other German spheres of influence after the defeat of Germany. However, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan's claims trumped prior promises to China, and the Treaty of Versailles assigned the up-to-date city of Tsingtao and the Kiautschou Bay region to Japan. The subsequent recognition of that Allied betrayal sparked the nationalist May Fourth Movement, which is regarded as a significant event in modern Chinese history. As a result, the Beiyang government refused to sign the treaty. World War I dealt a severe blow to Sino-German relations. Long-established trade connections had been destroyed and financial structures and markets wrecked. Of the almost 300 German firms conducting business in China in 1913, only two remained in 1919. 1920s Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the German Army (Reichswehr) was restricted to 100,000 men, and its military industrial production was greatly reduced. However, the treaty did not diminish Germany's place as a world leader in military innovation, and German industry retained the machinery and technology to produce military hardware. Therefore, to circumvent the treaty's restrictions, industrial firms formed partnerships with foreign nations such as the Soviet Union and Argentina to produce weapons and sell them legally. As the Chinese government did not sign the Treaty of Versailles, a separate peace treaty was concluded in 1921. After the death of Yuan Shi-kai, the Beiyang government collapsed, and the country fell into civil war, with various Chinese warlords vying for supremacy. German arms producers began looking to re-establish commercial links with China to tap into its vast market for weapons and military assistance. The Kuomintang government also sought German assistance, and the German-educated Chu Chia-hua (朱家驊; Zhū Jiāhuá) arranged almost all of the Sino-German contacts from 1926 to 1944. There were several reasons other than Germany's technological expertise that made it the top candidate in Chinese foreign relations. Firstly, Germany had no interest on having colonies in China after World War I. Secondly, unlike the Soviet Union, which helped with Kuomintang reorganization and opened party membership to communists, Germany had no political interest in China that could lead to confrontations with the central government. Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek saw German unification as something from which China could learn and emulate. Thus, Germany was seen as a primary force in the "international development" of China. In 1926, Chu Chia-hua invited Max Bauer to survey investment possibilities in China, and the next year, Bauer arrived in