15.1 China

State of the nation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

In 1750, China was ruled by the Qing or Manchu dynasty, which had been in power since 1644.

As the Manchus were not Han Chinese, they were regarded as foreigners by the majority of the population. At first they brought peace and stability to the country; in 1700, the standard of living and the development of science and the arts was among the best in the world.

However, by the nineteenth century, China was in decline. Under the Qing, the population grew quickly, reaching 300 million around 1800 and 400 million in 1850. Agricultural production could not meet the needs of this growing population. In industry only traditional technologies were in use. The standard of living fell and there was a rise of female infanticide.

Society and the education system were rigid. The Confucian beliefs of obedience were stressed in a conservative manner. Traders and merchants were on the bottom of the scale of social esteem, while officials and scholars were respected – but scholars were chosen by an examination system in which those who could learn and repeat ancient teachings were rewarded.

This meant that the scholars were less open to new ideas and were unable to lead China to meet the challenges of the modern world.

In previous centuries China had been a scientific leader, but it was now backward in comparison with Western Europe.

Change and continuity

During the nineteenth century, the government was unable to control the vast area of China and local rulers became more powerful. Along with major conflicts like the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion, there was widespread social unrest. The government was hampered in these conflicts by having to support the bannermen as well as local militia and a professional army.

There was little money for public works and the Grand Canal between Hangzhou and Beijing silted up and became useless for transporting goods. As well as this, the government restricted Chinese interaction with other countries. Foreign traders could only deal with licensed merchants, known as the cohong, which had a monopoly of the import–export trade. Foreign ships could only enter one port, Guangzhou, and only between October and January. Foreign traders could only stay in a special section of Guangzhou for these few months. No foreign ships could sail up the Pearl River.

Because of these measures, China had little opportunity to learn about the Westerners whom they called barbarians and ‘foreign devils’.

Chinese were forbidden to leave their country and were not allowed to teach Chinese to foreigners.

However, we do know that some, such as gold seekers and indentured labourers, did manage to leave. This combination of economic and military weakness with deliberate naivety about the West meant that China was ill-equipped to deal with the Westerners who were eager to profit from trade with China.

Trade relations with the West

Trade links between Europe and China had existed since the Ancient Roman period. Silk and fine porcelain was prized in Europe, although the Europeans were now copying Chinese designs and techniques. Over the eighteenth century, Chinese tea became very popular, especially among the British middle classes. In 1720, Britain imported 180 tonnes of tea from China and this grew to 10 600 tonnes by 1800. Britain was purchasing almost 15% of the annual Chinese tea crop. It was said that the British consumption of tea grew from around 1 kilogram per head annually in the late 1790s to about 5 kilograms per head a decade later. Tea became a necessary part of the English way of life – this was when the English afternoon tea ritual developed.

The traders paid in silver, which the Chinese government used for its currency. In 1780, the British paid almost half a million kilograms of silver. However, because silver was becoming increasingly hard to obtain, the foreign traders and their governments wanted to be able to sell other goods to China to help pay for the tea, silk and china. They also wanted to deal with traders outside the cohong and be able to enter other ports and thus avoid the cost of having all goods sold through Guangzhou, which was far to the south of the tea-growing regions around the Yangtze River.

In 1793, King George III of England sent the diplomat Lord George Macartney to China to negotiate the freeing up of Chinese trade.

Macartney took with him 84 servants and 600 boxes of gifts for Emperor Quianlong, whom he hoped to impress. He presented King George’s letter to the Emperor in a gold box encrusted with diamonds. At first the Emperor was unwilling to meet the envoy, who refused to kowtow.

However, they did have an informal meeting at the Imperial summer retreat. The Emperor accepted the gifts of clocks, telescopes and guns not because he was impressed by them but because he knew it had been so much trouble to bring them to Beijing. But he rejected the British requests, telling Macartney, ‘There is nothing we lack … We have never set much store on strange and ingenious objects, nor do we need any more of your country’s manufactures’.

Although Macartney failed to get any agreement to make the China trade more balanced and open, he gained useful knowledge about China.

He could see that the military forces were poorly armed, that poverty was widespread and that scholars and officials were uninterested in either improving the standard of living in China or in greater communication with the outside world.

Gun-boat diplomacy

The British East India Company was growing opium in India and could see this was a product that they could sell in China. Opium was useful as a pain-killer, but many became addicted to it.

British opium sales to China grew quickly: from 200 chests in 1729 to 1000 chests in 1767 and 4500 chests in 1800. Opium smoking became a terrible social problem, and by 1800 the Chinese government had banned the import and production of the drug. In 1813, opium smoking was prohibited – offenders received 100 lashes and were required to wear a heavy wooden collar for a month. However, the British continued the trade. By dealing with Chinese smugglers and bribing officials, the traders increased the volume to 40 000 chests by 1838.

Lin Zexu was an official appointed to stamp out the destructive trade. In a letter addressed to Queen Victoria, later published in the London Times, he wrote: ‘Let me ask you, where is your conscience? If people from a foreign country were seducing your people into buying and smoking opium, I’m certain you would not be happy either’.

Lin Zexu seized opium stores and 70 000 opium pipes. Opium belonging to the foreign traders was destroyed by 500 labourers working for 22 days. The British saw this destruction as an affront to their dignity and an assault on free trade. The British attacked the Chinese ports of Ningbo, Tianjin and Guangzhou, sailing up the Yangtze to Nanjing to demonstrate their superior force. On a single day in 1841, just one British steam-powered warship armed with large modern guns destroyed five Chinese junks, five forts, two military stations and onshore defences.

The Emperor had to submit to a humiliating peace: the Nanjing Treaty in 1842. Under the terms of the treaty, five ports were opened to international trade, China had to pay the British war costs and Britain took control of Hong Kong. This was the first of the unequal treaties under which foreign powers imposed their will on China. Unequal treaties also set low tariffs for imported goods, which not only made it hard for Chinese industry to develop but also increased British profits.

Foreigners were now allowed to enter China, and traders and Christian missionaries were soon challenging traditional Chinese beliefs and values. Further, under the principle of ‘extraterritoriality’, foreigners were not subject to Chinese law and courts but were tried under their own law.

Key event: the Taiping Rebellion

The Qing government also had to combat internal rebellions, especially after the humiliating Nanjing Treaty. Notably, the Taiping Rebellion of 1850–64 spread over 16 provinces and destroyed 600 cities. The leader, Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864), was a village school teacher who became enraged by the Manchus when he failed the Imperial Examination for a fourth time. He had a vision and believed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He incited his followers to destroy idols and ancestral temples, to renounce opium and alcohol, and to give up foot-binding and prostitution. He said the Qing were foreign rulers who had stolen Chinese wealth and oppressed China’s people.

He attracted many followers, especially among his own Hakka group, and they rose up against the government. In 1851, Hong declared he was King of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (Taiping). The Taipings called for a new type of society, with equal landholdings and equality for men and women. The Xianfeng Emperor, who ruled between 1850 and 1861, appointed Zeng Guofan to defeat the rebellion. Zeng had to set up a new army, with both men and women brought in as conscripts. It took 12 years and 20 000 troops to defeat the rebels, with the struggle damaging the fertile lower Yangtze area and causing the loss of more than 20 million lives. The plains were ‘strewn with human skeletons’ and rivers were ‘polluted with floating carcasses’. During this era, many Chinese went to the goldfields in California and Australia, leaving behind the misery and poverty of southern China. Others went to the Malacca Straits and the north coast of Java as traders.

The Taipings were defeated, but other rebellions broke out. Along the route of the Grand Canal, poverty and unemployment saw many become bandits in gangs. While the government was struggling to keep control, foreign powers took advantage of its weakness. In the Second Opium War of 1856–60, the French and British forces launched attacks on Guangzhou and other ports. They marched on Beijing, occupied it for 1 month, and looted and then burned the Emperor’s beautiful Summer Palace. Under the terms of the peace, 10 more ports became open to foreign traders and the British gained the Kowloon peninsula across from the island of Hong Kong. Significantly, the opium trade was legalised. Russian Count Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky helped to negotiate the peace, and in return Russia took over some northern provinces where they built the port of Vladivostok.

Position of China leading up to 1900

Self-strengthening movement

Broken by these terrible defeats, the Xianfeng Emperor died in 1861. He was succeeded by his 6-year-old son, whose uncle Prince Gong and mother the Empress Dowager Cixi ruled as regents. Many officials felt that new policies were needed. It was important to learn from Western countries and to develop China in a modern way. They were able to defeat China.

They said China must learn from the barbarians in order to do better than them.

Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were part of a small group of officials who wanted reform. Prince Gong supported this self-strengthening program.

They hired some Western technical experts as instructors and sent young Chinese abroad to study and understand Western institutions and production methods. They established a naval academy and built harbours, shipyards, gun factories, machine factories, and cotton, textile and paper mills.

They encouraged the study of European languages and established embassies in major cities such as London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin and Washington. As they modernised China, conservative critics attacked them and tried to undermine their efforts. They said that copying the West was an insult to ancient Chinese ways and beliefs.

The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) benefited from this struggle, as she was able to play the conservative and reform factions off against each other. The daughter of a low-ranking official, at the age of 15 years Cixi was given to the Xianfeng Emperor as a consort and gave birth to his only son. After the Emperor’s death, she shared power with the childless Empress Dowager Ci’an and the Eight Regent Ministers.

She gradually took control, and became the de facto ruler of China for 47 years. When her son died in 1875, she appointed a new emperor, her 3-year-old nephew Guangxu, ensuring her control for many more years.

The young Emperor Guangxu was attracted to the ideas of reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. In the Hundred Days reform in 1898 he issued many decrees for reform in education, the military and commerce, and moved China towards a constitutional monarchy. China seemed destined to follow the path of Japan in reforming and modernising, but this was not to be as the Empress Dowager Cixi and her conservatives staged a coup, executing many of Emperor Guangxu’s followers and imprisoning him for 10 years. Kang and Liang escaped to Japan, and Liang later toured Australia in 1900–01 seeking support for reform. When Empress Dowager Cixi was dying in 1908, she appointed her great-nephew, an infant, as Emperor Guangxu’s successor. It seems likely that she poisoned Guangxu, as he died suspiciously. She died the next day.

The intrigues of the Empress Dowager Cixi and her followers made it difficult for the government and people to face China’s problems. The people were poor and the country was not very advanced, and beset by foreigners who were taking its wealth and territory. Large areas of China had been lost and the country had been humiliated by disastrous military defeats. Its neighbour, Japan, had successfully modernised and was growing as a military power. Japan waged war against China in 1894–95 and won control of Taiwan. Once more China had to pay a huge fine to its enemy. As a result of all the money paid to the foreign powers, China remained in debt until 1949.

The Boxer Rebellion

In 1898, the Yellow River flooded 2000 villages, and millions of people lost their homes and livelihoods. The failure of the government to provide relief led to widespread criticism.

Many were irritated by the privileges enjoyed by foreigners. They resented the interference of Christian missionaries in Chinese life and customs. The peasants rose against the foreigners, murdering some missionaries and attacking their compounds. These protesters believed they had special powers, and practised martial arts, thus gaining the name ‘Boxers’ by foreigners. The Boxers laid siege to the foreign embassies in Beijing. The Empress supported the Boxers and declared war on the eight foreign powers, which defended their citizens.

In August 1900, 20 000 foreign troops marched into Beijing. Australian colonies sent troops to help defeat the Boxers. Once more China suffered a terrible defeat and the foreigners imposed harsh penalties and a huge fine to be paid over 40 years with interest. This was the final indignity for China. It had resisted reform and modernisation and had virtually become a nation subject to foreign powers. Only in 1911, with the Republican Revolution led by Sun Yat Sen and the overthrow of the monarchy, were the reformers able to make some progress in China.