When China joined World War I on the side of the Allies in 1917, they were promised the German concession in the Shandong Peninsula, particularly Qingdao. This was particularly significant for Chinese because the Shandong region is widely considered the birthplace of Confucius. However, in the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies reneged on this promise and instead stipulated that Shandong would go to Japan. While Wilson had, under the ideals of self-determination, promised to bring Shandong back under Chinese control, the Japanese put an end to discussion about the "Shandong Problem" because they were going to bring up the idea of racial equality in the League of Nations, not to mention the fact that Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the US Congress opposed Wilson. To many Chinese, already angered by the Twenty-One Demands put forward by Japan a few years earlier, giving Shandong to Japan anyway was a betrayal on behalf of the Western Allies. Subsequently, it set off the May Fourth Movement, and with that marking the beginning of modern Chinese nationalism, setting off an intellectual revolution, laying the seeds for Chinese Communism, and stopping China from signing and ratifying the Treaty of Versailles.
What if the Shandong Problem never came up in the first place? Suppose that the Allies had agreed to transfer Shandong back to China without making any pledges to Japan, and that the Japanese are ultimately placated by a compromise agreement which gives them additional rights over the port at Qingdao, but recognises the concession as being Chinese territory once more. What happens?
For one, no May Fourth Movement. The social, political and intellectual upheavals that were byproducts of the student-led demonstrations in China emerged as a result of Shandong. Removing the Movement from history means removing a huge turning point in the history of China. Without it, we wouldn't have the ideals of Communism become much more ingrained into China's political atmosphere - the movement made people agree more with Communism, in particular it's anti-imperialist ideology, and Mao himself considered it a "new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution". Moreover, considering the May Fourth Movement's success in uniting Chinese of many ethnicities and cultures, from Han to Manchu to Mongol to Turkic, against the Western Allies, Japan and traditionalism, butterflying it away would mean delaying the development of Chinese nationalism like we see today.
Any other opinions?
What if the Shandong Problem never came up in the first place? Suppose that the Allies had agreed to transfer Shandong back to China without making any pledges to Japan, and that the Japanese are ultimately placated by a compromise agreement which gives them additional rights over the port at Qingdao, but recognises the concession as being Chinese territory once more. What happens?
For one, no May Fourth Movement. The social, political and intellectual upheavals that were byproducts of the student-led demonstrations in China emerged as a result of Shandong. Removing the Movement from history means removing a huge turning point in the history of China. Without it, we wouldn't have the ideals of Communism become much more ingrained into China's political atmosphere - the movement made people agree more with Communism, in particular it's anti-imperialist ideology, and Mao himself considered it a "new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution". Moreover, considering the May Fourth Movement's success in uniting Chinese of many ethnicities and cultures, from Han to Manchu to Mongol to Turkic, against the Western Allies, Japan and traditionalism, butterflying it away would mean delaying the development of Chinese nationalism like we see today.
Any other opinions?