S04: From Empire to Nation-State

• How to reform China?
• What is this China that needs reform?
• How did China see the West? How did the West see China?

• Silver outflow: Trade surplus with England turned deficit in 1826
• Increasing opium smuggling
• Growing users and addicts: “the magistrate or governor who did not smoke opium was an exception”

• 21 million silver taels of indemnity
• End of Canton system whereby all foreign trade was confined to the port of Guangzhou (Canton), with foreign merchants restricted to a specific area
• Era of treaty ports: five coastal cities opened for foreign trade
• Extraterritoriality: foreign nationals subject to home laws for offenses in China
• Britain granted “most favored nation” status

External

• Opium War: Burden of indemnity payments
• Economic displacement after opening of new treaty ports
• Opium addiction and rural poverty

Domestic

• Population growth: From 150 million in 1650 to 300 million in 1800
• Official corruption
• State involution and declining fiscal capacity

• 1855-1858: Second Opium War against England and France
• 1858: Outer Manchuria ceded to Russia
• 1860: Treaty of Beijing

• 1850-1864: Taiping Civil War, led by Hong Xiuquan
• 1851-1868: Nian Rebellion in Anhui, Shandong, and Henan, led by remnants of the White Lotus Society
• 1855-1872: Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan, led by Du Wenxiu
• 1867-1876: Dungan Revolt in Xinjiang, led by Jakub Beg

• 1855: Yellow River changed course; Grand Canal flooded.
• 1873-1876: three year drought
• 1876-1879: Great North China Famine in five provinces, claiming at least 9.5 million lives.

• The opening of ports in Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai to Western trade led to job losses for millions of Southerners; many turned to banditry.
• Tensions arose between the Hakka ethnicity and the Han Chinese.
• A religious sect called the God Worshipping Society emerged among the Hakka, exacerbating the existing conflicts.

• Born in Hakka highlands in Fujian near Canton
• Failed exam candidate
• Encounter with American baptist missionary Issachar Jacox Roberts during exam trips

Robert Morrison (1782-1834)
Translator to the East India Company and of the Chinese Bible

Issachar Jacox Roberts (1802-1871)
Baptist missionary in China and supporter of the Taiping Rebellion.

• Hong traveled to the Hakka in Guangxi and built a military force of 20,000 by 1850.
• Gathered followers and built an army, controlled over a third of China by late 1850s.

• A “new way of life, a ‘Human Fellowship’ in which men and women would be equal, and wealth would be shared”
• Building utopia: Introduced common property, land reform, equal position of women, abstinence from opium, tobacco, and alcohol, calendar and literary reform, and new political-military organization
• Taiping ideology as blend of Confucian, ancient, and Western ideas

• Although signed in 1858, China didn’t ratify the Tianjin Treaty until British and French forces attacked and entered Beijing in 1960, burning the Summer Palace but sparing the Forbidden City.
• U.S. diplomat John Ward negotiated treaty ratifications in 1859, allowing other powers to benefit from the Treaty of Tianjin.

• Signed with Russia
• Cession of lands east and north of the Amur (Outer Manchuria)
• Russia as North Pacific Power: Naval stations in new Province of Vladivostok, Ussuriysk and other settlements
• Chinese access to the Sea of Japan sealed off

• The Dungan Revolt occurred from 1862 to 1877 in China, primarily involving Hui Muslims (Dungan) against the Qing government.
• The revolt began in Shaanxi Province and spread to Gansu and Ningxia, with the Hui seeking autonomy and rights.
• As Muslim rebellion spread from Shaanxi and Gansu to East Turkistan (now Xinjiang), rebel Muslims formed an independent power at Kuldja (Yining), a significant caravan trade center.

• In 1865, Yakub Beg invaded Kashgaria and established power, showing intentions to move towards the Ili region to support the British in India.
• This threatened the Sino-Russian Treaty of Kuldja (1851), and kindled great power rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in the region.

• What should the Qing do to quell its internal turmoils?
• How should the Qing handle its relationship with Western imperial powers?
• With the decline of the Qing power and prestige, Qing’s peripheral areas began to free themselves from the Qing influence. What should it do?

• After victory over the Taiping, Ward and Gordon received official ranks in the Qing bureaucracy, along with official robes and military investitures.
• Ward further solidified his alliance with the Chinese merchant community by marrying the daughter of banker Yang Fang, his benefactor.
• Ward and Gordon’s hybrid identity as Western-born Chinese subjects allowed them to seize opportunities in early 1862.

Western Mercenaries: Friends or Enemies?

• Foreign adventurers participated in the Taiping War on both Qing and Taiping sides, often against their governments’ prohibitions.
• Foreign officers could exploit their positions for their own interests and their training training might undermine Chinese troops’ discipline and loyalty.

Foreign Christians: Good Christians?

• Western missionaries were supported by the Qing under pressure from conquering western forces.
• Confusion among Chinese gentry: Why were they battling indigenous Chinese adherents to Christianity on the one hand and supporting foreign Christian missionaries on the other?

• Rebellion took 15 years and defeated only in 1864, when the Hunan army retook Nanjing.
• At least 100,000 Taiping rebels slaughtered; city burned.
• Estimated 20 million lives lost in total, twice that of World War I, and the deadliest civil war in history.

• Zuo Zongtang, also known as General Tso, led a military campaign in Xinjiang from 1876 to 1878 to suppress the Dungan Revolt and re-establish Qing control.
• Sino-Russian Treaty of St. Petersburg (1881): recognized China’s sovereignty over Mongolia; in return, Russia was granted the right to build a railway across northern China to Vladivostok. The Treaty also established a boundary in Central Asia.
• The campaign and negotiations cost China nearly 58 million taels in expedition and indemnity.
• In 1884, the region was officially established as the new province of Xinjiang, integrating it into China for the first time.

• The Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864.
• With over twenty million deaths, it was the deadliest civil war in history (twice the casualties of World War I).
• The destruction caused by the rebellion had long-lasting effects, with some areas of central China not fully recovering by the 1950s.

Pre-Taiping:

• Successful governance stemmed from a strong civilian bureaucracy rather than military power.
• Culture would prevail over force: the best men should serve in government rather than as soldiers.

After-Taiping:

• Arms and ammunition became the largest Western exports to China.
• To address rebellions, semi-permanent militias were formed at provincial and regional levels, but no national army until mid-20th century.
• Since the 1910s, China consistently had one of the largest numbers of men under arms of any nation.

• End of “law of avoidance”
• Regional armies, personally loyal to their commanders than to the empire
• New fiscal power: commercial transit tax
• Rise of local gentry and elite-led militia across the empire

• Loyalty to Qing
• Belief in Confucian ethics and moral self-cultivation
• Western technology in defense of Confucian statesmanship

• Decentralization: Power devolution from the imperial center
• Militarization: “Prosperous state and strong military”
• Modernization: Of administration and diplomacy
• Westernization: Of education, culture, and values

• The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) displaced many peasants, who sought refuge in Shanghai after losing their homes.
• Land regulations allowed Chinese refugees to rent and buy property in the International Settlements, creating new opportunities for them.
• The settlements became increasingly populated by Chinese nationals, despite being governed primarily by foreign powers.

• Traditional economic centers decimated by civil war and internal migration
• Depressed agricultural yield; labor more expensive than land
• Shift of domestic trade from hinterland to coast
• Treaty ports as centers of commercial boom and self-strengthening initiatives

New gov revenue:

• Commercial transit tax
• Imperial Maritime Customs

But limited impact:

• Decline of land tax
• Most new revenue from domestic and int’l trade to foreign gov and local elites
• Limited improvement to chronic budget deficits

• Western-style, capital-intensive enterprises
• Accompanied by new naval academies and educational facilities
• Management shared between gov and merchants
• Capital raised through selling shares or gov loans
• Rise of hybrid “gentry-merchant”: combining moral rectitude with commercial development

• Gov ties as both asset and liability: Vulnerable to state extraction and intervention
• Obscure lines of decision and responsibility
• Enterprises as bases of political patronage, local loyalties, and corruption

• The Chinese Educational Mission was established in the late 19th century to send Chinese students to the United States for education.
• It aimed to modernize China’s education system and promote Western knowledge and skills.
• Over 120 students were sent to study various subjects, including science and engineering.

• Western superiority came not only from military, but from four institutions: education, government, and science
• Affinity between Chinese tradition of local autonomy and Western representative democracy
• Two-level administration: Hereditary magistrate, and elected subordinate headmen

• Departure from traditional Confucian statecraft: Minimal state finance, maximal popular livelihoods
• New view of the state: Pursuit of “wealth and power”
• At the same time, confucian tradition as resource for present issues
• Philological scholarship as statecraft solution: “Seek truth from facts”
• Restoring Confucianism vs. Pursuing robust reform

• Qiu Jin (1875-1907): Chinese revolutionary, feminist, and writer.
• In the early 1900s, she left her husband and children to study in Japan.
• Executed after a failed uprising against the Qing dynasty; considered a national heroine in China and a martyr of republicanism and feminism.

• Education as basic solution for improving status of women
• Women as contributor to public discourses and social reforms

• Women’s rights defended in terms of collective rather than individual benefit: “Better mothers, stronger nation”
• Focus on education and economic self-sufficiency, rather than gender equality, female suffrage, or political rights
• Criticizing Western imperialism while championing Pan-Asianism: Japan’s civilizing mission to lead East Asia

• War triggered by domestic rebellion: Tonghak (Eastern Learning) movement invited Qing intervention
• From civil war to international war: Japan declared war on the Qing on August 1, 1894
• Destruction of Li Hongzhang’s Beiyang Fleet on Yalu River

• 200 million silver taels in indemnity
• Change in status of Korea: no longer a Qing tributary, but an independent nation (later officially annexed)
• Taiwan ceded to Japan as colony
• “Carving up China”: Loss of Liaodong peninsula and creation of foreign “spheres of influence”
• Right to set up foreign industrial factories in Qing

• The late-nineteenth-century court was divided into two factions: the emperor’s party and the empress dowager’s party.
• The Sino-Japanese War was a greater shock, even more so than the Opium War (1839–1842).
• Young reform-minded intellectuals, like Liang Qichao, highlighted the urgent need for modernization and Westernization.
• More than importing Western technology, the Qing needed more radical reform to prioritize constitutionalism, like Japan.

• Intellectuals into statesmen: Kang Youwei appointed to Foreign Office, Tan Sitong to he Grand Council
• Opening of “pathways of words”: soliciting reform suggestions
• Replacing Six Boards with Western-style cabinet ministries
• Introduction of an independent judiciary

After gaining an audience with Emperor Guangxu, Kang Youwei and his students influenced the launch of the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898:

• Kang Youwei
• Liang Qichao
• Tan Sitong

• How did they define China and its people?
• How did they define the time they live in?
• What needs to be changed? Why? How?
• What’s the place of Chinese tradition and/or culture?
• How would you compare and contrast these three thinkers?

• Kang says he lives in a world of “disorder”. What is its root cause?
• What is China’s relationship with the world? What does Kang say about other societies?
• What is the “Grand Commonality”? How do we get there?

• Leader of Hundred Days Reform
• Loyalist, constitutional monarchy
• “Grand Commonality”: global utopia of human equality and solidarity
• Blend of Confucianism, Buddhism, liberalism, utopianism and socialism/communism

• Liang sees “renewing the people” as an imperative for renewing China. But what people?
• Is renewing the people the same thing as Westernization? What does Liang say about “tradition”?
• “The main deficiency in our citizens is their lack of public morality”. What morality should they learn?
• How does Liang’s vision compare with that of his teacher, Kang Youwei?

• Need for comprehensive reform, but revolution as a recipe for disorder
• Constitutionalism as a source of progress.
• “Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu)”: Narrow nationalism of ethnically pure Han vs. Greater nationalism
• Nation-state as the only effective unit of struggle in social Darwinist world

• Is Confucius / Confucianism against reform?
• Why should change begin with a change of human relations?
• According to the Confucian philosopher Mencius, three fundamental bonds – between father and son, lord and subject, and husband and wife – constitute three of the five cardinal relationships. How should these relationships be reformed?

• Confucius as reformer, sympathetic to constitutional monarchy
• Re-interpretation of Confucian values as based on equality
• Not just legal reform, but reform of culture and minds
• Uneasy synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity

• Departure from traditional Confucian statecraft: Minimal state finance, maximal popular livelihoods
• New view of the state: Pursuit of “wealth and power”
• At the same time, confucian tradition as resource for present issues
• Philological scholarship as statecraft solution: “Seek truth from facts”
• Restoring Confucianism vs. Pursuing robust reform

• Rise of modern, activist, and fiscally efficient state
• Bureaucracy streamlined: Six Boards replaced by cabinet ministries
• New ministries: Trade, Education, Interior, Posts and Communication, etc.
• New sales tax on consumer goods; provincial revenue contributions
• Nationalization of profitable industries, mines, shipping lines

• Translation of Western legal texts
• Synthesizing Western law and Chinese tradition
• End of collective responsibility and cruel punishments
• New institituional structure: Ministry of Justice, Imperial Supreme Court
• New laws: criminal code, company law, citizenship (nationality by bloodline), etc.

• Creating centralized modern army to supplant Eight Banners and remnants of Taiping regional militia
• 1903: Commission on Military Reorganization
• Creation of Beiyang Army – first national army and China’s strongest military force
• Rise of Yuan Shikai (1859-1916) and key warlords of early Republican era

• Abolished in 1905
• End of traditional pathway to official service for over a millennium
• Establishment of Western-curriculum schools in all localities
• Modern school diploma replaced exam degree as credential for official service and social mobility

• 1905-1906: Overseas tour and study of political systems
• 1907: Commission to Study Constitutional Government established
• 1908: “Principles of the Constitution”, elected assemblies on local (1908) and provincial (1909) levels
• 1910: Provisional National Assembly convened in Beijing

The regime that a revolution destroys is almost always better than the one that immediately preceded it, and experience teaches that the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform.

The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856)

What did the Qing accomplish?

• Multinational, universal empire
• Expansion of geographical scope of “China”
• Incorporation of non-Han peoples
• Small government: centrality of indigenous elites and groups in imperial governance

China, earliest civilization of East Asia,
Admiring America and chasing Europe
The old nation is under new construction.
The Five Colored Flag flutters high,
The glory of the Republic
shines over mountains and rivers.
My compatriots,
let us sing for civilization,
the universal peace shall forever be protected.