ld disavow the possession of "any territorial
advantages or preferential or exclusive concessions in impairment of
Chinese sovereignty or inconsistent with the principle of equal
opportunity in Manchuria," and that Japan and Russia "engaged
reciprocally not to obstruct any general measures common to all
countries which China might take for the development of the commerce
and industry of Manchuria."

This distinction between the special interests of the contracting
parties and the interests of China herself, as well as of foreign
nations generally, is essential to clear understanding of a situation
which subsequently attracted much attention. From the time of the
Opium War (1857) to the Boxer rising (1900), each of the great
Western powers struggled for its own hand in China, and each sought
to gain for itself exclusive concessions and privileges with
comparatively little regard for the interests of others and with no
regard whatsoever for China's sovereign rights. The fruits of this
period were permanently ceded territories (Hongkong and Macao);
leases temporarily establishing foreign sovereignty in various
districts (Kiao-chou, Weihaiwei, and Kwang-chow); railway and mining
concessions, and the establishment of settlements at open ports where
foreign jurisdiction was supreme. But when, in 1900, the Boxer rising
forced all the powers into a common camp, they awoke to full
appreciation of a principle which had been growing current for the
past two or three years, namely, that concerted action on the lines
of maintaining China's integrity and securing to all alike equality
of opportunity and a similarly open door, was the only feasible
method of preventing the partition of the Chinese empire and averting
a clash of rival interests which might have disastrous results. This,
of course, did not mean that there was to be any abandonment of
special privileges already acquired or any surrender of existing
concessions. The arrangement was not to be retrospective in any
sense. Vested interests were to be strictly guarded until the lapse
of the periods for which they had been granted, or until the maturity
of China's competence to be really autonomous.

A curious situation was thus created. International professions of
respect for China's sovereignty, for the integrity of her empire, and
for the enforcement of the open door and equal opportunity co-existed
with legacies from an entirely different past. Russia endorsed this
new