China

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CHINA

clash of civilizations
the macartney mission and its impact
age of imperialism
neiyou waihuan and china's quest for a new identity
bibliography

When the French Revolution took place in 1789, China's last dynasty (the Qing, 1644–1912) had been in power for nearly a century and a half and under Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–1796) was at the height of its power economically, culturally, and perhaps even militarily. Chinese influence in Europe was strong, and European scholars from the Baron de Montesquieu to Voltaire all showed great interest in China. The French coined the word chinoiserie to express their enthusiasm about the country, the eighteenth-century English garden took on many of the characteristics attributed to Chinese gardens, and French rococo art was probably also influenced by Chinese styles. The enthusiasm for China and its culture even led European kings to copy the ritual plowing of the earth performed by the Chinese emperors every spring, after Voltaire praised the Chinese practice. China also benefited from its interaction with Europe, and European arts and sciences, especially Western astronomy, cartography, and mathematics, had a major impact on intellectual activity in China.

clash of civilizations

After the turn of the nineteenth century, however, in the wake of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, the cult of China quickly faded. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued in the early 1820s that China was a typical non-free country where only the emperor had free will. China's lack of interest in commerce and maritime explorations meant that it had fallen behind Europe and even came to be considered "outside the World's history." The increasing predominance of negative Western attitudes toward other cultures in the nineteenth century reflected the disdain felt by the Europeans when they compared their dynamic industrializing societies with the seemingly traditional and static China, and these assumptions profoundly affected relations between China and Europe.

"Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its own borders. There was therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce."

Emperor Qianlong's mandate to George III, 1793. In Imperial China, edited by Frank Schurmann and Orville Schell (New York, 1967), pp. 108–109).

The change of attitudes reflected both a clash of civilizations and the reversal of the fortunes of China and Europe. At a moment when Europe was becoming stronger and wanted to have economic and diplomatic relations on an equal footing with China, the Chinese still believed in the age-old dream that China was "all under heaven," and considered all others, including Europeans, as barbarians. The Europeans started to identify problems with China, among them the Chinese justice system. The Qing legal system was based on hierarchical social values, but the Europeans considered it arbitrary and unusually cruel. Another cause of conflict between the Chinese and Europeans was the Chinese attitude toward foreign trade and diplomacy. In the eighteenth century, the Qing state did not have a ministry of foreign affairs in a modern sense. Instead a number of organizations were responsible for foreign affairs. The Office of Border Affairs (lifan yuan) was responsible for Qing relations with its neighboring countries, including Russia, and for maintaining order in China's dangerous northwest area. The Board of Rites (libu) and the Imperial Household Office (neiwufu) also managed foreign affairs. Relations with countries bordering on the southern crescent of China's coastal and land frontiers were supervised by the former, while the latter was primarily in charge of European missionaries in China. Chinese foreign relations were determined not by diplomacy but by the tribute system, which was key to understanding China's interaction with Europeans. In the case of foreign trade, the Qing state did not want foreigners to have unlimited access to Chinese markets, and under the Guangzhou system that was established in the early eighteenth century foreign traders were allowed to conduct trade in only one port, Guangzhou, and only at a certain time of the year. They could deal only with the Qing court-licensed Chinese merchants, known as the hong merchants, whom Qing held responsible for the payment of all customs duties and for good conduct of foreigners. Under this system, the central government did not deal with European traders directly and kept them at arm's length.

the macartney mission and its impact

While China tried to restrict foreign trade through the Guangzhou system, the British government was determined to expand its trade with China. In 1792 Lord George Macartney (1737–1806) was appointed "ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary from the king of Great Britain to the emperor of China." The purpose of his mission to China was to establish equal diplomatic and economic relations with the Qing state and in particular to end the Guangzhou system and negotiate a new set of commercial agreements. The British also wanted the Qing state to allow permanent foreign diplomatic residences in Beijing. To facilitate his mission's success, Macartney brought a fine array of presents from King George III to Emperor Qianlong, including telescopes, terrestrial globes, a great lens, barometers, clocks, air guns, fine swords, and exact replicas of British warships.

The gifts were intended to show off British scientific and manufacturing skills and achievement, but the Chinese treated the Macartney mission as "tribute emissaries" who had come to celebrate Emperor Qianlong's birthday. They therefore allowed the British to go to Beijing. In his summer residence, Qianlong received the Macartney mission, along with emissaries from other countries, with considerable signs of favor. But when Qianlong was informed of the true purpose of the Macartney mission, he was not pleased. He rejected each and every request from the mission and issued edicts to George III explaining that China would not increase its foreign trade because China needed nothing from other countries. China also thought itself too great to consider itself equal to others, and therefore it was impossible to allow foreign countries to establish an equal relationship with the Chinese. His mission was a failure, but Macartney left China with firsthand observations of that country from which he concluded that China was not as strong as it pretended to be or looked. He described China as "an old, crazy, first rate man-of-war" that could be dashed to pieces on the shore, and this conclusion was crucial for explaining Britain's subsequent decision to use military means to impose its will on China.

The Macartney mission was the first official attempt by a European power to establish diplomatic and economic relations with China based on equality. This first official contact between China and Britain, however, was probably doomed from the outset because of the mutual misunderstandings and clash of civilizations, and it served to increase British prejudices against China. In 1816, immediately after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the British sent a second diplomatic mission to China with the same purpose as the Macartney mission. This mission was led by Lord Amherst, but the Chinese soon expelled him from the country.

age of imperialism

When diplomatic and peaceful efforts failed, the British waited for an opportunity to use other means to force China to accept its terms. That opportunity arose in 1839 when the Chinese decided to ban the opium trade. In response the British government immediately launched a war against China. From the first Opium War on, Britain and the other Great Powers repeatedly used gunboats to force China to join the international system and sign a series of unequal treaties. The unequal rights the Europeans and other powers imposed on China lasted until 1943, so that after the 1840s China gradually lost its national sovereignty. Foreigners, especially the British, controlled crucial Chinese resources such as the imperial Maritime Customs Bureau, which was for many years under the control of Robert Hart, a British subject. After being defeated by the Great Powers in 1842, 1860, 1895, and 1901, China was forced to pay indemnities. Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other large territories were ceded to foreigners so that many parts of China became foreign spheres of influences.

Foreign aggression and the larger access enjoyed by foreign traders and missionaries in the second half of the nineteenth century had a very negative impact on the Chinese economy and society. Disputes and clashes between Chinese and missionaries escalated, and the European powers used these disputes to further advance their invasion of China. In 1870 the clash between the local Tianjin population and French missionaries led to the death of sixteen French men and women. In 1875 local tribesmen in Yunnan murdered a British consul named Augustus Margary. On these occasions, the governments of France and Britain, respectively, forced the Qing state to open more ports, pay indemnities, and agree to additional unequal rights. Moreover, the Great Powers had their eyes on China's traditional tributary zones. France fought a war with China in 1884 and 1885 to win over Vietnam, an area that for many centuries had been under Chinese control. In 1886 the British followed suit by declaring Burma, another Chinese tributary zone, a protectorate. In 1894 the Japanese tried to take away Korea, a Chinese traditional tributary state, from China, and in the first Sino-Japanese War, China was defeated. The Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 1895) concluded the war. It proved to be disastrous for the Chinese. China had to recognize full Korean independence; pay 200 million taels (about US$ 264 million) to Japan; open four more treaty ports; cede Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaodong Peninsula; and allow the Japanese to build factories and other industrial enterprises in the treaty ports.

The Treaty of Shimonoseki started a scramble for concessions in China, and three European powers, Russia, France, and Germany, now joined forces in the Triple Intervention. They collectively forced Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China, in exchange for which Japan received an additional indemnity of 30 million taels (about US$42 million) from China. The true reason for the Triple Intervention was that Russia had its own ambitions on Liaodong. Because France had an alliance with Russia, it provided support. Germany wanted to keep Russia occupied in the Far East so as to lessen its presence in Europe, and so joined the intervention. Japan was humiliated by the Triple Intervention, which laid the seed for the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and Japan's declaration of war on Germany in 1914.

neiyou waihuan and china's quest for a new identity

The rise of Europe and foreign imperialism in China coincided with the social, political, and economic crises of the Qing state, and the European invasions made the crises even worse. "Nei you wai huan" (troubles from within and threats from without) was the central theme in Chinese policy from 1789 to 1914. Between 1795 and 1840 there were at least fifteen major uprisings in China, which had important consequences for Qing's dealing with the European invaders. After the first Opium War, serious rebellions in China such as the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864), the Nian Rebellion (1853–1868), and the rebellions of Chinese Muslims in the southwest and northwest (1855–1873) tied the Qing's hands to domestic affairs and brought China into a state of civil war that cost the Qing court crucial military and financial resources to put the rebellions down. In order to focus on the suppression of these domestic challenges, the Qing adopted a conciliatory policy toward the European and foreign powers and were willing to sacrifice national interest. The "nei you wai huan" phenomenon also comprised the background for the Qing court's several attempts at reform. Starting in 1861, after the joint Anglo-French forces entered Beijing, the Qing state

launched the so-called yangwu yundong (foreign affairs movement) and ziqiang yundong (self-strengthening movement). In the area of foreign affairs, it accepted the treaty system in order to appease the foreign powers. It established the Zongli Yamen, a temporary foreign ministry in 1861, and in 1876 China finally sent its first permanent diplomatic mission to London. In the domestic area, it put more non-Manchu Han Chinese in positions of real power in order to fight against the rebels. Although it still thought it was superior culturally and morally, the Qing did realize that it needed to learn from Western technology and military skills. It therefore set up arsenals to supply modern arms and built railways and a modern navy. A large number of European textbooks in technology and international law were also translated into Chinese.

Defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1895, however, brought about the total collapse of the self-strengthening movement. Many Chinese realized their political system had serious problems and that to survive in the West-dominated new world order China needed to engage in serious political reforms. The reform movement of 1898 under the leadership of Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and others, with support from Emperor Guangxu, was a direct response to this new thinking. The reformers introduced a series of laws to make China a modern state with the establishment of modern education and modern ministries. Unfortunately the reform of 1898 lasted for only about three months before Empress Dowager Cixi put the emperor under house arrest and forced Kang and Liang into exile. After the disastrous Boxer Rebellion in 1900, even Cixi realized the Qing court could not survive without major reform. Therefore, three years after she killed the 1898 reforms, Cixi did exactly what the 1898 reformers wanted to accomplish. Under the name of "New Policies," the old civil service examination was abolished, a modern education system was introduced, and six ancient ministries were supplanted by a dozen modern departments of government, including the ministry of foreign affairs. For many Chinese, however, the New Policies were too late and too little. The Qing collapsed quickly following the outbreak of rebellion in central China on 10 October 1911. On 1 January 1912 the Republic of China was founded under the strong influence of the French and American political systems. When World War I broke out in 1914, this new China was ready to enter the new world order under its own initiatives.