Shandong question, Wade-Giles romanization Shan-tung, at the Versailles Peace Conference ending World War I, in 1919, the problem of whether to transfer to Japan the special privileges formerly held by imperial Germany in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong. The final decision to validate the transfer produced a tremendous outcry in China and resulted in an outpouring of Chinese nationalist sentiment.
In 1898, when the Western imperialist powers were rushing to extract concessions from the weakened Qing dynasty, Germany obtained the use of Jiaozhou Bay, on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula, and the right to construct a naval base at Qingdao there. After World War I began, Japan joined the Allies and took over German interests in the peninsula. At the same time (1915), it presented China with its list of Twenty-one Demands, including Chinese recognition of Japan’s special position in Shandong. Since its Western friends were preoccupied with Germany, China had no choice but to accept the Japanese demands, but it expected the Versailles Peace Conference to restore Shandong.
However, the Japanese and the other Allied powers had made secret treaties in which Japan agreed to second other nations’ claims to German possessions in other parts of the world in return for support on the Shandong issue. The Chinese warlord government secretly agreed to Japanese terms in return for a loan, and the Shandong question was decided in favour of Japan.
Many Chinese, particularly students, impressed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s statements on self-determination and world democracy before the conference, were stunned by the conference’s decision. Students organized a mass demonstration on May 4, 1919. The intellectual revolution then going on in China was renamed the May Fourth Movement, and this iconoclastic reform movement eventually brought about the replacement of traditional Chinese ways with Western ideas and methods. On Feb. 4, 1922, during the Washington Conference, a treaty for the settlement of outstanding questions pertaining to Shandong was finally signed by China and Japan, in which the Japanese agreed to withdraw their troops from Shandong. The treaty also provided for the restoration to China of the former German-leased territory at Jiaozhou Bay and of a railway from Qingdao to Jinan in the province, with China paying some compensation to Japan.