From Sino-Japanese War To Russo-Japanese War: The Evolution Of Russia's Far East Policy (1895-1904)

After the event of "Three Countries'Intervention", the new combinations of the Far East international forces became to emerge, and the Far East international relations have been changed dramatically. One hand, Russia not only got his benefits easily from the event of "Three Countries'Intervention", but also acted as a savior of China, which brought China to way of unite Russia making a day; on the other hand, Japan considered that Russia was the obstacle of his China policy, because of losing liaotung peninsula. From then on, Japan regarded Russia as his enemy and began to fight drastically with Russia in the Far East area.After the event of "Three Countries' Intervention" in 1895, Russia began to implement his plan of the Far East evasion. During the 10 years between 1895 and 1904, Russia moved the main part of his evasion to the Far East area gradually, because of the international environment and his domestic factor. Based on the analysis of Russia's far east evasion plan, the far east policy of Russia can be divided into three parts. Firstly, in the period of 1895 to 1896, Russia just began to enter the Far East area. Secondly, from 1896 to 1902, after his succession in the event of Three Countries'Intervention", Russia moved his strategic center to the Far East area and evaded much territory of China and North Korea attempting to dominate the Far East area. Thirdly, between 1902 and 1904,Russia's striving for hegemony in the far east area caused drastically discontentment of Japan and some other western countries, which resulted in the explosion of the war between Japan and Russia. Been defeated in the war between Russia and Japan, Russia exited the striving for hegemony provisionally in the area of Far East.In this paper, the whole contents can be divided into four parts according to time order. In the first part, Russia acted as China's savior apparently in the event of "Three Countries' Intervention", and signed "Sino-Russia secret agreement" with China. But actually, Russia realized his wish that he could build his Siberia railway directly to the northeast of China using "Sino-Russia secret agreement", and used Russo Chinese Bank to import his capital into China in order to colonize the northeast of China in the future. In the second part, Russia decided to evade and occupy the northeast of China with military force with the plan called "Yellow Russia" program, in which Russia can use "Fengtian for the constitution" to replace the general of the three northeast provinces of China with Russian commander to colonize the northeast of China. Besides China, Russia also strived with Japan for North Korea in order to colonize North Korea exclusively. In the third part, facing Russia's "Retreat Portal" policy in the far east and its ambition of occupying North Korea and Northeast part of China, the other empires felt the threat from Russia. Because of the confliction between Russia's far east policy and Japan's mainland policy, the confrontation between Japan and Russia became so intense that Russo-Japanese War was going to exploded. After Russo-Japanese War exploded, the other empires all stood behind Japan under the consideration of each country's own benefits. At last, Russia was defeated in Russo-Japanese War, and his policy in the Far East failed as well. In last part of this paper, the reasons for the failure of Russia's far east policy were discussed with three factors:international environment, domestic environment and its own leader. And, the conclusion that Russia is totally imperialism can be deduced from the discussion mentioned above.