Treaty of Shimonoseki

The Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed on 17 April 1895 in the Japanese city of Shimonoseki, ending the First Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and Qing dynasty China. It was negotiated for Japan by Ito Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu and for China by the senior statesman Li Hongzhang, who was shot and wounded by a Japanese nationalist during the talks. Under its eleven articles, China recognized the full independence of Korea, ending its centuries-old tributary relationship with the peninsula; ceded Taiwan, the Penghu Islands and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan; paid Japan a war indemnity of 200 million taels of silver; and opened four additional Chinese ports to Japanese trade and residence. Within days of the signing, Russia, Germany and France jointly pressured Japan, in what became known as the Triple Intervention, to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China in exchange for an additional 30 million taels, a humiliation that fed Japanese resentment toward the European powers. For China, the treaty's terms were a national humiliation that discredited the Self-Strengthening Movement's reform efforts, encouraged further foreign encroachment on Chinese territory, and accelerated the political decline that ended in the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.