Chapter 4: China's Qing Dynasty and its Collapse
The present-day boundaries of China are based largely on the territory controlled by the Qing 清 dynasty
(1644 - 1912). China was among the world's oldest and most powerful empires throughout most the
history of human civilization. It is convenient to think of the broad outline of China's premodern history in
terms of successions of major dynasties of rulers (generally called emperors). The Qing was the last of
these dynasties. The typical Chinese dynasty, including the Qing, began with a military conqueror
subduing a large piece of territory within approximately the boundaries of present-day China. Next the
ruler would consolidate his hold on power and pass the throne on to one of his relatives, almost always a
son. The first several emperors of a new dynasty would usually expand its territory through further military
conquest. After about 50 to 100 years of territorial expansion, the dynasty would, in effect, settle down. At
that point, gradual weakening and decline usually set in for a variety of reasons. At some point--often 200
to 300 years into the dynasty's existence--the pace of decline would accelerate. The result would be the
dynasty's collapse, which was often followed by a period of turmoil for 50 or more years during which
there was no obvious ruler of "China," which had become divided into numerous territories ruled by
warlords or other strongmen. One of these strongmen would eventually succeed in conquering enough
territory to create the next dynasty. That, in an oversimplified nutshell, is the general pattern of China's
premodern political past.
In this chapter we examine the basic logic an institutions of the Qing dynasty and then zoom ahead to the
1840s. At that point, the Qing dynasty was still moderately powerful, but its time of fairly rapid decline had
started. A major factor in both the decline and the longevity of the Qing dynasty was aggressive
imperialism. Britain led the way in this imperialism, with close support from France and the United States.
Germany and Russia came along a little later, and by the 1890s, Japan had also become a major
imperialist aggressor in China. On the one hand, these imperialist countries weakened the Qing dynasty
by undermining its military power and its legitimacy in the eyes of most Chinese. On the other hand, these
same imperialist powers propped up the ailing dynasty so that it would do the day-to-day work of keeping
order in China (thus saving Japan, the U.S., and European countries the high cost of doing so). If it had
been allowed to follow its natural course, the Qing dynasty probably would have collapsed in the 1860s
as a result of the Taiping Rebellion (1851 - 1864), not in 1912.
The Qing Dynasty
The Qing was a conquest dynasty. It was the result of military invasion by the peoples of Manchuria, an
area previously outside of the Chinese emperor. Serious military pressure began in 1616, and by 1644
the Chinese capital of Beijing was in Manchu hands. Therefore, 1644 is the traditional start of the Qing
dynasty, but several more decades were required for China's new rulers to secure the southern portions
of the empire. Resistance to the Manchus in the south of China was widespread and lasted into the
1680s. The last stronghold of the Ming loyalists was the island of Taiwan, which fell in 1683. It was at this
point that all of China came under Manchu rule, but an undercurrent of Chinese resentment of the
Manchus lingered throughout the life of the dynasty.
The origins of the Qing dynasty as an outside conquest of the Chinese empire is significant for modern
history. First, an underlying tension between "Manchu" and "Chinese" identity was always part of politics
during the Qing dynasty. After its collapse, what was the status of Manchuria (today's Heilongjiang, Jilin,
and Liaoning Provinces, now somewhat awkwardly called Dongbei, "the Northeast")? Nobody was fully
certain, but there was a general consensus among most Chinese and most of the imperialists that it
should remain part of China. Nevertheless, if pressed, many would have agreed that this area was
somehow "special," "exceptional," or "different." Japan seized on this ambiguity regarding the status of
the Manchurian region and sought aggressively to control it. In 1931, Japan created a puppet state there,
a move that started a chain of events culminating in the Pacific War. After the war, nobody doubted that
this region would become part of the Chinese state, but its legacy remains very awkward in China.
Indeed, when a recent issue of National Geographic featured an article called "Manchurian Mandate."
Ostensibly reacting to the title, one reader wrote:
As a national of China, I am amused by your Americanized perspective on economic development in
China's Northeast. For people like me who grew up in the area, the term "Manchuria" is quite stupid. It
reveals a United States obsessed with China's history of being ruled by Euro-Americans and Japanese.
To Chinese, the name "Manchuria" represents a puppet regime in the darkest age that was created by
Japanese invaders who aimed to rule China. It is not different from someone from Holland preaching to
the U.S. on how to address racial hatred in "New Amsterdam." (National Geographic, January 2007;
commenting on the September 2006 issue)
This writer has said much in only a few sentences. If you had not read the article, you might think that its
author routinely referred to China's Northeast as "Manchuria." Not at all. He used the properly sanitized
term "Northeast." So the letter writer is ostensibly objecting to the mention of the word "Manchuria" at all.
One wonders what we should call the Manchurian language (related to Mongolian and entirely different
from and unrelated to any variety of Chinese)? And what about the people who conquered China in the
1600s--what should we call them? One suspects that there is something deeper at work in this writer's
objection to the M-word. Perhaps the idea of a non-Chinese journalist writing a sometimes mildly critical
article about this part of China is a source of irritation. Be that as it may, notice that the writer essentially
equates Americans and Japanese as aggressors in China. Many of you reading these words may be
surprised at such a stance. After all, didn't Japan and the United States fight a bloody war over what was,
at its core, Japanese aggression in China? History is rarely simple though, and it turns out that there is
much to say in support of this writer's point of view. Yes, Japan did eventually go too far in its overseas
aggression, thus provoking war with the United States. But the United States generally supported, or at
least went along with, Japanese control of Manchuria until 1931-2. Moreover, both Japan and the United
States vigorously pursued their own interests in China with little or no regard to Chinese views or Chinese
sovereignty. Although the writer of this letter is hardly an unbiased source, you should know that there is
very good reason for the commonly-held view among Chinese that the United States has long acted as
an imperialist aggressor in China. We will see more on this matter later in the course.
Now, to the Qing dynasty itself. First, as an overview, read the section Qing government and society.
The first major change the conquerors made during the seventeenth century was establishing the
Manchu banner system (baqi) in north China. A "banner" was an administrative unit that consisted of
several military colonies (zuoling). These colonies were responsible for supplying designated numbers of
soldiers (300 was a typical figure) to the government in times of military need. Initially, there were eight
banners, each with its own lands. The members of the military colonies engaged in agriculture and
enjoyed tax and other benefits in return for their military service obligations. The initial banners consisted
only of Manchus, but the dynasty did establish some banners that consisted of Chinese or other ethnic
groups such as Mongolians. The effectiveness of the banner system declined in the later part of the
dynasty, but in early Qing times, it functioned well as a cost-effective way to maintain a powerful military
organization.
The Manchu emperors embraced Chinese institutions and culture but simultaneously took steps to
preserve Manchu culture. With a few exceptions (most notably in the realm of male hair styles), the
Manchu rulers went out of their way to avoid exacerbating cultural and ethnic tensions. Manchu emperors
undertook the study of Chinese language and culture, and the great Kangxi Emperor ( r. 1662-1722) was
a master of the Confucian classics and other forms of Chinese literature. Ray Huang points out that "The
Qing emperors, on the whole, lived much closer to the expectation of the Chinese tradition than did
numerous indigenous rulers of preceding dynasties." (Ray Huang, China: A Macro History [Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990], pp. 185.) Early Qing emperors became sinicized, ruled firmly but well, and
came closer to the ideal of sage rulers than any emperor of the previous Ming dynasty. The population
recovered from the problems of the late Ming years and prospered.
This situation created a dilemma for those educated Chinese who had lived during the time of the Ming
dynasty, and, to a lesser extent, educated Chinese at any time in the Qing era: "Traditional statecraft,
growing out of the teachings of Mencius, taught them [educated Chinese] to value the satisfaction of the
population at large regardless of the origin of the ruler . . . . On that count, they had no cause to raise their
standard against the Qing. Yet, bound by the practice of those days, to acquiesce [to Manchu rule] was to
collaborate, which would always be a source of inner conflict." (Huang, p. 186) Should one serve an alien
dynasty of "barbarians" that nevertheless ruled well, or, should one refuse to serve the state out of loyalty
to the previous Ming dynasty or out of an ethnocentric sense that "Chinese" do not serve "barbarians?" It
is safe to say that this issue crossed the mind of nearly every educated Chinese at one time or another
during the Qing dynasty. Even the great modern scholar Qian Mu had to deal with these sorts of
questions. At age eight, in 1904, he was shocked to hear from a teacher that the emperor of China was
not Chinese: "My teacher Bogui also told me, 'You know that our emperor is not Chinese, don't you?' I
was shocked and said I didn't know. When I got home I asked my father about it. He said, 'Your teacher is
right. Our emperor is a Manchu, and we are Han [Chinese] people. That's why there are sometimes
things in the shops with both Han and Man[chu] writing.'" (Quoted in Jerry Dennerline, Qian Mu and the
World of Seven Mansions [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988], p. 20.)
Throughout most of the Qing dynasty we do not find nationalism in the modern sense of the word. In
other words, the majority of ordinary people living in China possessed little or no self-conscious "Chinese
" identity until the twentieth century. Only a small portion of the total population--namely those with a high
level of education--had a strong consciousness of themselves as distinctly "Chinese." It is easy to
overstate the degree of ethnic tension in Qing times by reading our modern conceptions of "nation" and
ethnic identity into the premodern past. Nevertheless, some degree of Chinese-Manchu ethnic tension
always existed at or below the surface of Qing China.
Qing emperors were ever on the lookout for Chinese writings critical of Manchus or northern "barbarians"
in general. Qing authorities burned such writings, and those associated with them usually faced severe
punishment. Lu Liuliang was a bitterly anti-Manchu scholar, physician and monk who died in 1683. His
anti-Manchu writings circulated underground in central China and inspired a young schoolteacher, Zeng
Jing, to explore the possibility of overthrowing the Qing state. His plot was found out and he was arrested.
Upon investigating the matter, the Yongzheng emperor became enraged that Lu's writings were in
circulation. He responded by having Lu's corpse exhumed and dismembered. Then he had all of Lu's
surviving relatives enslaved or exiled to remote locations. As for Zeng Jing, the emperor used him for
positive publicity: "He made a dramatic gesture of pardoning Zeng with no more than a reprimand on the
grounds that he had been gullible." (Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China [New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 1990], p. 85.) But Zeng was not so fortunate in the long run. When the
Yongzheng emperor died, his son, the new emperor, "Claiming filial loyalty to his insulted father . . .
reversed Yongzheng's edict of clemency and ordered the unfortunate Zeng Jing . . . sliced to pieces in the
market of [Beijing]." (Spence, p. 100) Although generally more benevolent than their Ming predecessors,
there were some things China's Manchu rulers would not tolerate.
Although China's new rulers quickly learned Chinese culture and presented themselves as Confucian
sages, they did impose one aspect of Manchu culture onto the entire Chinese male population. As a sign
of submission to Manchu rule, the dynasty required all males to wear their hair in Manchu style. This style
differed markedly from Chinese style and required shaving some hair at the top of the forehead and
allowing the rest to grow into a long braided ponytail. In English, this hair style is commonly called the
*queue.* It is easy to identify pictures and photographs from the Qing period because men will inevitably
have queues during this dynasty but not before or after. Because wearing the queue was a political act,
cutting it was one way to make an anti-Manchu political statement--a statement punishable by death
during Qing times.
The photo below is from the turbulent period in the vicinity of 1911 when the Qing dynasty was
teetering on the brink and collapsing. These two guys got haircuts in anticipation of the dynasty's
collapse. Ooops--they were a little too hasty. A month or two later and they would have been fine.
This is certainly a good example of the political significance that hair can acquire.
Qing Dynasty Clashes with Europe and the United States
During the eighteenth century, the merchants of several European countries began to take a strong
interest in direct trade with China. There was a high demand in western Europe for certain Chinese
products, especially tea, porcelain, and silk. We have seen that from the start of the Ming dynasty,
Chinese officials regarded foreign relations as an exercise in ceremonial reaffirmation of China's cultural
superiority. They viewed trade as a privilege the emperor might extent to "barbarians" who demonstrate
proper ritual submission. In the official rhetoric, at least, China did not need anything from the outside
world. Strictly speaking, this assertion was probably correct, although there were some items (clocks, for
example) that well-to-do Chinese definitely wanted from Europe.
The view of international trade that prevailed in Europe at the time was quite different. There, international
trade was a legitimate end in itself. Treaties and other conventions agreed upon by countries of
theoretically equal standing governed commercial intercourse between countries. In the eighteenth
century, Europeans who wanted to trade with China had no choice but to follow Chinese rules.
Because Europeans generally refused to participate in formal tributary relations with China, one might
think that the Qing court would have excluded them from trade altogether. But official rhetoric aside,
China's government did have an interest in monetary profit, and European merchants paid for their
purchases in silver. The Qing court therefore set aside the port of Guangzhou (Canton), in the extreme
south of China, for European trade. There, traders from England, France, other countries of Europe, and
later, the United States, traded with Chinese merchants under strictly regulated conditions. The Chinese
merchants who conducted the trade did so under license by the central government and paid large fees
for the privilege. In this way, trade with the Europeans provided a small but useful source of revenue for
China's government.
Guangzhou served as the sole Chinese port for trade with Europe from 1760 until 1842. The system of
trade that prevailed there is commonly called the Canton system. Each European country that pursued
trade rented a building that served as a combination embassy and trading center. A walled compound
surrounded these buildings. The European merchants were not free to travel in Guangzhou, and soldiers
guarded the outside of the compound around the clock. Only authorized Chinese merchants were allowed
in, and Europeans were allowed out only rarely. Local Chinese officials exacted bribes from European
and Chinese merchants alike, both of whom regarded these bribes as an unfortunate but necessary cost
of doing business. Chinese officials expected Europeans in Guangzhou to be humble and obedient at all
times. They were subject to Chinese law. The merchants usually behaved as their Chinese hosts
expected them to, because failure to do so might result in Chinese revocation of trading privileges.
Chinese officials assumed that by relegating the Europeans to the periphery of the empire and keeping
them under close watch they would cause no major trouble. As long as China had sufficient military
power to enforce its wishes, and as long as trade on the European side remained a private affair, not
directly connected with home governments, this assumption proved correct.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Britain's government began to show signs of greater interest in
China. In 1792, it sent an embassy of roughly 100 persons headed by Lord George Macartney to the
Qianlong Emperor's court. The ostensible purpose of the embassy was to congratulate the emperor on
his eightieth birthday, which resulted in the embassy being escorted to Beijing with much pomp and
ceremony as a "tribute embassy" in Chinese eyes. The real purpose of the journey from Britain's point of
view was to establish formal, European-style diplomatic relations with China including wider trade and
permission for British missionaries to preach Christianity. Chinese officials treated the embassy well, even
after Macartney refused to perform the full ritual of bowing before the emperor ("kowtow"). In the end,
however, the emperor's answer was a firm "no." In a formal reply edict to Britain's King George III the
Chinese emperor stated that China had no need for, or interest in, foreign items no matter how ingenious
they may be. He reaffirmed that it was only because of the emperor's generosity that foreigners were
allowed to trade at all, and all such trade must take place in Guangzhou and nowhere else. The edict
ended with the emperor commanding King George to "tremblingly obey and show no negligence!" The
Jiaqing Emperor (r. 1796-1820) did not even deign to see a second British embassy led by Lord Amherst
in 1816 because Amherst, like Macartney, refused to bow down before the Chinese emperor in the
manner customary for tributary envoys visiting China.
In the decades after the Macartney mission departed from China, a serious problem connected with the
British merchants began to emerge. A major economic concern for the Europeans trading with China was
the lack of European products that Chinese were willing to purchase in profitable quantities. European
vessels typically sailed for China with a light load, sold a few odds and ends, and then filled the cargo
holds with tea, porcelain, silk, and other Chinese items. The ship's supercargo paid for these Chinese
items in cash. Although voyages still made a profit this way, it would have been better to make a profit
twice: once by selling European goods to Chinese merchants and then vice versa upon return home.
English merchants (later joined by U.S. merchants) at last found the perfect item for sale in China: opium
obtained from India (or Turkey in the U.S. case). Opium had long been a medicinal drug in China, but the
British merchants supplied it for recreational use. As more Chinese became addicted, the demand for
opium grew. It became common for well-to-do Chinese to frequent opium dens to smoke, temporarily
leave their cares behind and sometimes also engage the services of prostitutes. Opium addiction
increased and the Qing government became alarmed, banning the drug for all but medicinal uses. We
should keep in mind that prohibitions against recreational drug use in Britain and the U.S. were twentiethcentury developments. In the 1800s, the recreational use of opium was perfectly legal in Britain, and
some prominent figures like the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) used the drug.
Opium was a growing social problem in China, and it also became an economic problem for the Qing
government. Before opium sales took off in the 1820s, China enjoyed a net surplus of silver from the
trade with Britain and other European countries. Thanks to opium, the flow of silver reversed, and the
Qing government became alarmed at this outflow of specie to foreign countries. In the mid 1830s, the
highest ministers of state began to debate the relative merits of two courses of action. One was to
legalize opium sales and then tax the drug. The other was to devote greater energy to the elimination of
opium use in China. Each side had strong support. In 1838, the Daoguang Emperor (r. 1821-50) decided
to crack down on the opium trade. For this purpose he selected the incorruptible official Lin Zexu to travel
to Guangzhou as an imperial commissioner and do whatever would prove necessary to rid the
Guangzhou area of opium.
Commissioner Lin addressed both the domestic side (consumption by Chinese) and the foreign side
(sales by British and American merchants). Regarding the later, he started negotiations with the resident
British trade commissioner. Lin demanded the British commissioner hand over all the opium that had
been stored up in the foreign compound. British merchants had much opium on hand at the time because
they incorrectly guessed that opium sales in China would soon be legal. To make a long story short,
Commissioner Lin eventually had to use intimidating tactics such as having the compound surrounded,
cutting off all supplies into it, and keeping up around the clock noise by having teams of soldiers beat
gongs and use other noise-making devices in shifts. The British commissioner finally gave in, and Lin's
soldiers destroyed all the opium. As the foreigners in Guangzhou watched the opium being destroyed,
Commissioner Lin wrote in a memorial to the emperor that they "do not dare show any disrespect, and
indeed, I should judge from their attitudes that they have the decency to feel heartily ashamed." (Spence,
p. 152)
But the British merchants had no such decency and were anything but ashamed. They returned home
and petitioned the crown to take action against China. In their testimony, many merchants exaggerated
the severity of Chinese actions. In fact, Commissioner Lin had acted with great restraint, and not one
foreigner was injured--except financially. After some debate, the British government responded by
sending a fleet. At its peak, the force included about twenty major vessels and 10,000 soldiers. Fighting
began in late 1839 and lasted until the summer of 1842, with some pauses along the way for
negotiations. In some places the Qing forces fought poorly and in others they fought heroically, but
everywhere they lost because British weapons and tactics were vastly superior. Had the year been 1740
instead of 1840, the results would probably have been reversed, but over the course of that century
European military technology had rapidly advanced, while Chinese military capabilities had rapidly
declined. The Opium War (Yapian zhanzheng), as the conflict soon came to be called, was a significant
turning point: "[I]t is worth re-emphasizing that in military terms the Opium War of 1839-1842 marked an
important historical moment. It was not only the most decisive reversal the Manchus had ever received, it
also saw innovations in Western military technology and tactics. The emergence of the steam-driven
vessel as a considerable force in naval battles was perhaps the most important of these . . . ." (Spence, p.
157) The Qing dynasty never fully recovered from the British victory.
When British forces were poised to capture Nanjing and threaten Beijing, Qing officials became serious
about ending the war. They agreed to a major treaty, the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanjing tiaoyue, 南京條約),
signed in 1842. The treaty was overwhelmingly favorable to Britain. It, plus a supplementary treaty signed
a year later, contained the following major provisions:

China had to pay for the value of the opium and all of Britain's military costs;

Britain received the island of Hong Kong as a permanent possession;

Five major seaports were opened to foreign trade;

A fixed tariff (5% ad valorem) was set on imports and exports;

British subjects in the trade ports enjoyed extraterritoriality, i.e., they were subject to British, not
Chinese, law, enforced by British officials;

Britain received "most favored nation" status such that if any other country got better concessions
from China, Britain, too, would automatically receive the same.
The U.S. government, and the governments of many European countries, signed similar treaties with
China shortly afterward.
One might think that this devastating defeat would have prompted large-scale reform in China. It did not,
as Huang explains:
We may note here that after the Opium War the court at Beijing never conducted an inquiry to determine
what happened, or send observers overseas, or made institutional readjustments. The blueprints of
modern military equipment offered by the American envoy were politely declined. Of all the clauses
included in the Treaty of Nanjing and the supplementary treaty, the one that grieved the Manchu and
Chinese officials most was that thenceforth diplomatic correspondence with the barbarians had to be
handled on an equal basis. (Huang, pp. 202-3)
The Qing dynasty went back to business as usual, or what it thought was business as usual, and soon
began to resist implementation of some parts of the treaty. A new emperor came to the throne in 1850
who was thoroughly xenophobic and dismissive of British power. Soon after Britain's treaty of Nanjing, the
United States signed a similar treaty with China. There was one difference, however, that proved to be
especially significant. The U.S. - Chinese Treaty of Wangxia (Zhong-Mei Wangxia tiaoyue) of 1844
specified that the treaty might be adjusted every twelve years in the event that any of its provisions
proved unworkable. The intent behind this provision was simply to provide a means of tweaking the
treaty, but British officials declared that by virtue of the U.S. treaty, Britain had the right to re-negotiate the
treaty of Nanjing after twelve years. Why? Because of the most favored nation clause. The Qing
government, rejected this interpretation. Tensions between China and Britain built up on the years 1854
and 1855. Late in 1856, Chinese military personnel seized a Chinese-owned ship, the Arrow, and
arrested some of its crew (all Chinese) on suspicion of smuggling. British official protested, because the
ship was registered in Hong Kong, which had become a British possession. When Chinese officials
refused to release the detained crew members, British officials proclaimed that the Arrow had been flying
the British flag (it is uncertain which flag, if any the vessel had been flying) and that the Chinese action
thus constituted an insult to king and country. This rhetorical approach aroused the British government,
with French and U.S. assistance, to military action. In 1857, a combined British and French force
captured Guangzhou (Canton). In 1858, a combined naval force sailed north and approached Tianjin (on
the gateway to Beijing). There, they captured two forts at Dagu (Dagu paotai), thus clearing the way for
entry into Beijing.
At this point, the Qing government, which was already fighting a desperate domestic battle with the
Taiping rebels, sued for peace. The result was the Treaty of Tianjin (Tianjin tiaoyue). Strictly speaking the
result was a series of four treaties, between China and Britain, France, Russia, and the United States, but
the provisions were nearly identical, so for all practical purposes it was one treaty. The main provisions
were allow foreign legations in Beijing (which had been closed to foreign residence until then), to open ten
more treaty ports, the right of foreigners to travel in the interior of China, and the right of foreign vessels to
sail the Yangzi River. In addition, China agreed to pay Britain and France a sizable cash indemnity. The
Treaty of Tianjin was, in short, a disastrous treaty for China, and it became the legal basis for that
country's semi-colonial status during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
And the story does not end at this point. In 1859, the Qing government balked at allowing the
establishment of foreign legations in Beijing. The immediate context for these issues was the official
ceremony for the ratification of the Treaty of Tianjin. British officials insisted it be conducted in Beijing,
and Chinese officials rejecting this notion. The British naval commander decided to press on to Beijing
regardless of Chinese wishes, but, unexpectedly (for both sides apparently) the Chinese forts at Dagu
inflicted severe damage to the British fleet, forcing it to beat a hasty retreat. A U.S. naval squadron
observing the situation rushed to assist the British by opening fire on the Chinese forts and by permitting
U.S. sailors to work aboard British vessels. Here we see a recurring pattern in imperialist aggression in
China. Whenever the interests of one imperialist power were seriously threatened, the others usually
rushed to its defense. Indeed, the expression "Blood is thicker than water" originated in this battle. The
U.S. Commodore Josiah Tattnall said these words in defense of his unauthorized attack on the Chinese
forts. In the twentieth century, Japan increasingly moved to assert itself in China at the expense of the
other imperialist powers instead of in cooperation with them. The result was the Pacific War, lasting from
1937 (some would say 1931) to 1945.
This Chinese victory was brief. In 1860 combined Anglo-French land and sea forces, with Russian and
U.S. support, attached Beijing, routing Qing armies. The emperor fled to his summer palace in Manchuria,
which the Anglo-French force then burnt to the ground after looting all its valuables. Back in Beijing, the
emperor's brother, Prince Gong, authorized peace negotiations. The result was the Conventions of
Beijing (Beijing tiaoyue), which added to the provisions of the treaty of Tianjin. Some of its terms included
a substantial increase in the indemnity payments to Britain and France, and the formal legalization of the
opium trade. The Qing government had been utterly defeated by a small European force (outnumbered
approximately 10 to 1), and its magnificent summer palace reduced to embers. There could be no doubt
about the balance of power.
The series of battles between 1857 and 1860 are collectively know by two names, the Arrow Wars and
the Second Opium War. Recently, the latter name has become more common. Throughout all these
battles between Anglo-French (and sometimes U.S.) and Chinese forces, these same western countries,
provided assistance to the Qing government in its fight against the Taiping rebels. Yes, amazing as it may
seem, Britain and its allies fought against and demolished Qing armies in some parts of China, while
providing military assistance to Qing armies in other parts of China during the same time period. Why?
Because Britain and company did not want the Qing government to collapse. Indeed, they decided to
burn the summer palace only after considerable deliberation. The idea was to send punishing message to
the Qing leadership about who their true masters were, but not to harm the Qing government so badly
that it would lose its ability to maintain order. The goal of the imperialists was to keep the Qing
government sufficiently weak that it could not resist their demands, but sufficiently strong that it could
maintain domestic order (thus relieving the imperialists of a potentially massive burden). This approach
worked, at least from the imperialists standpoint. Eventually the Qing dynasty rotted away beyond the
point where it could be salvaged, but it lasted until 1912.
China's defeat in the Second Opium War prompted some effort by reforming officials to establish modern
industries for military production, the so-called Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s and 70s. The
leaders of this movement attempted to use "Western" industrial technology without significantly altering
the social fabric of China. Ultimately the goal was to produce a China sufficiently strong that it could deal
effectively with Britain and the other foreign powers. In the end, however, the Self-Strengthening
Movement was a case of too little too late. The proof of its failure came in 1894-5 when China suffered a
decisive defeat at the hands of its much smaller neighbor Japan.
Overview of Later Developments
For reasons we will examine in detail later, the Qing dynasty went to war with Japan (the first SinoJapanese War) in 1894. Most European commentators predicted a Chinese victory, for the Qing forces
enjoyed great numerical superiority. Instead, however, Japan was everywhere victorious. By the spring of
1895, Japan's military had destroyed the Qing navy and was in a position to take Beijing as peace treaty
negotiations between the two sides began. China ended up paying Japan a large cash indemnity, giving
Taiwan to Japan, and granting Japan the same treaty status as the "Western" countries. The first SinoJapanese War marked the emergence of Japan as a major world military power. It also exposed the Qing
dynasty's extreme weakness. Fearing the Qing dynasty would soon collapse and China would descend
into anarchy, Britain, France, Russia, and Germany began dividing coastal China into what were
euphemistically called *"spheres of influence,"* that is, areas of China under the de facto control of one of
these European countries. By the turn of the century, large parts of China were virtual colonies. The sign
"No Dogs or Chinese Allowed" posted at the British-controlled municipal park in Shanghai was a crude
yet eloquent statement of the balance of power at the time. The United States was also involved in
Chinese affairs at this time, but it never acquired a formal sphere of influence.
Despite defeat in wars with several different foreign powers and a number of major internal rebellions (the
death toll in the Taiping Rebellion, for example, was as high as 20 million by some estimates), the Qing
dynasty managed to hang on to power. As we have seen, a major reason for its undeserved longevity
was that the major western powers propped up the faltering dynasty because they found dealing with it
convenient. From the standpoint of these western powers, the Qing dynasty was ideal because it was too
weak to offer effective military resistance to foreign powers but was still strong enough to maintain a
semblance of internal order.
Following defeat in the war with Japan, there was a brief flurry of reform efforts somewhat like the earlier
Self-Strengthening Movement, but more radical. For several months in the summer of 1898, it looked as if
the reformers would carry the day, but reactionary forces eventually won out in September 21 of that
year. The reforming emperor lost power in a palace coup, and his advisors ended up dead or in exile.
What was probably the last chance for the Qing dynasty to reform itself had passed.
In 1896-7, riots took place in several of China's cities directed against Christian missionaries, most of
whom were foreigners. In 1899, a secret society whose members practiced martial arts, magic, and
religious activities began to attack Christians in the German-occupied Shandong area. This secret society
was the Yihetuan, which means roughly "Righteousness and Harmony Militia." Because of the martial arts
connection, however, the English name is "Boxers." The Boxer Uprising of 1899-1900 began in Shandong
Province in response to provocation by German missionaries. It quickly spread throughout north China,
fueled by years of anger and outrage at the arrogance of the European powers and the inability of the
Qing government to stop it. The Qing government wavered, making some attempts to suppress the
movement but ultimately siding with it. The Boxers killed foreign and native Chinese Christians, burnt
churches, and tore down electric poles. They eventually demanded all foreigners leave China and laid
siege to the foreign embassy compound in Beijing in June 1900. The prevailing opinion outside China
was that the relatively small group of foreigners could not possibly have held out.
In large areas of China, however, local governors maintained order and refused to participate in the
uprising. The Qing government itself feared the Boxers almost as much as the foreigners did, and it did
not provide them with heavy weapons. The lack of heavy weapons combined with disorganized
leadership gave the besieged Europeans a chance at survival. They held out in their walled compound for
nearly three months until a multi-national relief force arrived to rescue them. Certain elements of the multinational relief force--mainly Russian and German soldiers, sometimes French--then went on a rampage of
terror. They raped and slaughtered innocent Chinese peasants by the thousands and burnt whole villages
to the ground. To the average Chinese resident of this area, it must have seemed that righteousness had
indeed been on the side of the Boxers.
After the foreign armies put down the uprising and the smoke had cleared, it looked as if the Qing
dynasty's days had *finally ended.* Nevertheless, the U.S. and major European powers *continued to
support the dynasty,* fearing the anarchy that might result in the wake of its fall. The main reason the
dynasty did not fall in 1900 or 1901 was the lack of any effective, organized opposition. It was not until
1911 that an internal revolution began that had sufficient force to overthrow the dynasty. As a result, in
1912 China became a republic. The end of the imperial age, however, did not mean an end to China's old
problems. The first half of the twentieth century was a turbulent and sanguinary period for China and its
people.
The Early Republic
The general process of the collapse of the Qing dynasty and its replacement by a republic resembles
revolutions in other parts of the modern world such as the transition from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet
Union. Following the Qing dynasty's defeat by Japan in 1895 and following the Boxer Uprising of 18991900, there were flurries of reform activities designed at strengthening China in one way or another.
These reform activities were not always coordinated, and they met with mixed results. They certainly did
cause some changes, but the Qing rulers were ultimately unwilling to entertain any reform that would
significantly undermine their power. Some of the results of this reform activity include the abolition of the
civil service examination system in 1905 and the creation of new, modern-style government ministries in
1906. In 1908, the Qing government announced the start of a nine-year program to create a constitution.
Calls for broader representation in government resulted in the creation of provisional assemblies (with
limited powers) in 1909 followed by a national assembly in 1910. These reforms were modifications to the
basic imperial system. In and of themselves, they were modest steps, but they helped create
expectations that major change was inevitable and near. In other words they created conditions that
made revolution more likely to break out and more likely to succeed.
In addition to these reforms in the realm of official intuitions, broader social changes were underway.
Literacy had gradually increased (even though the majority of Chinese were still illiterate at this time), and
it had become trendy to publish books, newspapers, and so forth in a literary style that closely resembled
ordinary speech. This change in style made mass media accessible to many more Chinese compared
with earlier generations. Large numbers of fairly ordinary people began to read newspapers and
magazines, thus learning about conditions in China and throughout the world. Those who read such
publications often discussed their content with others who could not read them, thus extending the reach
of news and commentary beyond the ranks of the literate. The existence of mass media (even if
controlled and censored) helped create a popular demand for change. This mass media also helped
inculcate a self-conscious identity of being Chinese. Most Chinese would not have explicitly regarded
themselves as "Chinese" until approximately the turn of the twentieth century.
One manifestation of this emergence of national consciousness among ordinary Chinese was actions in
opposition to the foreign imperialists. In 1904, merchants and local gentry in the provinces of Hubei,
Hunan, and Guangdong (roughly, south-central China) strongly objected to the Qing government's
granting of a railway concession to a foreign consortium dominated by J. P. Morgan and Company. The
U.S. government strongly supported the venture, but opposition to it spread widely among Chinese owing
in large part to mass media. Indeed, even Chinese studying in Japan and the U.S. joined the protest. The
Qing government feared that a revolt might occur in some of the provinces as a result, so in 1905 it
agreed to buy out the American (and Belgian) investors. This matter may be the first instance in which
mass protests caused a change in government policy.
Also in 1905 we see another milestone of the rise of national consciousness in China. The Shanghai
Chamber of Commerce organized a boycott of American goods. This boycott was not a response to any
particular incident, but rather a culmination of anger over the general state of U.S. - Chinese relations. By
the middle of the 1880s, contrary to the spirit (but not the letter) or diplomatic agreements between China
and the United States, the federal government had banned most forms of Chinese immigration. Large
Chinese immigrant communities already existed in the western regions of the U.S., a legacy of the need
for cheap labor to build railroads in the 1860s and 1870s. By the turn of the century, U.S. gunboats were
patrolling Chinese waters and were quick to resort to force at even the slightest Chinese violence toward
Americans. On the other hand, Chinese immigrants to the United States had endured decades of brutal
treatment, including several outright mob killings of Chinese in the western states in the 1870s and 1880s
(e.g. #Los Angeles Chinese Massacre# and the #Rock Springs Massacre#). No Americans had ever
been punished for the murder of these Chinese. It was this general situation that prompted the boycott.
Although it started in Shanghai, the boycott of U.S. goods spread to all of China within a month. It cut in
seriously to business profits, which prompted Theodore Roosevelt to send a naval fleet to China with a
warning to the Qing government that the U.S. would hold it responsible for any harm down to its business
interests by the boycott. In responses, the Qing government moved to suppress the boycott. By the end
of 1906, all remnants of the boycott movement had collapsed. There was no change in U.S. policy toward
China. In this sense, the boycott movement was a failure. But it demonstrated the potential power of
united mass protest. There would be future boycotts and protests in future decades as the general
population became increasingly active in contemporary political issues.
Chinese nationalism also manifested itself in anti-Manchu (thus anti-Qing) stances. This sentiment was
an important background element when in 1911, local elites in Sichuan province who had invested in
railroads. Part of the financing for these railroads came from foreign loans, and for this reason the Qing
government tried to involve itself in the project. These local elites resented any profit from their venture
that the Qing government might obtain from what the locals regarded as improper meddling in their
affairs. They protested, and the Qing government tried to suppress the protest by force. The Qing move
backfired. Instead of suppressing the protest, it touched off a general revolt. Soon, most of China's
provinces declared independence from the Qing dynasty. A group known as the Revolutionary League,
and headed by Sun Yatsen (Mandarin pronunciation = Sun Yixian; he is also known as Sun Zhongshan,
took the lead in promoting the anti-Qing rebellion after it broke out. At the time, Sun himself was out of the
country, and he rushed back to China. The official date for the start of the rebellion is "double ten," 10-10-
1911, and so October 10 is a national holiday in both China and Taiwan. Sun Yatsen is a national hero in
both places even through Sun did not actually start or lead the rebellion. Moreover, in recent decades,
Sun's very close ties to Japan have come to light, including secret agreements in which Sun expressed
willingness to cede Chinese territory to Japan as part of a deal for Japanese support for his organization.
As far as I know, the official stance of the Chinese government is to deny Sun's alleged ties with Japan, at
least to the extent of ceding territory. But this official stance notwithstanding, there can be no doubt of
close ties between Japan and Sun.
The Revolutionary League declared Sun Yatsen Provisional President of a Republic of China on January
1, 1912. Sun's elevation to the presidency was mainly honorary, and the Qing emperor was still in place.
During the first few months of 1912, major power brokers were busy with negotiations and maneuvering.
They sought to advance their own agendas, of course, but also to keep China from breaking up and
becoming engulfed in civil war. As a result of these behind-the-scenes moves, in March 1, 1912, both Sun
Yatsen and the Qing emperor resigned. In their place, Yuan Shikai, a prominent general and former high
Qing official, became president. Although Yuan initially declared his intent to create a democratic form of
government (largely a ploy to try and get money from the foreigners; similarly he also asked them to
"pray" for China' success, a word choice that appeared in newspapers around the world), he soon moved
to make himself dictator of a strong central government. In March 1913, a year after become president,
Yuan assassinated his main rival who was head of the national assembly. Soon thereafter he abolished
the assembly. In 1914, he abolished provincial and local assemblies. Yuan's government, however, was
quite weak and chronically short of funds. He was unable, therefore, to check the rise to power of local
warlords. Seeking to strengthen his power further, Yuan began to make plans to have himself declared
"emperor." These plans failed, because even Yuan's supporters refused to back such an anachronistic
step. Yuan died soon thereafter, in 1916. At that point, political power in China fell entirely into the hands
of the local warlords. It would be more than a decade before some semblance of a central government
would be restored.
In the meantime, Sun's Revolutionary League had transformed itself into the Guomindang. Its name
rather literally means "Citizen Party," but in English it is always called the Nationalist Party. Its
headquarters were in the southern province of Guangdong, and during the late teens and early 1920s, it
built up a political organization and an army. After Sun's death in 1925, one of his generals, Jiang Jieshi
(better known in the U.S. and Jiang Kai-shek, the Cantonese pronunciation his name), took over the
organization. Jiang was known as the "Red Marshall" in those days, because he received most of his
military training in the Soviet Union. Indeed, Sun, while not officially a Communist, was sympathetic with
Marxism and maintained close ties with Moscow. Thus, both the Guomindang (GMD), which ruled Taiwan
until recently and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) both claim Sun as their "father." In the early
1920s, Jiang's GMD pursued a policy alliance or "common front" with the CCP to opposed warlords and
imperialists. As we will see, Jiang later turned on his erstwhile allies and tried to #slaughter them.# He
was not completely successful, and the CCP survived. From the middle of the 1920s onward, the GMD
and CCP and their rivalry became the dominant forces shaping the course of Chinese history. We will
explore certain aspects of this history in later chapters.