Chinese Police, late Imperial or early Republic?

This photo appears in the Osprey Men at Arms issue devoted to Chinese Civil War Armies 1911-49 with the caption: "Cavalry in the city of Tiensin in 1912 wear an unusual uniform only seen in this part of China. It consists of a double-breasted dark blue jacket with the white shoulder boards of the cavalry and a peaked cap with a cap badge based on the flag of the Wuchang revolutionaries of 1911. The swords they carry are of Japanese make."

Whilst I love the Osprey series, they are not always accurate.
Blue with white embellishments was the colour of the Chinese police. Given their peaked caps I would go with Republic, but am unsure. Certainly well equipped for the police, but perhaps mounted branch from Peking.

Yes mounted police of Tiensin (or Peking) would seem likely, since the double breasted tunic is different from the single breasted M1910 dark blue ones worn by the Imperial Chinese cavalry in winter or full dress until the Republican uprising the following year.

According to Knotel all branches of the Imperial Army wore the dark blue uniform with peaked caps. Branch colours were red for infantry, yellow for artillery, white for cavalry, dark brown for transport corps and blue for pioneers. The Imperial Guard wore light grey. There was a light khaki uniform for summer wear.

The police photo shows up again in Tim Newark's "Brassey's Book of Uniforms". Here it is identified as "Chinese government soldiers". The interesting thing is that it is one of nine photographs published in the Brassey book with identical backdrops and clearly taken in the same studio at the same time. The other subjects are British highlanders, Indian sepoys, a Belgian infantryman, Austro-Hungarian sailors, Russian cossacks, French colonial infantry, Japanese infantry and German East Asiatic Expeditionary Corps. Brassey identifies this collection as "Soldiers of the international forces stationed at Tientsin in 1911". Place must have been crowded.

The Chinese characters say "bīng nà zhī," which I interpret as "soldiers who are paid," i.e. regulars.

mconrad wrote:The Chinese characters say "bīng nà zhī," which I interpret as "soldiers who are paid," i.e. regulars.

That's not at all what it means. The Chinese characters in this case are Japanese words in Kanji, read from right to left, or Zhi Na Bing, or 'Chinese soldiers'. Zhi na (or 'shina' in Japanese pronunciation) is a transliteration of the word western word 'China' and it is a term the post-Meiji Japanese began using to refer to China. The fact they ceased to refer to China as literally 'middle kingdom' and instead used a western word with no particular meaning was a gesture that they no longer respected China's suzerainty in the past in that region. The term is now deemed pejorative in both languages.

Thank you, that is very interesting.