Homer Lea - Chinese Affairs

Chinese Affairs

Lea developed an interest in China after his family moved to Los Angeles, seeing in China an opportunity to attain military glory. He often visited nearby Chinatown and also befriended Reverend Ng Poon Chew, a local Chinese missionary friend of his parents. He met other Chinese through Ng Poon Chew and soon began leaning their language (Cantonese). In 1899, while recuperating from a bout of smallpox, he learned of a recently organized Chinese society called the Pao Huang Hui (Protect the Emperor Society; also known as the Chinese Empire Reform Association), which K’ang Yu-wei, a former adviser to the Chinese emperor, helped establish to restore Emperor Kwang-Hsu to his throne. The emperor had been deposed in 1898 by Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi for instituting Western reforms.

Lea saw an opportunity for adventure in China with the Pao Huang Hui rather than returning to Stanford. He convinced local Pao Huang Hui leaders that he was a military expert who could greatly benefit their cause, in part, by falsely claiming Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee as a relative. Chinese officials were also impressed by his extensive Stanford education. The Pao Huang Hui welcomed him into their ranks with promises of becoming a General in their upcoming military campaign to restore the emperor to power. He traveled to China in 1900, while the Boxer Rebellion was underway, with high hopes of playing a major role in the military campaign. He became a Lieutenant General in the Pao Huang Hui’s makeshift military forces, but had a relatively unimportant assignment that involved training rural volunteers away from any active military operations. After the Pao Huang Hui’s main military forces were defeated by the imperial army, his military adventures in China came to a virtual end.

Lea returned to California in 1901 and continued working with the Pao Huang Hui. He became the architect of a plan to train a Pao Huang Hui military cadre in America whose goal was to return to China and help restore the emperor to power. In 1904, he began establishing a network of military schools nationwide to covertly train his soldiers. His soldiers wore uniforms similar to those of the U.S. Army, with the exception of having a dragon replacing the national eagle on buttons and hats, and he recruited U.S. Army veterans as drill instructors. While his training scheme received popular attention in the press, it also resulted in a series of unwanted federal, state and local investigations, which subsequently led K’ang Yu-Wei to disavow Lea and his training scheme.

After breaking with the Pao Huang Hui, Lea again turned his ambitions to China. In 1908, he unsuccessfully sought to become a U.S. trade representative to China for the Roosevelt administration; and in 1909, he unsuccessfully sought to become the U.S. Minister to China for the Taft administration. In 1908, he also contrived a bold and audacious military venture in China called the “Red Dragon Plan” that called for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to conquer the two southern Kwang provinces. He conspired with a handful of American businessmen and Dr. Yung Wing, a prominent former Chinese diplomat and scholar living in America. Through Yung Wing, he planned to solicit a united front of various southern Chinese factions and secret societies to organize an army that he would command for the revolution. If successful, Yung Wing was slated to head a coalition government of revolutionary forces while Lea and his fellow conspirators hoped to receive wide-ranging economic concessions from the new government.

When Chinese revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen came to America in late 1909 on a fund-raising trip, he met with Yung Wing, who convinced him that Lea and the Red Dragon conspirators could benefit his revolutionary movement. The Red Dragon conspirators joined Sun Yat-sen’s movement to topple the Manchu Dynasty and Lea became one of Sun Yat-sen’s most trusted advisors. Ultimately, the Red Dragon conspirators could not obtain the necessary financial backing for their plans and dissolved the conspiracy after a failed revolutionary attempt by Sun Yat-sen’s followers in March 1911. Lea, however, remained loyal to Sun Yat-sen.

In October 1911, Sun Yat-sen’s forces succeeded in their revolution to depose the Manchu Dynasty. Sun Yat-sen was in America on a fund raising trip when he received word that he was to be the president of the new Chinese provisional government. He immediately contacted Lea to help arrange American and British governmental support for the revolutionary cause. Sun Yat-sen and Lea believed in forming an Anglo-Saxon alliance with China that would grant the United States and Great Britain special status for their support. Lea, who was in Wiesbaden, Germany, receiving medical treatment for his failing eyesight, met Sun Yat-sen in London, but they failed to obtain the desired Anglo-American support.

As Sun Yat-sen and Lea sailed together for China, Lea’s influence on Sun Yat-sen appeared to be growing. As their ship made several port calls along the way, Sun Yat-sen announced plans to make Lea the chief of staff of China’s Republican army with authority to negotiate an end to hostilities with the imperial government. Shortly after arriving in Shanghai, China, in late December 1911, however, Lea suffered a major reversal of fortunes. He received word from the U.S. State Department that he could not be the chief of staff of China’s Republican army since U.S. legal restrictions prevented him from aiding revolutionary movements. At the same time, Chinese revolutionary leaders wary of his influence over Sun Yat-sen, considered him an interloper and wanted nothing to do with him, which further marginalized his position. He remained Sun Yat-sen’s close unofficial adviser until early February 1912, when he suffered a near fatal stroke shortly after he heard of Sun Yat-sen's resignation that left him partially paralyzed and signaled an end to his stay in China.