Cao Rulin (; January 23, 1877 – August 1966,

Midland, Michigan Midland is a city in and the county seat of Midland County, Michigan. The city's population was 42,547 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Midland Micropolitan Statistical Area, part of the larger Saginaw-Midland-Bay City Comb ...

, United States) was Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of the

Beiyang Government The Beiyang government (), officially the Republic of China (), sometimes spelled Peiyang Government, refers to the government of the Republic of China which sat in its capital Peking (Beijing) between 1912 and 1928. It was internationally r ...

, and an important member of the pro-Japanese movement in the early 20th century. He was a

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

lawyer working in Beijing when he was appointed by the provisional president,

Yuan Shikai Yuan Shikai (; 16 September 1859 – 6 June 1916) was a Chinese military and government official who rose to power during the late Qing dynasty and eventually ended the Qing dynasty rule of China in 1912, later becoming the Emperor of China. H ...

, to a vacant seat in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...

's senate in 1913. He represented

Outer Mongolia Outer Mongolia was the name of a territory in the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China from 1691 to 1911. It corresponds to the modern-day independent state of Mongolia and the Russian republic of Tuva. The historical region gained ''de facto' ...

because Mongolia boycotted the elections after declaring independence during the

Xinhai Revolution The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution or Hsinhai Revolution, ended China's last imperial dynasty, the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and led to the establishment of the Republic of China. The revolution was the culmination of a d ...

. In 1915, he took

's orders and signed the infamous "

Twenty-One Demands The Twenty-One Demands ( ja, 対華21ヶ条要求, Taika Nijūikkajō Yōkyū; ) was a set of demands made during the First World War by the Empire of Japan under Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu to the government of the Republic of China on 18 ...

" treaty with Japan. He later became the leader of the New Communications Clique. Cao Rulin was part of the Chinese envoy attending the Paris Peace Conference. At the conference many former German

concession Concession may refer to: General * Concession (contract) (sometimes called a concession agreement), a contractual right to carry on a certain kind of business or activity in an area, such as to explore or develop its natural resources or to opera ...

s in China were handed to Japan instead of back to China. This caused a great deal of unrest in China resulting in a student demonstration on May 4, 1919 outside

Tiananmen The Tiananmen (also Tian'anmen (天安门), Tienanmen, T’ien-an Men; ), or the Gate of Heaven-Sent Pacification, is a monumental gate in the city center of Beijing, China, the front gate of the Imperial City of Beijing, located near the ci ...

. This was the beginning of the

May Fourth Movement The May Fourth Movement was a Chinese anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing on May 4, 1919. Students gathered in front of Tiananmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) to protest the Chinese ...

. The demonstration shifted and Cao Rulin's house, at 3 Front Zhaojialou Lane in the East City District, was burned down. Cao was helped to escape by his friend, Nakae Ushikichi, son of

Nakae Chōmin was the pen-name of a journalist, political theorist and statesman in Meiji-period Japan. His real name was . His major contribution was the popularization of the egalitarian doctrines of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Japan ...

External links

Front Zhaojialou Lane

Tsao Ju-ling (Cao Rulin) 曹汝霖
from ''Biographies of Prominent Chinese'' c.1925. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cao Rulin Republic of China politicians from Shanghai 1966 deaths 1877 births Progressive Party (China) politicians Date of birth missing Place of birth missing Date of death missing Place of death missing Taiwanese people from Shanghai Chinese Civil War refugees People from Detroit Chinese emigrants to the United States Chinese people of World War I

See also

External links