Essay/Term paper: The rise of the manchus

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Social Issues

The Rise of the Manchus

Although the Manchus were not Han Chinese and were strongly resisted, especially
in the south, they had assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture before
conquering China Proper. Realizing that to dominate the empire they would have
to do things the Chinese way, the Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and
earlier Chinese derivation. They continued the Confucian court practices and
temple rituals, over which the emperors had traditionally presided. The Manchus
continued the Confucian civil service system. Although Chinese were barred from
the highest offices, Chinese officials predominated over Manchu officeholders
outside the capital, except in military positions. The Neo-Confucian philosophy,
emphasizing the obedience of subject to ruler, was enforced as the state creed.
The Manchu emperors also supported Chinese literary and historical projects of
enormous scope; the survival of much of China's ancient literature is attributed
to these projects.

Ever suspicious of Han Chinese, the Qing rulers put into effect measures aimed
at preventing the absorption of the Manchus into the dominant Han Chinese
population. Han Chinese were prohibited from migrating into the Manchu homeland,
and Manchus were forbidden to engage in trade or manual labor. Intermarriage
between the two groups was forbidden. In many government positions a system of
dual appointments was used--the Chinese appointee was required to do the
substantive work and the Manchu to ensure Han loyalty to Qing rule.

The Qing regime was determined to protect itself not only from internal
rebellion but also from foreign invasion. After China Proper had been subdued,
the Manchus conquered Outer Mongolia (now the Mongolian People's Republic) in
the late seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century they gained control of
Central Asia as far as the Pamir Mountains and established a protectorate over
the area the Chinese call Xizang () but commonly known in the West as Tibet. The
Qing thus became the first dynasty to eliminate successfully all danger to China
Proper from across its land borders. Under Manchu rule the empire grew to
include a larger area than before or since; Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-
Manchu resistance, was also incorporated into China for the first time. In
addition, Qing emperors received tribute from the various border states.

The chief threat to China's integrity did not come overland, as it had so often
in the past, but by sea, reaching the southern coastal area first. Western
traders, missionaries, and soldiers of fortune began to arrive in large numbers
even before the Qing, in the sixteenth century. The empire's inability to
evaluate correctly the nature of the new challenge or to respond flexibly to it
resulted in the demise of the Qing and the collapse of the entire millennia-old
framework of dynastic rule.

Emergence Of Modern China

The success of the Qing dynasty in maintaining the old order proved a liability
when the empire was confronted with growing challenges from seafaring Western
powers. The centuries of peace and self-satisfaction dating back to Ming times
had encouraged little change in the attitudes of the ruling elite. The imperial
Neo-Confucian scholars accepted as axiomatic the cultural superiority of Chinese
civilization and the position of the empire at the hub of their perceived world.
To question this assumption, to suggest innovation, or to promote the adoption
of foreign ideas was viewed as tantamount to heresy. Imperial purges dealt
severely with those who deviated from orthodoxy.

By the nineteenth century, China was experiencing growing internal pressures of
economic origin. By the start of the century, there were over 300 million
Chinese, but there was no industry or trade of sufficient scope to absorb the
surplus labor. Moreover, the scarcity of land led to widespread rural discontent
and a breakdown in law and order. The weakening through corruption of the
bureaucratic and military systems and mounting urban pauperism also contributed
to these disturbances. Localized revolts erupted in various parts of the empire
in the early nineteenth century. Secret societies, such as the White Lotus sect
() in the north and the Triad Society () in the south, gained ground, combining
anti-Manchu subversion with banditry.

The Western Powers Arrive

As elsewhere in Asia, in China the Portuguese were the pioneers, establishing a
foothold at Macao ( or Aomen in pinyin), from which they monopolized foreign
trade at the Chinese port of Guangzhou ( or Canton). Soon the Spanish arrived,
followed by the British and the French.

Trade between China and the West was carried on in the guise of tribute:
foreigners were obliged to follow the elaborate, centuries-old ritual imposed on
envoys from China's tributary states. There was no conception at the imperial
court that the Europeans would expect or deserve to be treated as cultural or
political equals. The sole exception was Russia, the most powerful inland
neighbor.

The Manchus were sensitive to the need for security along the northern land
frontier and therefore were prepared to be realistic in dealing with Russia. The
Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) with the Russians, drafted to bring to an end a
series of border incidents and to establish a border between Siberia and
Manchuria (northeast China) along the Heilong Jiang (
or Amur River), was China's first bilateral agreement with a European
power. In 1727 the Treaty of Kiakhta delimited the remainder of the eastern
portion of the Sino-Russian border. Western diplomatic efforts to expand trade
on equal terms were rebuffed, the official Chinese assumption being that the
empire was not in need of foreign--and thus inferior--products. Despite this
attitude, trade flourished, even though after 1760 all foreign trade was
confined to Guangzhou, where the foreign traders had to limit their dealings to
a dozen officially licensed Chinese merchant firms.

Trade was not the sole basis of contact with the West. Since the thirteenth
century, Roman Catholic missionaries had been attempting to establish their
church in China. Although by 1800 only a few hundred thousand Chinese had been
converted, the missionaries--mostly Jesuits--contributed greatly to Chinese
knowledge in such fields as cannon casting, calendar making, geography,
mathematics, cartography, music, art, and architecture. The Jesuits were
especially adept at fitting Christianity into a Chinese framework and were
condemned by a papal decision in 1704 for having tolerated the continuance of
Confucian ancestor rites among Christian converts. The papal decision quickly
weakened the Christian movement, which it proscribed as heterodox and disloyal.

The Opium War, 1839-42

During the eighteenth century, the market in Europe and America for tea, a new
drink in the West, expanded greatly. Additionally, there was a continuing demand
for Chinese silk and porcelain. But China, still in its preindustrial stage,
wanted little that the West had to offer, causing the Westerners, mostly British,
to incur an unfavorable balance of trade. To remedy the situation, the
foreigners developed a third-party trade, exchanging their merchandise in India
and Southeast Asia for raw materials and semiprocessed goods, which found a
ready market in Guangzhou. By the early nineteenth century, raw cotton and opium
() from India had become the staple British imports into China, in spite of the
fact that opium was prohibited entry by imperial decree. The opium traffic was
made possible through the connivance of profit-seeking merchants and a corrupt
bureaucracy.

In 1839 the Qing government, after a decade of unsuccessful anti-opium campaigns,
adopted drastic prohibitory laws against the opium trade. The emperor dispatched
a commissioner, Lin Zexu ( 1785-1850), to Guangzhou to suppress illicit opium
traffic. Lin seized illegal stocks of opium owned by Chinese dealers and then
detained the entire foreign community and confiscated and destroyed some 20,000
chests of illicit British opium. The British retaliated with a punitive
expedition, thus initiating the first Anglo-Chinese war, better known as the
Opium War (1839-42). Unprepared for war and grossly underestimating the
capabilities of the enemy, the Chinese were disastrously defeated, and their
image of their own imperial power was tarnished beyond repair. The Treaty of
Nanjing (1842), signed on board a British warship by two Manchu imperial
commissioners and the British plenipotentiary, was the first of a series of
agreements with the Western trading nations later called by the Chinese the
"unequal treaties." Under the Treaty of Nanjing, China ceded the island of Hong
Kong ( or Xianggang in pinyin) to the British; abolished the licensed monopoly
system of trade; opened 5 ports to British residence and foreign trade; limited
the tariff on trade to 5 percent ad valorem; granted British nationals
extraterritoriality (exemption from Chinese laws); and paid a large indemnity.
In addition, Britain was to have most-favored-nation treatment, that is, it
would receive whatever trading concessions the Chinese granted other powers then
or later. The Treaty of Nanjing set the scope and character of an unequal
relationship for the ensuing century of what the Chinese would call "national
humiliations." The treaty was followed by other incursions, wars, and treaties
that granted new concessions and added new privileges for the foreigners.

For people interested in knowing more about the history of opium in China and
its effect on the opium user, please check out Cliff Schaffer's Opiates page
which includes a brief history of the Opium Wars. You might also be interested
in a Brief History of Hong Kong.

The Self-Strengthening Movement

The rude realities of the Opium War, the unequal treaties, and the mid-century
mass uprisings caused Qing courtiers and officials to recognize the need to
strengthen China. Chinese scholars and officials had been examining and
translating "Western learning" since the 1840s. Under the direction of modern-
thinking Han officials, Western science and languages were studied, special
schools were opened in the larger cities, and arsenals, factories, and shipyards
were established according to Western models. Western diplomatic practices were
adopted by the Qing, and students were sent abroad by the government and on
individual or community initiative in the hope that national regeneration could
be achieved through the application of Western practical methods.

Amid these activities came an attempt to arrest the dynastic decline by
restoring the traditional order. The effort was known as the Tongzhi Restoration,
named for the Tongzhi ()Emperor (1862-74), and was engineered by the young
emperor's mother, the Empress Dowager Ci Xi ( 1835-1908). The restoration,
however, which applied "practical knowledge" while reaffirming the old mentality,
was not a genuine program of modernization.

The effort to graft Western technology onto Chinese institutions became known as
the Self-Strengthening Movement (
). The movement was championed by scholar-generals like Li Hongzhang (
1823-1901) and Zuo Zongtang ( 1812-85), who had fought with the government
forces in the Taiping Rebellion. From 1861 to 1894, leaders such as these, now
turned scholar-administrators, were responsible for establishing modern
institutions, developing basic industries, communications, and transportation,
and modernizing the military. But despite its leaders' accomplishments, the
Self-Strengthening Movement did not recognize the significance of the political
institutions and social theories that had fostered Western advances and
innovations. This weakness led to the movement's failure. Modernization during
this period would have been difficult under the best of circumstances. The
bureaucracy was still deeply influenced by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Chinese
society was still reeling from the ravages of the Taiping and other rebellions,
and foreign encroachments continued to threaten the integrity of China.

The first step in the foreign powers' effort to carve up the empire was taken by
Russia, which had been expanding into Central Asia. By the 1850s, tsarist troops
also had invaded the Heilong Jiang watershed of Manchuria, from which their
countrymen had been ejected under the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Russians used the
superior knowledge of China they had acquired through their century-long
residence in Beijing to further their aggrandizement. In 1860 Russian diplomats
secured the secession of all of Manchuria north of the Heilong Jiang and east of
the Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri River). Foreign encroachments increased after 1860 by
means of a series of treaties imposed on China on one pretext or another. The
foreign stranglehold on the vital sectors of the Chinese economy was reinforced
through a lengthening list of concessions. Foreign settlements in the treaty
ports became extraterritorial--sovereign pockets of territories over which China
had no jurisdiction. The safety of these foreign settlements was ensured by the
menacing presence of warships and gunboats.

At this time the foreign powers also took over the peripheral states that had
acknowledged Chinese suzerainty and given tribute to the emperor. France
colonized Cochin China, as southern Vietnam was then called, and by 1864
established a protectorate over Cambodia. Following a victorious war against
China in 1884-85, France also took Annam. Britain gained control over Burma.
Russia penetrated into Chinese Turkestan (the modern-day Xinjiang-Uyghur
Autonomous Region). Japan, having emerged from its century-and-a-half-long
seclusion and having gone through its own modernization movement, defeated China
in the war of 1894-95. The Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan and
the Penghu Islands to Japan, pay a huge indemnity, permit the establishment of
Japanese industries in four treaty ports, and recognize Japanese hegemony over
Korea. In 1898 the British acquired a ninety-nine-year lease over the so-called
New Territories of Kowloon ( or Jiulong in pinyin), which increased the size of
their Hong Kong colony. Britain, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, and Belgium
each gained spheres of influence in China. The United States, which had not
acquired any territorial cessions, proposed in 1899 that there be an "open door"
policy in China, whereby all foreign countries would have equal duties and
privileges in all treaty ports within and outside the various spheres of
influence. All but Russia agreed to the United States overture.

Emergence Of Modern China: III

The Hundred Days' Reform and the Aftermath

In the 103 days from June 11 to September 21, 1898, the Qing emperor, Guangxu (
1875-1908), ordered a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping social and
institutional changes. This effort reflected the thinking of a group of
progressive scholar-reformers who had impressed the court with the urgency of
making innovations for the nation's survival. Influenced by the Japanese success
with modernization, the reformers declared that China needed more than "self-
strengthening" and that innovation must be accompanied by institutional and
ideological change.

The imperial edicts for reform covered a broad range of subjects, including
stamping out corruption and remaking, among other things, the academic and
civil-service examination systems, legal system, governmental structure, defense
establishment, and postal services. The edicts attempted to modernize
agriculture, medicine, and mining and to promote practical studies instead of
Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. The court also planned to send students abroad for
firsthand observation and technical studies. All these changes were to be
brought about under a de facto constitutional monarchy.

Opposition to the reform was intense among the conservative ruling elite,
especially the Manchus, who, in condemning the announced reform as too radical,
proposed instead a more moderate and gradualist course of change. Supported by
ultraconservatives and with the tacit support of the political opportunist Yuan
Shikai ( 1859-1916), Empress Dowager Ci Xi () engineered a coup d'tat on
September 21, 1898, forcing the young reform-minded Guangxu into seclusion. Ci
Xi took over the government as regent. The Hundred Days' Reform () ended with
the rescindment of the new edicts and the execution of six of the reform's chief
advocates. The two principal leaders, Kang Youwei ( 1858-1927) and Liang Qichao
( 1873-1929), fled abroad to found the Baohuang Hui ( or Protect the Emperor
Society) and to work, unsuccessfully, for a constitutional monarchy in China.

The conservatives then gave clandestine backing to the antiforeign and anti-
Christian movement of secret societies known as Yihetuan ( or Society of
Righteousness and Harmony). The movement has been better known in the West as
the Boxers (from an earlier name--Yihequan, or Righteousness and Harmony
Boxers). In 1900 Boxer bands spread over the north China countryside, burning
missionary facilities and killing Chinese Christians. Finally, in June 1900, the
Boxers besieged the foreign concessions in Beijing and Tianjin, an action that
provoked an allied relief expedition by the offended nations. The Qing declared
war against the invaders, who easily crushed their opposition and occupied north
China. Under the Protocol of 1901, the court was made to consent to the
execution of ten high officials and the punishment of hundreds of others,
expansion of the Legation Quarter, payment of war reparations, stationing of
foreign troops in China, and razing of some Chinese fortifications.

In the decade that followed, the court belatedly put into effect some reform
measures. These included the abolition of the moribund Confucian-based
examination, educational and military modernization patterned after the model of
Japan, and an experiment, if half-hearted, in constitutional and parliamentary
government. The suddenness and ambitiousness of the reform effort actually
hindered its success. One effect, to be felt for decades to come, was the
establishment of new armies, which, in turn, gave rise to warlordism.

The Republican Revolution of 1911

Failure of reform from the top and the fiasco of the Boxer Uprising convinced
many Chinese that the only real solution lay in outright revolution, in sweeping
away the old order and erecting a new one patterned preferably after the example
of Japan. The revolutionary leader was Sun Yat-sen ( or Sun Yixian in pinyin,
1866-1925), a republican and anti-Qing activist who became increasingly popular
among the overseas Chinese and Chinese students abroad, especially in Japan. In
1905 Sun founded the Tongmeng Hui ( or United League) in Tokyo with Huang Xing (
1874-1916), a popular leader of the Chinese revolutionary movement in Japan, as
his deputy. This movement, generously supported by overseas Chinese funds, also
gained political support with regional military officers and some of the
reformers who had fled China after the Hundred Days' Reform. Sun's political
philosophy was conceptualized in 1897, first enunciated in Tokyo in 1905, and
modified through the early 1920s. It centered on the Three Principles of the
People ( or san min zhuyi): "nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood."
The principle of nationalism called for overthrowing the Manchus and ending
foreign hegemony over China. The second principle, democracy, was used to
describe Sun's goal of a popularly elected republican form of government.
People's livelihood, often referred to as socialism, was aimed at helping the
common people through regulation of the ownership of the means of production and
land.

The republican revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, in Wuchang (), the
capital of Hubei () Province, among discontented modernized army units whose
anti-Qing plot had been uncovered. It had been preceded by numerous abortive
uprisings and organized protests inside China. The revolt quickly spread to
neighboring cities, and Tongmeng Hui members throughout the country rose in
immediate support of the Wuchang revolutionary forces. By late November, fifteen
of the twenty-four provinces had declared their independence of the Qing empire.
A month later, Sun Yat-sen returned to China from the United States, where he
had been raising funds among overseas Chinese and American sympathizers. On
January 1, 1912, Sun was inaugurated in Nanjing as the provisional president of
the new Chinese republic. But power in Beijing already had passed to the
commander-in-chief of the imperial army, Yuan Shikai, the strongest regional
military leader at the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreign
intervention from undermining the infant republic, Sun agreed to Yuan's demand
that China be united under a Beijing government headed by Yuan. On February 12,
1912, the last Manchu emperor, the child Puyi (), abdicated. On March 10, in
Beijing, Yuan Shikai was sworn in as provisional president of the Republic of
China.

Republican China

The republic that Sun Yat-sen () and his associates envisioned evolved slowly.
The revolutionists lacked an army, and the power of Yuan Shikai () began to
outstrip that of parliament. Yuan revised the constitution at will and became
dictatorial. In August 1912 a new political party was founded by Song Jiaoren (
1882-1913), one of Sun's associates. The party, the Guomindang ( Kuomintang or
KMT--the National People's Party, frequently referred to as the Nationalist
Party), was an amalgamation of small political groups, including Sun's Tongmeng
Hui (). In the national elections held in February 1913 for the new bicameral
parliament, Song campaigned against the Yuan administration, and his party won a
majority of seats. Yuan had Song assassinated in March; he had already arranged
the assassination of several pro-revolutionist generals. Animosity toward Yuan
grew. In the summer of 1913 seven southern provinces rebelled against Yuan. When
the rebellion was suppressed, Sun and other instigators fled to Japan. In
October 1913 an intimidated parliament formally elected Yuan president of the
Republic of China, and the major powers extended recognition to his government.
To achieve international recognition, Yuan Shikai had to agree to autonomy for
Outer Mongolia and Xizang (
). China was still to be suzerain, but it would have to allow Russia a free
hand in Outer Mongolia and Britain continuance of its influence in Xizang.

In November Yuan Shikai, legally president, ordered the Guomindang dissolved and
its members removed from parliament. Within a few months, he suspended
parliament and the provincial assemblies and forced the promulgation of a new
constitution, which, in effect, made him president for life. Yuan's ambitions
still were not satisfied, and, by the end of 1915, it was announced that he
would reestablish the monarchy. Widespread rebellions ensued, and numerous
provinces declared independence. With opposition at every quarter and the nation
breaking up into warlord factions, Yuan Shikai died of natural causes in June
1916, deserted by his lieutenants.

Nationalism and Communism

After Yuan Shikai's death, shifting alliances of regional warlords fought for
control of the Beijing government. The nation also was threatened from without
by the Japanese. When World War I broke out in 1914, Japan fought on the Allied
side and seized German holdings in Shandong () Province. In 1915 the Japanese
set before the warlord government in Beijing the so-called Twenty-One Demands,
which would have made China a Japanese protectorate. The Beijing government
rejected some of these demands but yielded to the Japanese insistence on keeping
the Shandong territory already in its possession. Beijing also recognized
Tokyo's authority over southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. In 1917,
in secret communiques, Britain, France, and Italy assented to the Japanese claim
in exchange for the Japan's naval action against Germany.

In 1917 China declared war on Germany in the hope of recovering its lost
province, then under Japanese control. But in 1918 the Beijing government signed
a secret deal with Japan accepting the latter's claim to Shandong. When the
Paris peace conference of 1919 confirmed the Japanese claim to Shandong and
Beijing's sellout became public, internal reaction was shattering. On May 4,
1919, there were massive student demonstrations against the Beijing government
and Japan. The political fervor, student activism, and iconoclastic and
reformist intellectual currents set in motion by the patriotic student protest
developed into a national awakening known as the May Fourth Movement (). The
intellectual milieu in which the May Fourth Movement developed was known as the
New Culture Movement and occupied the period from 1917 to 1923. The student
demonstrations of May 4, 1919 were the high point of the New Culture Movement,
and the terms are often used synonymously. Students returned from abroad
advocating social and political theories ranging from complete Westernization of
China to the socialism that one day would be adopted by China's communist rulers.


Opposing the Warlords

The May Fourth Movement helped to rekindle the then-fading cause of republican
revolution. In 1917 Sun Yat-sen had become commander-in-chief of a rival
military government in Guangzhou () in collaboration with southern warlords. In
October 1919 Sun reestablished the Guomindang to counter the government in
Beijing. The latter, under a succession of warlords, still maintained its facade
of legitimacy and its relations with the West. By 1921 Sun had become president
of the southern government. He spent his remaining years trying to consolidate
his regime and achieve unity with the north. His efforts to obtain aid from the
Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1921 he turned to the Soviet
Union, which had recently achieved its own revolution. The Soviets sought to
befriend the Chinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks on "Western
imperialism." But for political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a
dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Chinese Communist
Party ( CCP). The Soviets hoped for consolidation but were prepared for either
side to emerge victorious. In this way the struggle for power in China began
between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1922 the Guomindang-warlord
alliance in Guangzhou was ruptured, and Sun fled to Shanghai (). By then Sun saw
the need to seek Soviet support for his cause. In 1923 a joint statement by Sun
and a Soviet representative in Shanghai pledged Soviet assistance for China's
national unification. Soviet advisers--the most prominent of whom was an agent
of the Comintern, Mikhail Borodin--began to arrive in China in 1923 to aid in
the reorganization and consolidation of the Guomindang along the lines of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CCP was under Comintern instructions to
cooperate with the Guomindang, and its members were encouraged to join while
maintaining their party identities. The CCP was still small at the time, having
a membership of 300 in 1922 and only 1,500 by 1925. The Guomindang in 1922
already had 150,000 members. Soviet advisers also helped the Nationalists set up
a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques and
in 1923 sent Chiang Kai-shek ( Jiang Jieshi in pinyin), one of Sun's lieutenants
from Tongmeng Hui days, for several months' military and political study in
Moscow. After Chiang's return in late 1923, he participated in the establishment
of the Whampoa ( Huangpu in pinyin) Military Academy outside Guangzhou, which
was the seat of government under the Guomindang-CCP alliance. In 1924 Chiang
became head of the academy and began the rise to prominence that would make him
Sun's successor as head of the Guomindang and the unifier of all China under the
right-wing nationalist government.

Sun Yat-sen died of cancer in Beijing in March 1925, but the Nationalist
movement he had helped to initiate was gaining momentum. During the summer of
1925, Chiang, as commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, set out
on the long-delayed Northern Expedition against the northern warlords. Within
nine months, half of China had been conquered. By 1926, however, the Guomindang
had divided into left- and right-wing factions, and the Communist bloc within it
was also growing. In March 1926, after thwarting a kidnapping attempt against
him, Chiang abruptly dismissed his Soviet advisers, imposed restrictions on CCP
members' participation in the top leadership, and emerged as the preeminent
Guomindang leader. The Soviet Union, still hoping to prevent a split between
Chiang and the CCP, ordered Communist underground activities to facilitate the
Northern Expedition, which was finally launched by Chiang from Guangzhou in July
1926.

In early 1927 the Guomindang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary
ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the Guomindang had decided to move the seat
of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. But Chiang, whose
Northern Expedition was proving successful, set his forces to destroying the
Shanghai CCP apparatus and established an anti-Communist government at Nanjing
in April 1927. There now were three capitals in China: the internationally
recognized warlord regime in Beijing; the Communist and left-wing Guomindang
regime at Wuhan (); and the right-wing civilian-military regime at Nanjing,
which would remain