This day in 1913

Poking about to see if history would reveal how it would repeat itself, I came across this little tidbit:

The "Six Powers" (the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany and Japan) agreed to a $125,000,000 loan to China at 6 percent interest.

Japan loaned China money and just a hundred years later China almost opened a can of whipa$$ on Japan. How quickly they forget, huh? Then again there was that little war Japan started with China in the 1930's, so I guess they haven't liked each other for a long time.

Don't mind me; just rambling on tonight.

Wonder if China ever paid back the money?

Jan 1913

reply to post by jiggerj


It's barely 2013 and you had to go open up this can of worms.

I'm going to go eat some asparagus to help defeat the hangover tomorrow.
Took me 12 minutes to type this,damn red squiggily lines.

reply to post by jiggerj


Now in 2013 we owe money to China! My, my how things have changed in 100 years.

Happy New Year Jiggerj...

I'd never heard of this, so with a few spare minutes did some background reading.
Wikipedia itself just cites a newspaper article.

Thanks to trove, here is a newspaper report of the day.



So there was agreement for the loan, but here is another newspaper article from a few months later saying that the Americans had dropped out of deal because Wilson found the terms to be too unfair for the Chinese. Too much outside influence on the inner workings of the Chinese government.
How times have changed.

Edit -

The exact language the President used was that the conditions of the loan seemed "to touch very nearly the administrative independence of China itself," and that a loan thus obtained was "obnoxious" to the principles upon which the American government rests. It is to be hoped that President Wilson's dictum will be universally accepted after the war and that meddling in Chinese affairs will cease

link

Originally posted by caladonea
reply to post by jiggerj

 

Now in 2013 we owe money to China! My, my how things have changed in 100 years.

Happy New Year Jiggerj...

edit on 31-12-2012 by caladonea because: correct spelling

HNY to you too!

Things sure have changed. Japan beat the crap out of China in the 30's. Now China would crush Japan in a day.