After the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan coerced the annexation of the Liaodong Peninsula with the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, but had to give it up due to diplomatic pressure from the 1895 Triple Intervention. In the aftermath of the Japanese threat, Qing viceroy Li Hongzhang visited Moscow in 1896 and signed a secret treaty with Russian foreign minister Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovsky, allowing Imperial Russia to build a Russian-gauge railway through Manchuria, which opened the door towards further Russian expansionism in the form of another lease convention in 1898, effectively allowing Russia to annex Port Arthur in all but name. However, after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Russian forces used that anti-foreigner insurgency as a pretext to formally invade and occupy most of Manchuria, and Mukden became a Russian stronghold in the Far East with the building of what would become the South Manchurian Railway - from Harbin via Mukden to Dalny.[20][21]