia with the Dalian port in its control and directly threatening the Russian interests.

Wei Hai Wei Battle

Wei Hai Wei (now renamed as Weihai), located on the shores of the Bohai Sea in Shandong Province, was the naval Headquarters of the Qing Beiyang fleet. The base was located on the Liugong island at the entrance to the Wei Hai Wei Bay, a part of the Bohai Sea. It was a strategically located base jutting into the Yellow Sea at the south-eastern end of the Bohai Sea with the Dalian Port (earlier known as Port Arthur) at the north-eastern end, in the Liaodong peninsula of the Liaoning province. Dalian was the other base of the Beiyang Fleet. Wei Hai Wei has the shortest sea-distance from China to Korea. 

Wei Hai Wei was heavily protected in c. 1895 with 15 fortresses on the shoreline all of them equipped with a considerable number of the then state-of-the-art 16-Kms-range German Krupp cannons, facing the sea, out of a total nearly 400 Krupp guns^[9] possessed by the Qing dynasty; torpedoes ready to be fired at any advancing Japanese naval ships; booms spread out as a measure of protection, and mines laid. While other Chinese shoreline forts were equipped with a mix of Krupp and less effective British Armstrong guns, the Wei Hai Wei fort was equipped only with the more advanced Krupp guns.

On the Chinese New Year’s day in c.1895, the IJN attacked the Beiyang Fleet, which had retreated into what it thought was the safe confines of the Wei Hai Wei base after the defeat at the Yalu River battle a few months earlier. The Beiyang fleet possessed two 7000 tonne weight 1885-built German pre-dreadnoughts (iron-clad ships to withstand heavy fire), Dingyuan (Everlasting Peace) & Zhenyuan (Shake From Far). They were characterized by a pair of gun turrets (two guns of 305mm in each turret) at each end of the ship as primary guns, in addition to two 150mm Krupp secondary guns, assorted other guns, and sixteen torpedo tubes. At that time, they were both called Asia’s ‘No. 1 Giant Ship’. In the years before the war, 1886, 1889, and 1890, they had made port calls in Japan as an intimidatory tactics though touted as a friendly visit.

The Japanese forces launched a pincer attack through land forces which captured the forts while the IJN attacked the Beiyang fleet in the Wei Hai Wei harbour frontally. As the Japanese forces easily took charge of the forts from the fleeing Qing military, they turned the fort and shore-based Krupp cannons on the safely berthed Beiyang Fleet themselves, a sight that drove the Chinese admiral to commit suicide^[10].  Unable to move the ships out of the base from the shore-side attack and caught by surprise, the Beiyang Fleet sunk. 

The IJN captured Wei Hai Wei after the Chinese surrendered on February 17, 1895. The Chinese hastily agreed to a peace agreement after this defeat which was concluded in the Japanese city of Shimonoseki. The Chinese fear that a pincer Japanese attack from Liaoning and Shandong could endanger the capital Beijing itself, prompted them to hastily agree for the Treaty. According to the Shimonoseki Treaty, China agreed to release Korea from its dominance and accord it full freedom, agreed to cede permanently Formosa (Taiwan) and Liaodong Peninsula (in Manchuria) including the Dalian Port to Japan, allow several Chinese ports as entrepot for the Japanese traders, and announced Japan as its Most Favoured Nation. The Japanese occupied Wei Hai Wei until they vacated it in May 1898, after all war reparations had been paid off by China. Imperial Japan occupied Taiwan from 1895 until their surrender in WW-II in 1945. 

Why Did the Qing Navy Lose So Badly?

Chinese scholars attribute many reasons, some of which are: poor training, poor leadership, low morale, poor equipment, disorganization, weak Chinese Imperial institutions, corruption, no centralized development of the Navy which was left to regional bureaucrats, larger size of Japanese forces, and superior Japanese tactics^[11]. Unlike the Combined Fleet of Japan under a single Yokosuka-based central command, the Qing navy which had four fleets, the Beiyang with bases at Dalian and Wei Hai Wei, the Nanyang  at Shanghai, Fuzhou and Guangzhou, were under regional commands and never combined for a joint effort. Apparently, the Japanese had also studied the Qing naval vessels closely when they made their coercive port calls as stated earlier.

Consequences of the Wei Hai Wei Battle

The effect of the naval defeat at Wei Hai Wei was such that for another century thereafter, the Chinese did not develop their navy except for minimal coastal defence. This was contrary to the much earlier Yuan dynasty who developed a navy, despite coming from the landlocked Mongol steppe, to attack Japan, though unsuccessfully, in order to defeat the stubborn Southern Song by stopping their trade routes with Japan. Subsequently, the Yuan Emperor Kublai Khan also attacked Sumatra and the Javan Hindu Empire of Singhasari, though all of them were unsuccessful too. Later the early Ming sent naval flotilla to the Indian Ocean region under legendary Admiral Zheng He, to spread the Chinese idea of tianxia (‘all under Heaven’). The early Qing also built a navy to pursue and defeat the rebellious pro-Ming forces which were operating from Taiwan to dethrone the Qing. 

After 1895, the regional dominance shifted decisively in favour of Japan from the centuries old hegemony of China. This hastened the downfall of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which anyway was disliked by the majority Han as the Manchus were not part of the Han stock. Korea came under the suzerainty of Japan, giving it the security it had always longed for. 

Within a week after the Shimonoseki Agreement, there was Triple Intervention, by Russia, France, and Germany, forcing Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China. Russian imperialism feared the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and also coveted the fair-weather Dalian port as well. It eventually coerced China to part with the port three years later. Since France and Russia had secretively concluded an alliance against the rise of Germany unbeknown to Germany, France supported the Russian demand. For its part, Germany also supported the Russian demand because it felt that the issue would divert the Russian focus away from Europe to the Far East. This led to similar territorial demands by the British and the Qing handed over Wei Hai Wei to them on 1^st July 1898, two months after the Japanese vacation, and the British possessed it until 1930.

For its part, Japan was angered by this Triple intervention and waited for a chance to fight the Russians at an appropriate time, which came in c. 1904. In a decisive battle in the Tsushima Straits, Japan decisively defeated the Russian Baltic Fleet. 

Comparison With Today

Today, the PLAN is not only the premier naval force in Asia as the Qing Beiyang Navy, but rivals the US Navy. Traditionally, the Chinese military posture has been to have massive forces which would threaten and make the adversary submit to its demands. Naval forces of Commander Zheng He or those of Kublai Khan had always sailed with hundreds of vessels, many of which were huge in size. PLA in general, and PLAN in particular, have the same approach. Even the Coast Guard cutters of China are easily 10000 dwt. Besides, PLAN is also very technologically advanced almost entirely due to its own efforts unlike in 1894. This is the biggest difference between then and now. 

However, it is still a moot point how well it has integrated technology and the assets with an overall training and operating plan. Unlike the Japanese or the Americans, PLAN had never been involved in naval warfare since Wei Hai Wei in c. 1894 and its possession of aircraft carriers, SSNs, and SSBNs are more recent. IJN tackled the Beiyang Navy through unified command, tactics, operational experience, modernization, training, and integrating newer technologies more effectively into their operations. PLAN might have implemented most of them in its operations today but it still lacks operational experience, and also lacks intense training with experienced maritime forces in order to absorb the best practices. The other problem is the suspect quality of its manpower and even equipment, as evidenced in various theatres of conflict such as in Vietnam (1979) or India (Ladakh 2020, Nathu La 1967, Sumdorong Chu 1986) or in the latest Op. Sindoor (May 2025). This was very much evident in 1894-95 as well. PLAN also suffers from the tyranny of having to escape from its near seas such as Yellow Sea, East Sea or the South China Sea into the Pacific or the Indian Oceans , only through a score of narrow straits and channels which are all under the control of adversaries such as Japan, the Philippines, and India. Though this was not of any concern then, it is a huge problem for China now. 

Unlike China, Japan has a long history of naval warfare. It also builds very sophisticated and proven naval platforms such as frigates (Mogami-class), submarines (Soryu-class conventional), destroyers (Maya-class), and helicopter-turned-aircraft carriers (Izumo-class). It practices extensively through joint exercises with the US, NATO, and the QUAD navies. It has invested heavily in missile defences (Aegis, Patriot PAC-3, and Joint Command & Control with the US forces) also, specifically with Chinese threats in mind. 

Conclusion

We can clearly see that naval dominance played the biggest part in establishing suzerainty and hegemony, a fact that continues until today. Even as we can debate whether Mahan’s or Julian Corbett’s maritime theories are suitable on a finer grain, it is no gainsaying that coarsely, naval power determines the course of events. A corollary is that a mere recognition of naval power and a build-up of naval assets are not enough as they have to be backed by training, tactics, operational acumen, unity of purpose, and a sound strategy. A second observation that can be made is that nation-states keep their self-interests above everything else and act accordingly and in a realistic way. The Triple Intervention against Japan, the US mediation in 1905 clearly demonstrate this aspect. Thirdly, Nation-states build up their military to protect their interests, resources, trade routes as Japan did with respect to Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan in 1895. Fourthly, an action by a state can be interpreted as a deep security concern by another, the idea of ‘indivisibility of security’,  and can lead to opportunistic alliances even among adversaries, as Russia, France, and Germany did. In the light of the on-going developments in the Far East, these lessons are important for India.  

References

[1] “Japan-China Relationship: The Quad – Part 3”, Chennai Centre for China Studies, May 2021

[2] “The Developing Military Alliance in North-East Asia”, Subramanyam Sridharan, Jun. 6 2024, Chennai Centre for China Studies https://www.c3sindia.org/post/issue-brief-iii-the-developing-military-alliance-in-north-east-asia-by-subramaniyam-sridharan

[3] “Becoming China: The Story Behind the State”, Jeanne-Marie Gescher, Bloomsbury, 2017 ISBN: 978-1-4088-8723-3

[4] “The United States and the Opening to Japan, 1853”, Office of the Historian, Dept. Of State https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/opening-to-japan

[5] “Japan’s Industrial Revolution”, Nippon.com https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/b06904/

[6] “The Gift Locomotive That Charmed Samurai Japan”, Aug. 5, 2017, Nippon.com https://www.nippon.com/en/nipponblog/m00123/

[7] “KAIGUN: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy 1887-1941” David C Evans, Mark R Peattie – Naval Institute Press, USA - Digitized by the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/kaigunstrategyta0000evan/mode/2up

[8] “Influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on Japanese Maritime Strategy”, Himadri Bose, IDSA, Feb. 2020 https://www.idsa.in/system/files/jds/14-2-2020-influence-of-alfred-thayer-mahan-hbose.pdf

[9] “Why did the Qing Dynasty, which possessed the ‘Krupp Cannon’ lose?” https://daydaynews.cc/en/history/122476.html

[10] “Becoming China: The Story Behind the State”, Jeanne-Marie Gescher, Bloomsbury, 2017 ISBN: 978-1-4088-8723-3

[11] “Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure,1865–1895”, Benjamin A Elman, Modern Asian Studies 38, 2 (2004), pp. 283–326, Cambridge University Press, 2004