6.3: China and Japan

The Opium Wars

By the mid-1700s, the British East India Company (EIC) dominated the administration of India but was facing an imbalance of trade with Qing China. British demand for Chinese tea, porcelain, and silk was greater than the Chinese demand for British goods. In addition, the only payment Qing officials would accept in exchange for their goods was silver. Since British merchants could not collect enough silver to pay for the trade goods they wanted, the EIC found a way to reverse the trade imbalance: smuggling opium into China.

After they took control of Calcutta, India in 1756, the EIC expanded the production of opium in India and began smuggling it into China. Although the Qing had outlawed opium imports in 1729, the EIC’s smuggling activities led more than 1% of China’s 400 million people to become addicted to it. China shifted from being a magnet for silver with a huge trade surplus to a net importer whose treasuries were rapidly dwindling. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an annual average of 4,500 trunks of opium were transported by the EIC and smuggled into China. By 1839, over 40,000 133-pound trunks of opium were smuggled into China. Some Chinese officials wanted to legalize opium so the empire could tax it, but Confucian moralists won the policy debate and opium continued to be illegal in China. A handful of U.S. business entities also smuggled opium into China. 

In 1839, the emperor sent one of China’s most distinguished officials, Lin Zexu, to the trading settlement of Canton to stamp out the opium trade. Lin blockaded the European trading district, raided and searched the foreigners’ warehouses, confiscated 20,000 chests containing 1200 tons of opium, and dumped it into the ocean. The EIC complained about its losses in London, and Queen Victoria sent a naval fleet including four steam-powered battleships. Lightly-armored Chinese war junks, designed to fight river pirates, were severely outgunned. The limited range of Qing cannon compared to British artillery allowed the invaders to pummel Chinese defenses from a safe distance. This conflict is the first of two Opium Wars. Figure 6.3.1 shows the East India Company steam ship Nemesis, along with a couple of rowing boats on the side, destroying the Chinese war junks in Anson's Bay, on 7 January 1841. There is an explosion in the background. Many people can be seen in the water and clinging on to debris throughout the scene. 

The 1842 Treaty of Nanking, called the “Unequal Treaty” by the Chinese, forced the Chinese to accept the opium trade operated by British merchants. According to this treaty, the Qing government also had to open five Chinese ports to European traders, gave the British the island of Hong Kong, and required China to establish diplomatic relations with Britain as an equal power. The Chinese could no longer treat foreigners as barbarians unworthy of official notice. The Chinese were also made to pay Britain for the opium Lin had destroyed. The U.S. counterpart to the Treaty of Nanking was the Treaty of Wangxia, the first treaty signed between the U.S. and China in 1844.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): British EIC Destruction of Chinese war junks, painted by Edward Duncan, in the Public Domain.

China was defeated by the British again in the Second Opium War (1857-59) that resulted in another unequal treaty. The Chinese had to open even more ports for international trade, accept foreign merchants and missionaries traveling anywhere in China, and to set a low import tariff on imported goods, giving foreign merchants an upper hand in their trade transactions.

By the end of the nineteenth century, over 90 ports of call were available to more than 300,000 European and American traders, diplomats, and missionaries. The weakness of the Qing empire against foreign aggression was exacerbated by the ongoing opium crisis and by crumbling infrastructure and famine in the countryside. Magistrates and officials addicted to opium were ineffective and often diverted money that should have been spent maintaining dams and irrigation canals to their own uses.

By 1900, several countries began to carve up Chinese territory into “spheres of influence” where they conducted further trade, resource extraction, and in some cases, Christian missionary activity. These countries included Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan. Chinese frustration and anger over the loss of control in their own country led to events such as 1850-1864 Taiping Rebellion.

The leader of the Taiping rebellion was a man named Hong Xiuquan who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus. Hong preached that he was on a mission from God to save the poor and suffering populations of China. He gained followers by teaching equality among men and women and the elimination of private property. Historians believe that up to 30 million people may have died as Hong's armies conquered 17 provinces over a 14 year period. Hong's armies killed those who opposed his movement. Others died from disease and starvation due to the destruction caused by Hong's military offensives. Chinese cultural traditions such as pottery with its imperial kilns were also dealt a severe blow from which they did not recover, during and after the Taiping Rebellion. 

Conflict Between China and Japan

By the 1890s, China also faced the rapidly industrializing Japanese Empire. Since the 1870s, Japan embarked on a policy of industrialization and territorial expansion in order to keep up with the United States and Europe. In less than thirty years, the Japanese reconstructed their government, initiated their own industrial revolution, and modernized their military based on U.S. and European models. They hired military, scientific, and diplomatic advisers from the U.S., France, Germany, and the Netherlands. They adopted western cultural practices, from using pencils and constructing railroads, to abandoning samurai culture for western style military suits. The samurai warriors cut their hair which had traditionally been tied into a topknot.  

Despite these dramatic changes, Japan suffered a lack of natural resources needed for industrialization, namely, coal, iron ore, and oil. To acquire both resources and markets, the Japanese government followed the example of European colonial regimes. They claimed territory in China and with assistance from the British, and were victorious in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War. With this humiliating defeat, the Qing Chinese rulers were forced to grant control of the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan to Japan, and Japanese trading rights in Korea and Manchuria.

Toward the End of the Qing Dynasty

Facing economic decline since the Opium Wars, social disintegration continued with increased opium addiction. Continued Qing political and military weakness made China further subject to colonial domination. In this context, the Boxer Rebellion broke out among its people. The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-colonial, anti-Christian revolt led by martial artists who called themselves the Righteous Fists, or “Boxers” by Westerners.  The Boxers believed they were impervious to foreign weapons and marched into Beijing intending to help the imperial government exterminate the foreigners.

An eight-nation alliance, which included European nations, the U.S., and Japan, sent 19,000 troops to fight the Boxers. The foreign soldiers freed the legations besieged in the capital, but they also looted Beijing and the surrounding countryside and summarily executed anyone suspected of being a Boxer. With the suppression of the rebellion by foreign troops, the Qing government agreed to pay an indemnity of 450 million taels of silver to the allies (worth about $10 billion today). ​

The abject state of the Qing dynasty and the increasing regional power of Japan set the scene for China to become a battlefield for territorial conflicts between Russia, Japan, and the United States. The United States acquired the Philippine Islands from Spain after the 1898 war, and immediately began projecting its own political and commercial power into East Asia. Coming late to the imperial game in China, the United States sought to limit the existing  “spheres of influence” and prevent new ones from being imposed by either Russia or Japan. U.S. diplomats advocated for an “Open Door Policy” in China, in which the Qing Empire would not limit any commercial activity by outside powers.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): 1911 Portrait of Sun Yat-Sen, National Museum of China, in the Public Domain.

The most inspirational leader of the modernizers was Sun Yat-sen. Born in 1866, he moved to the then independent Kingdom of Hawaii, where an older brother owned a farm. While in Hawaii, Sun Yat-Sen completed his secondary education at a U.S. missionary school and then studied medicine in Hong Kong. Soon after, Sun Yat-Sen began promoting the end of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a Chinese republic. Because of his opposition to the Qing, Sun lived in exile in Hawaii, Japan, Malaysia, Canada, and Europe, where he formed the alliance which would end the Qing regime in the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. Figure 6.3.2 is a black and white photo of Sun Yat-sen in a western suit and tie, taken in December 1911 after he returned to China from overseas. Sun Yat-sen was the first leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and the first provisional president of the Republic of China. In Taiwan, he is referred to as the "Father of the Nation."

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Crowd facing armed soldiers in Moscow, 1905, in the Public Domain

Japan versus Russia

In 1900, Russia occupied Manchuria and came into conflict with Japanese interests on the Korean peninsula. This led to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. After the Japanese Navy sank the main battleships of Russia’s Pacific fleet in the 1904 Battle of Port Arthur and held off the Russian army, the world realized the power of an organized and industrialized Japan. The Europeans and Americans had to consider the Japanese as equals, while colonized peoples realized that the Europeans were not invincible.

Russia's defeat by the Japanese highlighted the ineffectiveness of the Tsarist regime. By this time, workers who had been living in the cities wanted the Tsar to help to improve their working conditions and wages. At the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in January 1905, a priest, George Gapon, presented a petition signed by 135,000 workers asking for these changes. Rather than show concern for the workers' concerns, the Tsar’s palace guards fired upon the peaceful crowd. This “Bloody Sunday” increased demands for reform, including widespread support for a parliamentary monarch. Figure 6.3.3 is a black and white image that shows armed imperial soldiers facing Father Gapon and unarmed petitioners standing in the snow outside the Tsar's palace in St. Petersburg.

In an attempt to appeal to the Russian people, the Tsar sent most of the Russian Baltic Fleet to retake Port Arthur from the Japanese. However, two thirds of the Russian ships were sunk by the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. Later that year in October 1905, Tsar Nicolas II acquiesced to the formation of an elected parliament and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. However, he soon reneged on granting full oversight powers to this new legislature, preferring to retain his traditional role as an absolute monarch.

Tsar Nicholas II also agreed to end the unpopular war with Imperial Japan. Peace between the Russians and Japanese was negotiated in Portsmouth, Maine, in the United States, highlighting the increased importance of the U.S. in world affairs. Figure 6.3.4 shows the Russian and Japanese delegates, dressed in suits, at a reception for the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth negotiations. The treaty was mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt and signed in New Hampshire. For his role in helping to end the war, President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. Japan took over Russia’s “sphere of influence” on China’s Liaotung Peninsula and was recognized as the sole power in Korea, which became part of the Japanese Empire in 1910. This event was part of the movement toward Japanese imperialism. Like other colonial regimes, Japan was seeking overseas markets, territorial expansion, and international stature.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Delegates reception - Negotiations for the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, Photograph by W.G.C. Kimball, in the Public Domain.

By the time the peace treaty was signed between Russia and Japan in 1905, the Qing empire was devolving into a series of warlord-controlled regions. The Empress Dowager, Cixi, who had wielded effective power for nearly five decades died in 1908. She was replaced by the five-year-old Prince Puyi as Emperor. It was not long before modernizing forces within China soon overthrew the imperial system. This monumental shift in Chinese politics is memorialized in the 1987 movie, “The Last Emperor.”

Primary Source: 1839-Letter from Qing Dynasty Commissioner Lin to the British Queen Victoria

Looking over the public documents accompanying the tribute sent (by your predecessors) on various occasions, we find the following: “All the people of my country, arriving at the Central Land for purposes of trade, have to feel grateful to the great emperor for the most perfect justice, for the kindest treatment,” and other words to that effect. Delighted did we feel that the kings of your honorable nation so clearly understood the great principles of propriety, and were so deeply grateful for the heavenly goodness (of our emperor):—therefore, it was that we of the heavenly dynasty nourished and cherished your people from afar, and bestowed upon them redoubled proofs of our urbanity and kindness. It is merely from these circumstances, that your country— deriving immense advantage from its commercial intercourse with us, which has endured now two hundred years—has become the rich and flourishing kingdom that it is said to be!

But, during the commercial intercourse which has existed so long, among the numerous foreign merchants resorting hither, are wheat and tares, good and bad; and of these latter are some, who, by means of introducing opium by stealth, have seduced our Chinese people, and caused every province of the land to overflow with that poison. These then know merely to advantage themselves, they care not about injuring others! This is a principle which heaven’s Providence repugnates; and which mankind conjointly look upon with abhorrence! Moreover, the great emperor hearing of it, actually quivered with indignation, and especially dispatched me, the commissioner, to Canton, that in conjunction with the viceroy and lieut.-governor of the province, means might be taken for its suppression!

Every native of the Inner Land who sells opium, as also all who smoke it, are alike adjudged to death. Were we then to go back and take up the crimes of the foreigners, who, by selling it for many years have induced dreadful calamity and robbed us of enormous wealth, and punish them with equal severity, our laws could not but award to them absolute annihilation! But, considering that these said foreigners did yet repent of their crime, and with a sincere heart beg for mercy; that they took 20,283 chests of opium piled up in their store-ships, and through Elliot, the superintendent of the trade of your said country, petitioned that they might be delivered up to us, when the same were all utterly destroyed, of which we, the imperial commissioner and colleagues, made a duly prepared memorial to his majesty;—considering these circumstances, we have happily received a fresh proof of the extraordinary goodness of the great emperor, inasmuch as he who voluntarily comes forward, may yet be deemed a fit subject for mercy, and his crimes be graciously remitted him. But as for him who again knowingly violates the laws, difficult indeed will it be thus to go on repeatedly pardoning! He or they shall alike be doomed to the penalties of the new statute. We presume that you, the sovereign of your honorable nation, on pouring out your heart before the altar of eternal justice, cannot but command all foreigners with the deepest respect to reverence our laws! If we only lay clearly before your eyes, what is profitable and what is destructive, you will then know that the statutes of the heavenly dynasty cannot but be obeyed with fear and trembling.

Your honorable nation takes away the products of our central land, and not only do you thereby obtain food and support for yourselves, but moreover, by re-selling these products to other countries you reap a threefold profit. Now if you would only not sell opium, this threefold profit would be secured to you: how can you possibly consent to forgo it for a drug that is hurtful to men, and an unbridled craving after gain that seems to know no bounds! Let us suppose that foreigners came from another country, and brought opium into England, and seduced the people of your country to smoke it, would not you, the sovereign of the said country, look upon such a procedure with anger, and in your just indignation endeavor to get rid of it? Now we have always heard that your highness possesses a most kind and benevolent heart, surely then you are incapable of doing or causing to be done unto another, that which you should not wish another to do unto you.

Our celestial empire rules over ten thousand kingdoms! Most surely do we possess a measure of godlike majesty which ye cannot fathom! Still we cannot bear to slay or exterminate without previous warning, and it is for this reason that we now clearly make known to you the fixed laws of our land. If the foreign merchants of your said honorable nation desire to continue their commercial intercourse, they then must tremblingly obey our recorded statutes, they must cut off for ever the source from which the opium flows, and on no account make an experiment of our laws in their own persons! Let then your highness punish those of your subjects who may be criminal, do not endeavor to screen or conceal them, and thus you will secure peace and quietness to your possessions, thus will you more than ever display a proper sense of respect and obedience, and thus may we unitedly enjoy the common blessings of peace and happiness. What greater joy! What more complete felicity than this!

Let your highness immediately, upon the receipt of this communication, inform us promptly of the state of matters, and of the measure you are pursuing utterly to put a stop to the opium evil. Please let your reply be speedy. Do not on any account make excuses or procrastinate.

Source: Digital China / Harvard

Review Questions

• In what ways do you think the Opium Wars are remembered in China today? 
• What kind of changes did Japan undergo as it pursued its industrial revolution?