We in the United States tend to think of China as a relatively new world power. Which just means that we had not really heard much about China until a ping pong game under Richard Nixon - if that reference doesn’t resonate, you are too young:-)1. We “know” there were people in China hundreds or thousands of years ago, but we give almost no back story or context from our education. We “know” there were people in India thousands of years ago, and we didn’t learn about them either. So it isn’t personal, we just are not extremely knowledgeable about “foreigners”.
So why is our understanding of China so incomplete? Are there implications today? To understand much of today’s Chinese actions, we should look back at the “Century of Humiliation”. This period is critical to their history and coincides with when America finally starting interacting with the world. It help us to understand the Chinese world view, and we do not have to travel to the distant past. The current Chinese world outlook was forged in much more recent history.
Opium Wars and the fall of the Qing Dynasty
The Qing dynasty was the last of the Chinese Empire dynasties than ruled the nation. The Chinese empire had lasted for over 2,000 years very successfully. Different dynasties had ruled the Empire, but the country remained unified. The Chinese Empire was a sprawling country with an amazing track record in inventions and educated public servants. A succession of dynasties ruled the empire, with varying levels of success and wealth, but almost no equals militarily.
However, with out rivals for thousands of years, the Chinese state grew complacent. By the late 1800s the Chinese Empire was militarily weak compared to the militaries of the western powers where advances in weapons had solidified. China was unprepared because two millennia of history showed China would be successful and not challenged. Instead, western powers, particularly Britain, stormed into China and demanded special status over Chinese economies, land, and citizens.
One of the demands that China ultimately pushed back on was Britain’s insistence to allow export of opium to China. In the early 1800s, China outlawed the use of Opium, which by then was a very profitable British import. It was also a highly addictive natural narcotic that hooked the Chinese. An analogy would be where Colombian cartels demanded free movement of heroin into the Untied States, and went to war when we outlawed it. The difference being Britain was much more powerful than China. The Opium War of 1839 to 1842 occurred to force the weakened Chinese Empire to allow opium imports, but the results were much more debilitating than just a change in a single law.
Treaty of Nanking – Beginning of the End
At the end of that war, China was forced to sing the Treaty of Nanking. The Treaty of Nanking essentially allowed the great powers of the time to take over some ports, to set up extraterritoriality local administrative district (essentially colonies), and ceded Hong Kong to the British.
What followed were more wars with outside powers, leading to more concessions and internal civil wars. In 1898 there were plans to turn the Empire into a Constitutional Monarchy, but these plans were cancelled by the Empress Dowager Cixi, and the western dominance of the country continued and expanded.
Open Door Policy / Demand by the USA
The United States stayed out of the Empire business until the Spanish American war of 1898. Suddenly the US found the best colonies all snapped up. And so the United States issued the “Open Door” policy in China in 1898. It called “equal privileges” for all countries trading with China and supported Chinese territorial integrity. In the United States, this was hailed as support for the freedom of the Chinese government and equal opportunity for all traders. In reality it was imposed on the Chinese and foreign governments in support of American companies. It also lead to the “Boxer Rebellion” which was an uprising against foreign nationals, missionaries and Chinese Christians.
Boxer Rebellion
The rebellion was centered on attacking foreign interests in China. The foreign powers with concessions fought their way to Beijing to rescue their citizens. In the process the great powers tried to establish new concessions, which the United States opposed.
In 1912 the Qing dynasty collapsed, and a Republic was established.
(from Wikipedia) In that period ( sm: 1842 - 1942), China suffered major internal fragmentation, lost almost all of the wars that it fought, and was often forced to give major concessions to the great powers in unequal treaties. In many cases, China was forced to pay large amounts of reparations, open up ports for trade, lease or cede territories (such as Russian Manchuria, parts of northwest China, and Sakhalin Island to the Russian Empire, Jiaozhou Bay to the German Empire, Hong Kong to the British Empire, Macau to the Portuguese Empire, Zhanjiang to France, and Taiwan and Dalian to the Empire of Japan), and make various other concessions of sovereignty to foreign "spheres of influence" after military defeats.
The Republic was founded by Sun Yat-sen – a hero to both the Communist Chinese and Taiwanese Nationalist Government (Kuomintang or KMT). Sun Yat-sen pushed back against foreign concessions and was supported in this by the United States. The Open Door policy of the United States was still in effect and the Chinese and US governments allied to stop more concessions from being granted. This was the first Sino-US ‘special relationship”.
Efforts to Unify China
In reality, the first Chinese Republic government ruled very small parts of the nation. Warlords ran vast districts, the Chinese Communists ruled parts of the country and other nations ruled the richest parts of China.
In the late 1920s KMT and Chiang Kai-shek ran the government and sidelining Sun Yat-Sen. Chiang Kai-shek attempted to unify the country under his control and tried (or claimed to try) to modernize China. However, starting in 1927, the government was focussed on fighting the Chinese communists, who had been inspired the the Soviet Union’s communists.
The Communist – KMT conflict was shelved in 1936 as they both allied in order to fight the Japanese. Towards the end of World War II, but before Japan was fully pushed out of China, the KMT turned and slaughtered the Communist Chinese – their nominal allies.
During World War II, China was considered part of the “Big 4” allied powers (US, UK, USSR and China). As part of the successful allies on the war, the spheres of influence were abandoned and nearly all of the foreign concessions were returned to China. The exceptions being Hong Kong and Macau.
Impact Today in China
The memory of these years affects the current Chinese zeitgeist. Chinese express pride now in their long culture and history. They look back on the Century of Humiliation as a period of great repression. Their citizens often direct their anger via the internet to perceived or actual slights from other countries.
To me! It often seems that the Chinese internet attacks on other nations, in particular Japan and the United States, stem from their citizens’ pride in their country and their anger at the way the world treated them in the past. Understanding Chinese mindsets can only help with relations going forward. Ignoring the opinions of the people will result in very negative consequences. With a population of over 1 Billion people, China has to monitor the mood of the people closely, and the historical record is one area that the citizens of China are united on.
The United States and China did not have diplomatic relations in 1971, when China invited the United States Ping Pong team into China for an event. This was the first delegation of Americans into mainland China in decades. Relations thawed and improved after this and it was followed by President Nixon’s famous trip to China in 1972.