A Political and Economic History of China, Part 24: The Qing Dynasty’s Legacy

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9 MIN READ - The Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs and Other Egghead Stuff closes out his history of the Chinese dynasties, this time with his own two cents: a longer analysis of how the last dynasty’s “Century of Humiliation” has rightly and wrongly shaped present-day Chinese attitudes and CCP policies towards the West.

The Economics Correspondent has devoted a lengthy thirteen articles to the Qing dynasty of 1644-1912, more than all the other dynasties combined, because in his opinion the Qing is both more interesting and more relevant to today’s China than all the others combined.

Poring through the work of western China historians one will find the focus of their work also heavily weighted towards the Qing.

The reasons aren’t hard to grasp.

Prior to the Qing there was little contact between China and westerners, mostly Silk Road merchants and the occasional Jesuit scholar-priest.

That all changed during the Qing when contact and interaction with the West soared, and the end result was western dominance over China with the so-called Great Powers winning frequent military conflicts and encroachment upon Chinese territory.

Another element that adds to the intrigue: the Qing rulers weren’t even ethnic Han Chinese but instead Manchurian invaders from the north, eventually leading to secret Han plots to overthrow and expel their alien overlords.

Then there’s the decline of the Qing and China itself, a topic that stirs resentment among Chinese even today.

Before the late 18th century China, even when ruled by other dynasties, had always been the dominant Far East power, interrupted briefly by the chaos of insurrections when dynasties were overthrown every few centuries. China had overshadowed the region for thousands of years, and historians believe it was likely the richest and most powerful nation on earth during the golden ages of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.

The decline of the Qing changed all of that.

Not only did China fall into the same disarray that typified the declines of most other dynasties, but this time it was subjugated by foreign powers from the West or, in the minds of 19th, 20th century, and present-day Chinese, “humiliated.”

Hence the widely-used term “Century of Humiliation,” invoked repeatedly by the CCP and defined as roughly 1839 to 1949, from the First Opium War to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

How is the Century of Humiliation viewed by the Chinese public and the western public? Or by the Chinese communist government and western governments? 

Quite differently.

CHINESE ATTITUDES

While western academics and history buffs recognize the past misdeeds of the European, Russian, and Japanese governments who carved up Chinese territory and even exported opium to China, most Chinese make no such concessions regarding the Qing’s many blunders.

According to most Chinese the West is completely at fault and China was entirely the victim.

The CCP pushes the same narrative via its propaganda, in part because it’s useful for Beijing.

China is becoming more assertive in the 21st century and butting heads with the USA, Australia, Japan, India, and other neighbors, some of whom have asked for US military protection. Given its ambitions the CCP knows more confrontations are inevitable and uses “Century of Humiliation” propaganda to stroke resentment and anger among its own people whose support they will rely on during future conflicts. Xi Jinping has also preemptively multiplied public references to the Opium Wars, citing it more than any of his predecessors.

And it’s not just mainland Chinese.

While Hong Kong Chinese and non-indigenous Taiwanese, who haven’t been bombarded by communist propaganda for 75 years, may hold a more balanced view of the West, nationalistic sentiment still runs deep for some. Ethnic Chinese are generally a very proud people with, in the Correspondent’s opinion, a great deal to be legitimately proud of given China’s magnificent history and culture. So it’s easy for even non-communist Chinese to harbor feelings of resentment when discussing the Century of Humiliation. Nationalist fervor can sometimes cloud their perspective as well.

As historian Stephen Platt has mentioned, westerners watch the recent ascent of Chinese power with interest, but Chinese see nothing interesting about it at all. In their view history is simply reverting back to the norm, when China was the dominant power in Asia and even the world—a norm that was rudely interrupted by the malfeasance of predatory foreign powers during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

WESTERN ATTITUDES

Well the Correspondent differs with most Chinese, whether they be mainland communist Chinese, Hong Kong, or Taiwanese. And this difference of opinion has invoked a lot of discomfort and even anger among some Chinese the Correspondent has corresponded with and even knows personally.

But so be it. The facts are not on their side.

First, it’s important to establish that the West was still *mostly* at fault. This was the period of European and Japanese colonialism, when world powers competed with one another by conquering faraway lands and expanding their empires.

Although Great Britain never “conquered” vast territories within China, it did gain complete control over Hong Kong—not to “rule” but to establish a safe haven for trade free from the massive Qing corruption that had prevailed in Canton for nearly a century. However Russia, Germany, France, and Japan outright grabbed land, and a lot of it. Germany colonized Shandong province, Japan grabbed Korea and Taiwan, France extracted most of Vietnam from China, and Russia took the most of all: over one million square kilometers, mostly in Manchuria.

The British also exported vast quantities of opium into China to solve its trade deficit problem—with the explicit approval of Parliament—effectively turning China into a nation of drug addicts. The American government didn’t adopt a policy of opium dealing and opium didn’t grow in American territories anyway, but in the spirit of laissez-faire its politicians ignored the opium shipping activities of private American merchants.

On this front the Correspondent believes Chinese have every right to complain about misconduct by western powers.

But the Qing dynasty screwed up plenty too leading, in the Correspondent’s opinion, to perfectly avoidable conflicts and China’s downward spiral. The examples that follow have been covered in the Correspondent’s previous columns.

First, the British sale of opium to China didn’t originate from wanton greed and avarice. 46 years before the First Opium War Britain sent a diplomatic mission to Beijing to establish free trade and formal relations. The Macartney Embassy of 1793 wished to trade British manufactures, the products of its first industrial revolution, for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain.

The Qianlong emperor not only rejected all British proposals (including diplomatic relations), he dismissed the ambassadors and Britain itself as a horde of lowly barbarians, using the word barbarian repeatedly when writing to King George III that (paraphrasing) “China has everything and needs nothing from your country” and renouncing the industrial revolution.

Meanwhile Qianlong had allowed a professional flatterer to gain full control of the Qing finance ministry who in turn literally bankrupted the empire through embezzlement (another mistake).

To solve the Qing’s self-inflicted fiscal crises, the Jiaqing and Daoguang emperors adopted a formal trade policy of protectionism—keeping western goods out of China while selling vast quantities of silk, tea, and porcelain to the West—to run perpetual trade surpluses which were still unable to offset the vast corruption draining the imperial treasury.

When the British returned and requested free trade and formal diplomatic relations again (1816), the Jiaqing emperor also rejected their overtures and the meeting got held up over Qing demands that the British barbarians, now vastly superior economically, technologically, and militarily, perform the kowtow.

The British in particular, tiring of losing silver to China year after year due to Qing protectionist policies, resorted to opium smuggling to resolve the trade imbalance and the rest is history. But had the Qing accepted free trade earlier no such conflict over opium would have taken place.

Some Chinese argue that even if free trade flourished between the two nations the predatory British would still have forced opium on China out of pure greed. While it’s impossible to go back and conduct a grand counterfactual experiment changing some of the variables to observe the new outcome, the Correspondent believes history has already dispelled that theory.

All one has to do is look at Japan.

When American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed his “black ships” to Japan in 1853—ships capable of moving under their own power which terrified many Japanese—and fired his guns in Tokyo Bay, Japan immediately realized it had fallen behind the rest of the world and quickly embraced free trade with the West. In a more farsighted decision Japanese officials, including the great Meiji emperor, understood that Japan would benefit most by importing western technology and learning from it, and within less than fifty years Japan rose from an isolated agricultural island to a major world power.

Despite Japan opening its markets, both imports and exports, the West never forced opium on Japan nor did the Japanese become a nation of opium addicts.

In the Correspondent’s opinion, had the Qing had not closed China off from the world while engaging in blatant protectionism, Britain would not have tired of an unequal trade arrangement and resorted to opium to balance it. China would also have strengthened herself immeasurably.

There were more mistakes.

In the years before the First Opium War British officials happily allowed Qing officials to ride their warships in a demonstration of western technology. The ship “inspections” were primarily an attempt to convince the Qing government that open trade with Britain would bring tangible benefits to China.

Qing officials relayed detailed reports back to the emperor that British naval vessels were vastly superior to Chinese junks, noting they didn’t require favorable winds, were capable of “fantastic speeds,” and employed cannons with superior firepower and range which could be pointed in any direction. In other words, the westerners can’t be subdued militarily.

Yet when the first conflict over opium broke out, the Daoguang emperor and his imperial court were so deluded they actually *welcomed* the war and instructed their navy to “subdue” and “destroy” the British. The result, of course, was a humiliating rout that ultimately delivered Hong Kong to the “big nosed barbarians.”

In the Correspondent’s opinion, living delusional fantasies about your own country’s military capabilities is a huge mistake under any circumstances. But welcoming a war with a superior navy, one whose government you’ve been playing protectionist games with for decades and degrading as “inferior barbarians,” is an even bigger mistake.

Another blunder: when the Second Opium War broke out the British sent an expeditionary force to Beijing to negotiate terms to end the fighting. The Xianfeng emperor sent emissaries to meet the British and agree to the terms, proposing the negotiators proceed to Beijing for talks while the larger expeditionary force, which moved more slowly, would catch up a few days later for the final signing ceremony.

But instead of negotiating in good faith the Qing tortured and executed most of the negotiator party which had entered Beijing under flag of truce. Qing cavalry then launched a sneak attack against the smaller British expeditionary force from both sides but were repelled (actually devastated) by Britain’s new Armstrong artillery guns.

When the expeditionary force got to Beijing the imperial court had fled and the British found most of their comrades executed with their bodies mutilated. British troops were so outraged that they wanted to burn down all of Beijing but the embassy’s leader, Lord Elgin, convinced them to punish only the emperor by sacking and burning down his summer vacation palace.

Again, the Correspondent considers the Qing ruse, torture and killing of diplomatic negotiators under flag of truce, and surprise ambush, especially against a military they had known for over two decades was vastly superior, a foolish mistake.

As the decades dragged on the Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled China for 47 years, continued to resist trade with the West and even stymied internal reform and modernization of China itself. She embezzled state funds on a vast scale including, famously, money appropriated for modernizing the Qing navy which instead built her notorious “floating marble palace” to throw lavish parties at her summer resort. 

One year later the Qing Navy was routed by the Imperial Japanese Navy and China was forced to cede Korea and Taiwan to their increasingly belligerent neighbor.

Another huge bungle on part of the Qing.

Although there are countless more errors that would have produced far better outcomes for China had the Qing sidestepped them, we’ll focus lastly on the Boxer Rebellion.

When a pro-Qing secret society moved to violently expel all westerners from China the Empress Dowager Cixi, knowing the West was now even more superior militarily than ever, took a quiet noncommittal stance.

Her silence, interpreted as tacit approval, encouraged the insurgents (known as the Boxers) to begin massacring western civilians, diplomats, priests, nuns, and thousands of Chinese Christian converts.

Seeing the suffering of westerners and their Christian churches burning, Cixi openly supported the Boxers and urged them to continue killing civilians until all westerners were gone, another huge mistake that set China back.

Predictably the western powers, hearing their civilian subjects were being beheaded all over northern China, sent a multinational allied expeditionary force to Beijing which easily defeated combined Qing-Boxer fighters. China was forced to pay a huge monetary indemnity which the United States partially refunded to build Qinghua University in Beijing, China’s most prestigious learning institution today.

Had the Qing simply embraced free trade and diplomatic relations with the West in the late 18th century all of the wars, ceding of territory, monetary reparations, and loss of life would have been avoided (in the Correspondent’s view).

Mention of these Qing mistakes and their consequences is nearly guaranteed to incense most mainland Chinese and even some Hong Kongers and Taiwanese. But in the Correspondent’s opinion they are undeniable facts and Chinese would be better served learning from them instead of more commonly lashing out in anger. 

In the end, the West was still mostly at fault, but the Qing dynasty made fatal mistake after fatal mistake—in sharp contrast to Japan which opened up to the world and subsequently modernized and prospered.

Unfortunately given the CCP’s incessant propaganda, which reinforces the narrative the West was completely in the wrong and China was entirely the victim, the prospects for greater Chinese introspection, more nuanced reflection on the Century of Humiliation, and a moderation of today’s anti-Western rhetoric are not very good.