Qing China Confronted the West

1
Qing China Confronted the West

• Western powers proved to be a formidable threat
  to Qing government
• China began to suffer from another wave of
  foreign invasion, this time from Europe
• The Opium War (1839-1842)
• Cause, burning of opium, Lin Zexu
• Defeat by British humiliated Qing government
• Treaty of Nanjing stipulated Chinas war
  compensation in twelve articles
• one says, The island of Hong Kong to be
  possessed in perpetuity by Victoria and her
  successors, and ruled as they shall see fit
• British merchants and soldiers entered Canton as
  a result of its opening as a treaty port were
  with anti-British attacks by rural militias and
  urban mobs
• Violent attackers were met by British reprisals
  and reciprocal atrocities
• Chinese began to know that British army and navy
  are superior to Chinas

2
More Western Presence

• More foreign presence/aggression in China
  coincided with waves of domestic turbulence, such
  as the Taiping and Nian
• The advance of foreign intrusion
• Second Opium War, or Arrow War (1856-1860)
• British moved jointly with the Americans and
  French to press for treaty revision
• Qing search of British ship, Arrow, a
  smugglers ship furnished British pretext for a
  new series of military action
• Violent war took place in 1859 before the forts
  of Dagu, where Qing army was defeated
• Twenty thousand British and French troops entered
  into Bejing, sacked and burnt the Summer Palace,
  the famous Yuan-ming-yuan, to the ground

3
China Encircled

• In the end of 1850s, Qing China was encircled by
  foreign powers
• Russia in the northwestinvaded Xinjiang
• Japan in the eastoccupied the Ryukyu Islands
• France in the southeast Asia and southeast
  Chinatook Vietnam, laid seige to Ningpo,
  occupied the Penghu Islands (Pescadores)

4
War with Japan

• Japans sweeping economic and institutional
  reforms of the Meiji Restoration, which began in
  1868, made Japan a strong power
• Japans military expansion resulted in
• the annexation of Ryukyus (1879)
• seizing Korean palace during its domestic
  rebellion (1894)
• seizing Chinese harbor at Lüshun
• Defeating Chinese Northern Fleet (2 battleships,
  10 cruisers, 2 torpedo boats (1895)
• Treaty of Shimonoseki ceded Taiwan to Japan in
  perpetuity

5
Late Qings Modernization Effort

• Both the Taipings and foreign powers pushed the
  Qing to strengthen itself through modernization
• The Taipings
• Competent governors learned experience from their
  wars with the Taipings
• Foreign powers
• Superiority of western weaponry
• The humiliating defeat by Japan in Sino-Japanese
  war in 1895
• French and British invasion in 1860 forced the
  Qing to adopt a conciliatory policy toward
  foreign powers
• Leader of more open-minded reformer Yi Xin and
  Wen Xiang
• The Conservatives in the Qing court blocked the
  reform
• Cixi, Empress Dowager, Yi Huan, Wo Ren

6
China Crucified

• During 1898 and 1899, foreign powers intensified
  their pressures and outrages on China
• The Germans occupied Qingdao
• The British took over Weihaiwei
• Also forced the Qing to lease a large area of
  fertile farmland on the Kowloon peninsula north
  of Hong Kong for 99 years, which the British
  called The New Territories
• The Russians occupied Lüshun
• The French claimed special rights in Chinas
  southwesten provinces and on the island of Hainan
• The Japanese, already masters of Taiwan,
  intensified their economic penetration of central
  China
• The US wanted China to declare an open door
  policy, under the terms of which all countries
  agree not to deny others access to their spheres
  of influences
• Chinese began to fear that their country was
  about to be carved up like a melon (guafen)

7
The Boxer Uprising (1898-1901)

• The Boxers United in Righteousness (Yihequan)
  appeared as an expression of nationalism
• Emerged in northwest Shandong in 1898
• A collective force of a variety of secret-society
  and self-defense units that had spread in
  southern Shandong previously in response to the
  provocations of Western missionaries and their
  Chinese converts
• Desperate local farmers and workers plagued by
  flood and drought joined the force to call for
  the ending of special privileges enjoyed by
  Christian converts and Christian missionaries
• By 1898, they had destroyed/stolen a good deal of
  property from Chinese Christians and had killed
  several converts in the Shandong-Hebei border
  area
• Foreigners, alarmed by the Boxers killing,
  demanded that the Qing suppress the Boxers and
  their supporters
• The Boxers responded with a slogan, Revive the
  Qing, destroy the foreign
• Many boxers believed they were invulnerable to
  swords and bullets in combat
• when at last the Foreign Devils/Are expelled to
  the very last man/The Great Qing, united,
  together/Will bring peace to this our land one
  catchy jingle

8
The Expansion of the Boxers

• The Boxers expanded dramatically
• 70 percent were poor peasants, male and young
• The rest were mixture of itinerants and artisans
• Peddlers, rickshaw men, sedan-chair carriers,
  canal boatmen, leather workers, knife sharpeners,
  barbers, dismissed soldiers, salt smugglers
• Joined by female Boxer groups, such as the Red
  Lanterns Shining (Hongdeng zhao)
• They harassed or killed foreigners and Chinese
  converts, and sometimes even those possessed
  foreign objects
• The Qing court wavered between punishing the
  Boxers who killed foreigners and condoning their
  show of anti-foreign loyalty

9
Qing Declaration of War

• Western forces seized the forts at Dagu to
  provide cover for a troop landing, should
  full-scale war broke out
• News of battle at the Dagu ports arrived Beijing,
  which agitated Qing court and Beijing citizens
• German minister was shot dead in the street as he
  went to an interview with the Zhongli Yamen,
  which was in charge of foreign affairs
• The Boxers force laid siege to the
  foreign-legation areas
• Praising the Boxers as a loyal militia, the
  empress dowager Cixi issued a declaration of
  war against the foreign powers

10
Full-Scale War

• With the government behind them, the Boxers
  launched a series attacks on mission compounds
  and on foreigners
• In August 1900, the colonial troops of the Allied
  nations, about 20,000, fought they way through
  Beijing
• Soldiers of eight nations sacked the city and
  burnt imperial palace, the Forbidden City, and
  used it as the headquarters for the foreign
  expeditionary force
• Boxer resistance quickly crumbled, hundreds of
  thousand were killed
• More than two hundred foreigners were killed
• Empress Dowager and Emperor Guangxu fled to the
  West, establishing a temporary capital in the
  city of Xian

11
Peace Treaty

• A peace treaty known as the Boxer Protocol was
  signed in 1901
• The Qing agreed to erect monuments to the memory
  of the more than two hundred Western dead
• The Qing to pay an indemnity of 450 million
  taels (of gold) for damages to foreign life and
  property ( until the debt was amortized on
  12/31/1940, total Chinese payments over the
  thirty-nine year period would amount to 0.98
  billion)

12
Revolution

• Qings being carved up like a melon was a
  national disgrace, which Han Chinese could not
  tolerate
• Revolutionaries wanted to overthrow the Manchu
  state to avenge the national disgrace, and to
  restore the Chinese