马江海战之后,中法关系进入实质上的战争状态。清朝官员纷纷提出局外严守中立,禁止向法国提供战时物资与代传电报,达到逼迫法国屈服的目的。然而,在要求中立国严守中立的同时,清政府却逐渐意识到中立法阻碍中国争取国际援助和欧美列强对中立法的依违不定。貌似公平的中立法,对处于军事劣势的中国而言其实并不公平,反而有“作茧自缚”之害。于是,清政府提出活用中立法规的“不援之援”策略,在要求局外中立的同时,秘密争取各种外援。在中立问题上,从墨守成规到阳奉阴违的转变,表明清政府并非完全信奉国际法,反而从本土情境和国家利益出发,对国际法加以灵活运用。 After the Ma-Hai naval battle, Sino-French relations entered a real war status. Officials in the Qing dynasty put forward strict neutrality outside their borders and forbidding the provision of wartime supplies and telegrams to France in order to force France to surrender. However, while demanding that the neutral nation maintain its neutrality, the Qing government realized that the neutrality law has hindered China from seeking international aid and that the European and American powers violated the neutral law. The seemingly fair neutral law is not fair to China in a military disadvantage. Instead, it has “harmed itself”. As a result, the Qing government put forward the strategy of “invigorating the aid” of making use of the neutrality laws and regulations and striving for all kinds of foreign aid secretly while seeking independence from the outside. On the issue of neutrality, the change from sticking to conventions to overtaxing of the yin and yang indicates that the Qing government did not fully believe in international law but instead used it flexibly in light of its own circumstances and national interests.