Today, China has
risen to the status of a superpower. Smaller countries in its neighbourhood and
elsewhere look at it as a hegemon that exploits vulnerable countries. Its predatory
policy of lending huge amounts on extortionate terms has sent countries like
Pakistan and Sri Lanka into massive debt traps. But there was a time when China
was a victim of unequal treaties enforced by Western great powers, as well as
Russia and Japan. In fact, it suffered what is now termed as the “hundred years
of national humiliation”. It is a term used in China to describe the
period of subjugation of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China by
Western powers and Japan from 1839 to 1949.
It all began with the
opium trade in the 18th century dotted with two Opium Wars.
First Opium War
Opium came to China
circa 6th century AD, through Arab and Turkish traders. The
quantities of imports were small. However, in the 17th century,
tobacco entered China from North America, which gave birth to the practice of
smoking tobacco in combination with opium. This happened during the Qing
Dynasty’s tenure, which lasted from 1644 to 1911-12.
In 1773, the British
East India Company had established a monopoly on opium cultivation in Bengal
and became the leading supplier of opium to China. Other Western countries also
joined in the trade, including the United States, which dealt in Turkish and
Indian opium. France, Portugal, etc. were other countries selling opium in
Chinese markets.
Those were the times
when Britain and other European countries had a prolonged trade imbalance with
China. There was an insatiable demand in Europe for Chinese tea, silks, and
porcelain pottery. Since the Chinese had little use for European goods, the European
traders had to pay for Chinese products with gold or silver. The opium trade,
which created a steady demand among Chinese addicts for opium, solved this
chronic trade imbalance.
The addiction to
opium spread so wide and deep that it affected even the imperial troops and the
official classes of China. An alarmed Yongzheng Emperor (1722-35) banned the
sale and smoking of opium. This step could not stop the opium trade. In 1796, the
Jiaqing Emperor outlawed the import and cultivation of opium, in vain.
The East India
Company circumvented the ban by outsourcing to private traders licensed by the
Company to take goods from India to China. These traders sold the opium to
smugglers from the Chinese coast. The gold and silver the traders received from
those sales were turned over to the Company. The amount of opium imported into
China increased from about 200 chests annually in 1729 to 40,000 per year in 1838.
Each chest weighed about 64 kg. The local officials could be easily corrupted
and convinced to connive in the spread of a network of opium distribution
throughout China.
During the Daoguang
Emperor’s reign, the morally incorruptible Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu
instituted laws banning opium throughout China. Hundreds of dealers were
arrested and opium worth about three million pound sterling was destroyed. The
war became inevitable. An expeditionary force of 44 British ships invaded
Canton. It was an unequal war. The British had steamships, heavy cannons, and
rockets. Their infantry was equipped with rifles capable of accurate long-range
fire. The Chinese had slow-moving sail-ships and rafts. Their troops had
matchlocks that became ineffective beyond 50 yards and could fire one round per
minute. 69 British troops were killed in the war while about 18,000 Chinese
soldiers were killed or wounded.
The First Opium War
ended with the signing of the Nanking Treaty on 29 August, 1842, aboard the
British warship HMS Cornwallis. The signatories were Sir Henry Pottinger on the
British side and Qiying Yilibu and Niu Jiang representing the Qing Dynasty. It
was an unequal treaty, which proved to be the first of several such treaties
that followed.
Under the treaty, British
citizens in China acquired immunity from prosecution under Chinese laws. China
agreed to cede the Hong Kong island (together with some small nearby islands)
to the British Empire, and open the Chinese ports of Canton (Guangzhou), Amoy
(Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo), and Shanghai, to foreign traders.
China was forced to allow British missionaries into its interiors. British
merchants established spheres of influence in and around British ports with
impunity.
Great Britain also
received:
1. Fixed tariffs
2. Extraterritoriality
for British citizens on Chinese soil
3. Most favoured nation
status
The equivalent
American treaty forbade opium trade, but, as British and American merchants
were only subject to the legal control of their consuls, the trade continued.
Second Opium War
The Chinese officials
were reluctant to enforce the Nanking Treaty, and other unequal treaties
imposed by France and the United States (both in 1844). To make matters worse,
Britain demanded additional concessions from the Chinese in 1854, including the
opening of all China’s ports to foreign traders, a 0% tariff rate on British
imports, and legalisation of Britain’s trade in opium imported from Burma and
India.
The Chinese resisted
these demands until the Arrow Incident of October 8, 1856. The Arrow was a ship
registered in China but based out of the British colony of Hong Kong. Chinese
officials boarded the ship and arrested its crew, which they were legally
justified as the ship was used for smuggling opium. But Britain demanded that
China release the crew. Although the Chinese complied, the British destroyed
four Chinese coastal forts and sank over 20 navy boats. Since China was in the
throes of the Taiping Rebellion, it had little military power to spare to
defend its sovereignty.
Taiping, or the God
Worshipping Society, drew its teachings from Confucianism, ancient Chinese texts, and Christian
beliefs. The
Taiping rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local
officials launched a campaign against the sect. The Taipings wanted to
overthrow the ruling Manchus. With around 100 million killed, the war was one
of the bloodiest in human history.
The 1857 war of
Indian independence drew Britain’s attention away from China for a while. But
once the Indian revolt was crushed and the Mughal rule abolished, Britain
refocused on China. France joined Britain in the Second Opium War. China
surrendered and was forced to sign the punitive Treaty of Tientsin in June 1858,
which allowed Britain, France, Russia and the United States to establish
embassies in Beijing. It opened 11 additional ports to foreign traders, allowed
free navigation for foreign vessels up to the Yangtze river, and foreigners could
travel into the interiors of China.
Once again, China had
to pay indemnities for the war the British had started. In addition, the treaty
mandated equal treatment for the Chinese who converted to Christianity and
legalisation of trading in opium. Britain also received parts of coastal
Kowloon, on the mainland across from the Hong Kong island.
These unequal
treaties provoked the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. It was a popular uprising
against the invasion of China by foreign peoples and foreign ideas such as
Christianity. The Boxer Rebellion supported the peasant uprising of
1900 that attempted to drive all foreigners from China. “Boxers” was a
name that foreigners gave to a Chinese secret society. Its Chinese name,
translated in English, meant “Righteous and Harmonious Fists”. They originally
aimed to destroy the Qing Dynasty and the Westerners who had a privileged
position in China.
The Boxers were powerful in North China. In 1898, conservative
antiforeign forces won control of the Chinese government and persuaded the
Boxers to drop their opposition to the Qing Dynasty and unite with it in
destroying the foreigners. In response, an
international force comprising soldiers from Japan, Russia, Britain, USA,
France, Italy and Austria-Hungary captured Beijing on 14 August, 1900. While
the foreign troops looted the capital, the Empress dowager fled. After lengthy negotiations,
an agreement was signed in September 1901, providing for reparations to
be made to the foreign powers.
PostScript
The Second Opium War
marked the beginning of Qing Dynasty’s decline into the oblivion that ended
with the abdication of Emperor Puyi in 1911.
After
the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Government terminated most of the
privileges gained by tsarist Russia under the unequal treaties. Between 1928
and 1931, the Chinese Nationalists persuaded the Western powers to return
tariff autonomy to China. But Britain, France and the United States did not
relinquish extraterritorial privileges until 1946. The British restored
sovereignty over Hong Kong to China in 1997, and the Portuguese did the same in
Macau in 1999, after both countries had concluded agreements with China.
No comments:
Post a Comment