The so-called 'Scramble for Concessions' following the First Sino-Japanese War was not necessarily a singular event, but rather a chain of actions and counter-actions by the Great Powers. The degree to which military power over the Qing was being leveraged could therefore vary.

The unexpectedly extreme terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 had provoked the 'Triple Intervention', a tripartite plan by Russia, its ally France, and Germany to prevent Japan from obtaining its desired territorial gains in southern Manchuria. Were Japan to gain control over the Liaodong Peninsula, the Russians argued, they would be placed within constant striking distance of Beijing and be put in a controlling position of Korea, whose independence it was nominally safeguarding. The approach in Tokyo was very much good-cop-bad-cop, with the French and Russian ambassadors (whose superiors back home were fully prepared to launch naval forces) sending 'friendly advice', and the German representative angling for a more militarily threatening approach. In turn, neither Japan's ally of Britain, nor the US, chose to intervene, and so under naval pressure Japan was forced to evacuate the Liaodong Peninsula in May 1895. However, none of the three interveners actually demanded or received any direct concessions.

Nevertheless, there was some sense of entitlement at work, especially from the Germans, and a desire to seize some pretext for an occupation of Jiaozhou Bay, a region which had been suggested by Ferdinand von Richthofen (uncle to the more famous Red Baron) in the 1870s as a viable option alongside Zhoushan Island, just across from the treaty port at Ningbo. Ningbo, however, fell squarely within British interests in the Yangtze, and so long-term it was Jiaozhou that was desired. The pretext came on the night of 1-2 November 1897, when two German Catholic missionaries from the Society of the Divine Word were ambushed and murdered in Juye County, Shandong, likely by members of the Big Sword Society, a secret society which was operating as a counterweight to growing Christian influence in the region. The 'Juye Incident', as it became known, was seized upon by the German government as a cause for military intervention, and on 13 November the East Asia Cruiser Squadron sailed into Jiaozhou Bay, and the next day marines disembarked and occupied Qingdao, ostensibly as security for other concessions, but it was evident that the intent was long-term occupation. In December, Kaiser Wilhelm II's brother Heinrich was dispatched to China along with troops, artillery and cruisers, arriving at Shanghai in April 1898, but even before then, on 8 March, the Germans had 'negotiated' a 99-year lease on the territory.

The Russian response was at first to attempt to block the occupation, with the Russian foreign minister, Count Muraviev, indicating in mid-November 1897 that Jiaozhou Bay fell within the Russian sphere of influence as per the terms of 1895. However, lacking the naval capacity in East Asia to actually challenge the Germans, the Russians withdrew the warning and focussed on Manchuria. On a visit to Moscow in 1896, the pre-eminent Qing official, Li Hongzhang, had agreed to a secret treaty with Muraviev's predecessor, known as the Li-Lobanov Agreement, promising mutual military aid in East Asia, for which the establishment of a rail line in Manchuria for moving Russian reinforcements was considered vital. Consequently, a Russian presence in the region was already expected. However, the German occupation of Qingdao accelerated matters. Russia's lease on Dalian and Port Arthur would also be implicitly secured by force, with a squadron from Vladivostok bearing on Port Arthur by the last two weeks of December. In mid-late March 1898 (there is apparently some ambiguity as to the date), the Russians obtained a 25-year lease on Port Arthur and Dalian, with Dalian made an 'open port' but Port Arthur reserved exclusively for the Russians and Qing, primarily as a naval base.

Britain's seizure of Weihaiwei on the tip of the Shandong Peninsula came as a direct reaction to the Russian occupation of Port Arthur, which was recognised as having no commercial potential at all and was therefore a base purely for power projection. Qingdao, by contrast, was quite close to the North Chinese economic core even if the Germans sought to establish naval facilities. As with the Russian and German ports, Weihaiwei served a crucial role in projecting power in the Bohai Gulf, and would be essential to offsetting Russian naval expansion, though Britain chose not to also use Weihaiwei as a means of challenging German economic dominance in Shandong. Unlike the Germans and Russians, the British didn't send ships in first, not least because Weihaiwei was being occupied by Japan as a hostage for indemnity payments until 21 May 1898. Instead, the 25-year lease on Weihaiwei (chosen to match the Russian so as to not extend beyond its strategic usefulness,) agreed on 3 April, came into force after the Japanese left, with the Union Jack being hoisted on 24 May to coincide with Queen Victoria's birthday.

All three occupations were spun to the Qing as reinforcements of existing friendly relations: the Germans claimed that they were safeguarding their interests and ensuring the proper exercise of justice in response to the Juye Incident, the Russians claimed that they were assisting the Qing by placing their own counterweight in Port Arthur, and the British that their seizure of Weihaiwei was to apparently be a safeguard against the carving up of China by the Great Powers by checking the expansion of both of them. But there were subtle differences. While Germany and Russia seized their respective ports by force, Britain got its seemingly by leveraging its pro-Qing stance and its ability to support the Qing against further encroachment via Weihaiwei.

France also had an interest in obtaining some sort of naval port, and chose Guangzhouwan, north of Hainan Island. The French 99-year lease on the bay was obtained on 10 April 1898, again without a pre-emptive act of naval intervention, but the threat of military force was likely there – back in 1884, their fleet had utterly destroyed the Qing's southern naval presence at the Battle of Fuzhou, and they nearly managed to wrest Taiwan from Qing control as well in 1885. As such, only a year earlier in 1897, they had received recognition of Yunnan, Guangdong and Guangxi as exclusive spheres of influence, precluding the cession of any land in these provinces to any other foreign power.

The New Territories lease was to some extent thus a knee-jerk reaction to growing French influence, attempting to extend Hong Kong's increasingly inadequately small territory before France was able to make good on its exclusive claim to alienating territory in the region, as well as a counterweight to France's inevitable increase in local economic and naval engagement. I'm not aware of that much research having been done regarding the actual process of securing the New Territories lease, but given the 25-year conditions for Port Arthur versus Weihaiwei, it's not implausible that the lease length was chosen to match the French lease on Guangzhouwan in order to check their newfound advantage. Overt threats of force don't appear to have been a major part of the deal at all, although certainly in the long term, the impact of numerous on-and-off military conflicts with the Western powers over the years would certainly have made the Qing more acquiescent to foreign territorial demands.

Sources, Notes and References

1. Kees van Dijk, Pacific Strife: The Great Powers and Their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the Western Pacific 1870-1914 (2015)
2. Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (1986)