The Unfinished Revolution by Tjio Kayloe

Author:Tjio Kayloe
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9789814779678
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd
Published: 2017-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Homer Lea

Lea became involved in Chinese affairs and joined the Baohuanghui while still at Stanford. In the summer of 1900, he dropped out of college and traveled to China, where he received a commission as a lieutenant-general in the embryonic Baohuanghui army. His role was to train its soldiers in Guangdong and Guangxi, and lead an attack on Guangzhou from Macau with a “coolie army of 25,000” to restore the Guangxu Emperor to the throne. The plan failed and Lea returned home to the United States. In 1904, he masterminded a plan to covertly train a cadre of Chinese soldiers in America, which eventually grew into a network of military schools in more than 20 cities across the continental United States. The idea was to send these soldiers to China to take part in a coordinated coup to restore the Guangxu Emperor. Lea hired former U.S. Army soldiers as instructors and commissioned them into the Baohuanghui army. His clandestine program nearly collapsed in 1905 when the U.S. Secret Service and several states investigated it for possible violation of neutrality laws. Lea’s affiliation with the Baohuanghui ended in late 1908 after the death of the Guangxu Emperor.

Lea then tried to become a U.S. trade representative to China but failed. It was at this time that he put together the military conspiracy known as the Red Dragon. The plan called for organizing a revolutionary plot to conquer several provinces in China that would later extend throughout the empire. It was a scheme that bordered on fantasy and was doomed from the outset yet was so potentially lucrative as to prove irresistible to some. His co-conspirator in this enterprise was Charles Boothe, a retired New York banker living in South Pasadena. Yung Wing was their adviser on Chinese affairs. In the fall of 1908, Boothe enlisted the aid of his childhood friend Walter W. Allen. A hardheaded businessman, Allen was less optimistic about the project than the two Californians, but agreed nevertheless to act as their link with the eastern financial establishment. He suggested raising a little more than half of the projected US$9 million cost of the venture from American investors and the balance from Chinese sympathizers. Both groups would have formal control and share the profits proportionately. Voting control, however, would be vested exclusively with the Americans. Investors would be paid ten percent annual interest with the pay dirt to come from concessions granted to the syndicate by the revolutionary government. These included a 99-year franchise to build and operate all Chinese railways and a monopoly of China’s mineral resources. They needed a Chinese figurehead and had considered Kang Youwei for the post but Allen took him off the list when he learned of Kang’s financial improprieties. Yuan Shikai was also on the list but there was no way of getting in touch with him. Allen had mentioned Sun to his conspiracy partners but after meeting him in New York with Yung Wing, he had strong reservations about Sun’s capacity and credibility for leadership.

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