China and the West: Imperialism, Opium, and Self-Strengthening (1800-1921)

In the 1800s China simultaneously experiences major internal strains and Western imperialist pressure,
backed by military might which China cannot match. Chinas position in the world and self-image is
reversed in a mere 100 year period (c.a. 1840-1940) from leading civilization to subjected and torn
country.
The Japanese witness Chinas experience with the military power of Western nations, and after the
arrival of an American delegation in Japan in 1853, Japan is also forced to open its ports. Japan is able
to adapt rapidly to match the power of the West and soon establishes itself as a competitor with the
Western powers for colonial rights in Asia. In 1894-5, Japan challenges and defeats China in a war over
influence in Korea, thereby upsetting the traditional international order in East Asia, where China was
the supreme power and Japan a tribute-bearing subordinate power.
Through the 1700s, Chinas imperial system flourishes under the Qing (Ching) or Manchu dynasty.
China is at the center of the world economy as Europeans and Americans seek Chinese goods.
By the late 1700s, however, the strong Chinese state is experiencing internal strains particularly, an
expanding population that taxes food supply and government control and these strains lead to
rebellions and a weakening of the central government. (The Taiping Rebellion, which lasts from 18501864, affects a large portion of China before being suppressed.)
Western nations are experiencing an outflow of silver bullion to China as a result of the imbalance of
trade in Chinas favor, and they bring opium into China as a commodity to trade to reverse the flow of
silver.
Chinas attempt to ban the sale of opium in the port city of Canton leads to the Opium War of 1839 in
which the Chinese are defeated by superior British arms and which results in the imposition of the first
of many Unequal Treaties. These treaties open other cities, Treaty Ports first along the coast and
then throughout China to trade, foreign legal jurisdiction on Chinese territory in these ports, foreign
control of tariffs, and Christian missionary presence. By the late 1800s, China is said to be carved up
like a melon by foreign powers competing for spheres of influence on Chinese soil.
From the 1860s onward, the Chinese attempt reform efforts to meet the military and political challenge
of the West. China searches for ways to adapt Western learning and technology while preserving
Chinese values and Chinese learning. Reformers and conservatives struggle to find the right formula to
make China strong enough to protect itself against foreign pressure, but they are unsuccessful in the late
1800s.
The Qing dynasty of the Manchus is seen as a foreign dynasty by the Chinese. (The well-known
Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1900 begins as an anti-Qing uprising but is redirected by the Qing Empress
Dowager against the Westerners in China.) As a symbol of revolution, Chinese males cut off the long
braids, or queues, they had been forced to wear as a sign of submission to the authority of the Manchus.
The dynastic authority is not able to serve as a focal point for national mobilization against the West, as
the emperor is able to do in Japan in the same period.
China finds its traditional power relationship with Japan reversed in the late 19th century, especially
after its defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese war in 1894-95 over influence in Korea. (The Japanese,
after witnessing the treatment of China by the West and its own experience of near-colonialism in 1853,
successfully establish Japan as a competitor with Western powers for colonial rights in Asia and special
privileges in China.)
China is impressed by Japans defeat of Russia, a Western power, in the Russo-Japanese War of 190405; additional reform efforts follow in China and the examination system, which linked the Chinese
Confucian educational system to the civil service, is abolished in 1906.
Internal strains and foreign activity in China lead to rebellions and ultimately revolt of the provinces
against the Qing imperial authority in 1911 in the name of a Republican Revolution. (New scholarship,
by writers such as Edward Rhoads, challenges the notion that the 1911 Revolution was inevitable and
suggests that reforms leading to a constitutional monarchy, recommended by the Chinese reforms of
1898 and similar to reforms of Meiji Japan, might have been possible were it not for court politics and
military delays that facilitated the 1911 Revolution route.)
Chinese military leaders, warlords, step into the political vacuum created by the fall of the Qing. The
warlords control different regions of the country and compete for domination of the nominal central
government in Beijing. Sun Yat-sen and his nascent Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or Guomindang)
struggle to bring republican government to China.

The terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, ending WW I, enrage the Chinese urban populace by
recognizing Japanese claims to former German rights in the Shandong peninsula of China. This leads to
an outpouring of nationalistic sentiment on May 4, 1919 and to the subsequent May 4th Movement to
reform Chinese culture through the adoption of Western Science and Democracy. The Confucian
system is discredited and rejected by those who feel it did not provide China with the strength it needed
to meet the challenge of the West.
For some Chinese, Marxism a) represents a Western theory, based on a scientific analysis of historical
development, that b) offers the promise of escape from the imperialism that is thwarting their national
ambitions, and c) promises economic development that would improve the lot of all. It also offers a
comparative philosophic system that can for some fill the vacuum left after the rejection of the
Confucian system. The founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 follows the success of the
communist revolution in Russia of 1917-18.
The Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party (founded in 1921) work and compete to
reunify China politically.
The very rapid change in Chinas international status and self-image as a leading civilization leads the
Chinese on a quest to reestablish Chinas place in the world a quest that continues today.
China in Revolution, 1912-1949

In the context of a) the political chaos that follows the fall of the centralized dynastic power of the Qing
in the Republican Revolution in 1911 and b) the growing nationalism that crystallizes as the May 4th
Movement after the 1919 Versailles Peace settlement two political parties work and compete to
reunify China and to modernize it to face the challenge of imperialist encroachment by the West and
Japan. These are the Nationalist Party (Guomindang or Kuomintang) and the Chinese Communist
Party.
Inadequate political control over the Japanese military, economic strains, and the worldwide Depression
of the 1930s set the stage for the rise of the military in Japan and the pursuit of Japanese imperialist
interests in Asia. Japan feels excluded by the West in the division of spoils in China. Japan pursues its
own dominance of China by occupying Manchuria in 1931 and invading China in 1937 and remaining
there until its defeat at the conclusion of WW II in 1945.
In China, the army of the Nationalist Party, led by Chiang Kai-shek (political heir of Sun Yat-sen),
marches north in 1926 on the "Northern Expedition" from its base in southern China to establish a new
government at Nanking in 1927 and to reunify part of China. This is sometimes called the Nationalist
Revolution. The Nationalist government remained in power in Nanking until 1937 (1927-37 is known
as the "Nanking Decade") when it is forced by the Japanese invasion to move inland and ultimately
establish its wartime capital in Chungking (Chongqing) in 1938, where it remains until 1945. Japan
captures the capital city of Nanking in 1937 in a brutal battle and subsequent reign of terror known as
the "Rape of Nanking."
Members of the Chinese Communist Party, pursued by the Nationalists in the 1930s, march from
southern China to a remote region, Yenan, in northern China where they refine strategies for rural
mobilization and revolution. This "Long March" takes place from 1934-1935.
When the Japanese attack the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United
States enters World War II and goes to war with Japan; the war ends when the U.S. drops atomic
bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) in Japan in 1945 and Japan surrenders
unconditionally to the Allied forces. Japan's first attempt to enter the modern international system ends
in failure.
During the course of the war Japan conquers other Asian nations, pursuing its own imperialist
objectives and challenging Western powers for economic and military dominance in Asia. Hostility and
unsettled issues resulting from the Japanese occupation remain in Japan's relations with Korea, China,
and the countries of SE Asia.
When WW II ends in 1945 with Japan's defeat in China, the Nationalists and the Communist forces
fight a civil war for control of China. The Communists are victorious in 1949 and the Nationalists leave
the mainland of China and establish a rival government on the island of Taiwan. (The rival
governments continue to exist today as the People's Republic of China on the mainland and the
Republic of China on Taiwan.)