onto the sidewalk, where an Indian policeman allowed the English boy to continue while stopping Koo to give him a fine for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk. Koo was shocked to discover that owing to extraterritoriality, the laws and rules that applied to Chinese in China did not apply to British subjects-in this instance laws prohibiting riding a bicycle on the sidewalk-and that a foreign policeman had power over the Chinese police. Koo was left with a lifelong desire to end the status of extraterritoriality that had been imposed by the 19th century "Unequal treaties". Koo studied at Saint John's University, Shanghai from 1901 to 1904, and Columbia University in New York City, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society, a literary and debating club, and graduated with a BA in Liberal Arts (1908) and an MA in Political Science (1909). In 1912 he received his PhD in international law and diplomacy from Columbia. Return to Peking Koo returned to Peking in 1912. He served the Republic of China as English Secretary to President Yuan Shikai. In 1915, Koo was made Republic of China's Minister to the United States and Cuba. At the Paris Peace Conference In 1919, he was a member of the Chinese delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, led by Foreign Minister Lou Tseng-Tsiang. In 1897, China had been forced to sign a treaty that gave a 99-year lease giving sovereignty over the city of Qingdao to Germany while also giving Germany various special rights and economic control over the Shandong peninsula. Qingdao became the principal German naval base in Asia. In 1914, Japan entered World War I on the Allied side and seized Qingdao after a siege. The Japanese made it very clear that they wished to take over the German rights in Shandong province by right of conquest, a demand that the Chinese vehemently rejected. In January 1915, Japan presented the 21 Demands that if accepted would have turned China into a virtual Japanese protectorate, warning in a note presented to the Chinese that Japan would take "vigorous methods" if the 21 Demands were rejected. Following protests from the United States that the 21 Demands would negate the Open Door policy towards trade with China, the Japanese dropped the more extreme of the 21 Demands. On 25 May 1915, the Japanese forced the Chinese to agree that after the war ended, the