A History of China (68 page)

Conflict erupted with France, which sought control especially over Vietnam. Ironically, the Chinese had attempted to dominate Vietnam since the Han dynasty. They had attacked in the Tang and had actually annexed the country from 1406 to 1427, during the Ming dynasty. After the withdrawal of Ming forces, the Later Li dynasty (1428–1789) was founded, and then during the late Qing the Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945) governed the country. Yet Vietnam followed a Chinese model. Like the Chinese, the Vietnamese had set up a civil-service examination, the successful candidates of which staffed the bureaucracy. Buddhism, which had also spread to Vietnam from China, had been a vital spiritual force, which affected secular life as well. Yet centralized control proved elusive because of poor transport and communications, divisions between a more sophisticated north and a less well developed and poorer south, a tremendous disparity in income between the wealthy elite and much of the peasantry, and a variety of different ethnic groups who did not necessarily identify with the state, the dynasty, or each other. Such disunity plagued the Nguyen dynasty and facilitated the efforts of rapacious foreign states to dominate the country.

Napoleonic-era France had expansionist impulses not only in Western Europe and Russia but also in Southeast Asia. French merchants, advisers, and missionaries began to arrive in Vietnam in the early nineteenth century. The missionaries had greater success in Vietnam than in China, and Catholicism spread rapidly among the elite and commoners. Fearful about the growing number of conversions to Catholicism, the Nguyen dynasty cracked down on missionaries and Vietnamese converts. However, the government was ineffective against French incursions. By the mid 1870s, France had signed treaties that allowed it to dominate in South Vietnam and in modern Cambodia. Nationalists in North Vietnam pivoted against France, which responded by occupying both Hanoi and Haiphong in 1882. The Nguyen court appealed to the Qing for assistance. Li Hongzhang, the chief foreign-affairs statesman for the Qing, wanted to negotiate for a peace settlement, but the court opted for conflict with France. The Qing navy was no match for the French ships, which approached Fuzhou on China’s southeast coast and sank about a dozen Chinese vessels without losing a single one of their own. The Qing forces were able to defeat the French on land in southwest China. However, news of their victories did not reach the Qing court in Beijing until after a peace agreement had been concluded. Under this arrangement, the Qing relinquished its claim to Vietnam, which became part of the colony of French Indochina. Within a decade, the French added Cambodia and Laos to their growing domain in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, in 1885, the British established a protectorate over Burma. Siam proved to be the only Southeast Asian country to preserve its independence.

Japan was, from the Chinese perspective, the most surprising of the foreign countries to take advantage of the Qing’s decline. After Japan was opened up to foreign contact by US commodore Matthew Perry in 1854, different factions in the country debated its future course. In 1868, reformers took power and ousted the Tokugawa Shogun. The emperor moved from the ancient capital of Kyoto to Tokyo and ushered in the Meiji Restoration, named for the title of his reign. Claiming that they were merely restoring the emperor as head of state rather than initiating a revolution, the reformers skillfully and swiftly guided Japan toward modernization. They developed a modern army and navy to replace the samurai class; allegedly dispensed with the Confucian four-class structure of samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants; and emphasized a new form of nationalistic Shinto to legitimize their reforms. At the same time, they sent a mission, under the leadership of Iwakura Tomomi (1825–1883), to study and then select the best Western institutions upon which to model their own modernized structures. They examined the West’s militaries, social and economic organizations, technologies, legal codes, and educational systems and chose the optimal forms for Japan. About sixty students accompanied the mission, and some remained behind to study at Western educational institutions.

Within a short time, the centralized leadership of reformers had propelled Japan into an increasingly industrial economy. Its navy, in particular, had been enormously strengthened. China, which had barely begun to build modern ships and to train naval commanders in modern warfare, was at a decided disadvantage. When a crisis erupted in 1874–1875, this lack of a powerful navy forced China to accede to Japanese wishes. Japan claimed the Ryukyu Islands, which had sent tribute to China and was considered a Qing vassal state. The resulting dispute between China and Japan was resolved peacefully: with the threat of violence hanging over them, Qing diplomats agreed that Japan had special interests in the islands. This was Japan’s first victory, but the Japanese would later make even more demands on the Qing, leading ultimately to war.

The most devastating blow to the Qing came from Japan’s expansionist efforts. From the 1870s, the Meiji reformers had been eager for a base on the Asian mainland. Japan needed a reliable source of mineral and natural resources for an industrial economy and it lacked such supplies within the country itself. The Asian mainland, especially China, provided a huge potential market for Japanese finished goods, or so the Meiji reformers believed. Concerned also that Japanese population growth would soon outstrip the resources and land available in the four main Japanese islands, they sought nearby lands in which to settle the excess population. Manchuria satisfied all these requirements: it had valuable resources, it could form a base from which to approach and access the Chinese market, and it was a relatively underpopulated region as a result of Qing efforts to preserve the Manchus by closing the area to Chinese settlers from the seventeenth century on.

Korea was an intermediary step toward Manchuria. Yet nineteenth-century Korea had energetically attempted to exclude foreigners and had earned the epithet “Hermit Nation.” The long-lived Yi dynasty (1392–1910) had successfully kept most Westerners out of the country, but it failed to cope with domestic inequalities and the ensuing disturbances. Throughout the nineteenth century, considerable turbulence had been created by stiff taxes on peasants, the limited size of peasant holdings in comparison with huge landlord estates, and the fact that a large percentage of peasants did not own land but rather farmed the land of landowners. A reform movement in the 1860s sputtered to a halt; it neither altered the domestic issues nor opened the country to foreigners.

Japan was determined to change Korea’s attitude toward the world. Following its success in challenging China’s claim to the Ryukyu Islands, Japan almost immediately set about asserting itself in Korea. In 1876, it opened Korea’s doors by signing a treaty that initiated regular relations with the Hermit Nation and secured access to three ports for commerce. However, China still laid claim to Korea, despite Korea’s independent signing of a treaty. Meanwhile, Japan persisted in its missions to detach Korea from Chinese suzerainty and to make it a dependency. Violence and revolts in Korea facilitated Japanese efforts. In 1884, the Korean king and the rebels called for military assistance from both China and Japan. Each sent troops, and a confrontation seemed imminent. Li Hongzhang prevented a war by signing an agreement with the Japanese that appeared to pave the way for a long-lasting peace. Each side pledged to withdraw its forces and to notify the other if, at the Korean king’s request or by its own decision, it dispatched armies to Korea. This understanding seemed to create a mechanism for stability. The Qing then appointed a Chinese Resident to represent its interests in Korea and to confirm its fleeting special claims in the Korean court.

However, appearances were deceptive, partly because of domestic outbreaks in Korea. The Tonghak movement, based upon a murky blend of Buddhist and indigenous beliefs and practices, had developed by the middle of the nineteenth century and added adherents over the decades as it protested against domestic exploitation and corruption and the court’s acquiescence to foreign countries. Its invocation of political discontent caused the Korean government to ban the movement and provoked a rebellion, which gained traction due to parlous economic conditions. The Korean king sought assistance from China to crush the rebellion, and the Qing dispatched a force and informed Japan of its intention to do so. Unwilling to be left out, Japan itself sent troops, who turned out to be more effective than the Chinese forces. They reached the king’s palace and captured the king and queen, an action that demanded a response from the Qing. It could not stand idly by while its perhaps closest “vassal” was in such danger. Li Hongzhang ordered that additional troops be sent to Korea and mobilized China’s relatively few modern ships.

The conflict seemed to be a colossal mismatch. A struggle between China (traditionally one of the world’s great empires, with a sizable population and abundant resources) and a group of four islands (with a population a seventh or an eighth of that in the reputedly powerful state across the sea) appeared to be no contest. Most Chinese had perceived of the Japanese as students who modeled their culture and institutions on those of China. They considered Chinese civilization to be superior and Japanese civilization to be a pale imitation. However, a few Chinese recognized that Japan had made a tremendous surge forward with the onset of the Meiji Restoration. Turning to the Western model of industrialization, Japan had created a powerful military force with a strong esprit de corps while Qing armies had scarcely been bolstered and wallowed in corruption and poor morale.

The Sino–Japanese War and the resulting treaty did not turn out gloriously for China. Japanese troops readily overwhelmed the Chinese force in Seoul and then headed north into China. The Japanese navy virtually demolished the outmatched northern Chinese navy, compelling the Qing court to seek peace within a year of the onset of hostilities. The Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 turned out to be a cause of national humiliation for China. The Qing was forced to abandon any claims to control over Korea, which it subsequently recognized as an independent country. It had to pay an indemnity for Japanese losses during the short-lived war and to open additional ports for trade. Japan also gained control over Taiwan and the Pescadores. The treaty granted the Liaodong peninsula to Japan, but Russia (fearful that Japanese annexation might threaten its own interests in Manchuria) and Germany and France (concerned about Japan’s increasing power in east Asia) compelled the Japanese to abandon that provision. Finally, Japan elicited a most-favored-nation clause in the treaty, placing it on a par with the Western countries. Japan’s image in the world had been bolstered while China’s place had deteriorated.

In the fifty or so years since China’s defeat in the first Opium War, it had become a virtually powerless giant. China, which had been the dominant force in east Asia since the Han dynasty, had now been bypassed and seemed a spectator, not an active participant, in developments. Japan had inherited China’s status and, in doing so, had revealed ever more clearly the Qing’s weakness. Westerners now concluded that if Japan, a minor Asian land in their view, could decisively overwhelm China, then they would not face considerable opposition in staking greater claims to the East.

Such logic drove the so-called scramble for concessions. One after another, foreign powers sought both special economic privileges and political influence in various regions in China. Germany, which had been virtually excluded from the colonial expansion in Asia and Africa, now attempted to compensate by asserting itself in Shandong province. Under the agreement it negotiated with the Qing, Germany leased land in the province and received mining and railroad rights. A tangible German influence was seen in the establishment of breweries; Tsingtao, the most popular beer in overseas Chinese restaurants in modern times, was originally produced in the German concession. Russia and France obtained leases on harbors. The tsarist court, with its fixation on warm-water ports, received Port Arthur on the Liaodong peninsula, and France opted for Guangzhou Bay in the south, where its interests lay. The powers went even further, demanding that China not relinquish specific regions to any other countries. The Japanese, for example, claimed privileges in Fujian province right across the sea from Taiwan, which it had detached from China. Britain received a similar guarantee for the Yangzi River region, as did Russia for Manchuria and France for Chinese regions adjacent to Indochina.

This apparent dismemberment of the country worried some foreigners because they feared that their companies and businessmen would be excluded from the various concessions. The USA, which had not participated in the scramble for concessions, sought to play a role in east Asia, but the other powers seem to have locked it out. The US Secretary of State John Hay responded by sending two letters to the powers, which articulated what came to be known as the Open Door Policy. The letters emphasized the concept of free trade in the concession areas for all powers, not simply the dominant country, and affirmed support for the Qing dynasty and its continued rule over China. Economic self-interest in the USA dictated the creation of the Open Door Policy, not idealism or an attempt to protect China, as is often portrayed in US history textbooks. The USA wanted to maintain commerce, on favorable terms, with China, and the Open Door Policy, if implemented, would secure its position in this trade.

Defeat in the Sino–Japanese war and the ensuing scramble for concessions among the powers were devastating blows to Chinese prestige and self-image. Patriotic Chinese were shocked not only by the loss to Japan but also by the great powers’ continual encroachment on Chinese territory. China had been laid low by a country it traditionally perceived as imitative of Chinese culture and by Western barbarians. Some nationalists blamed the Manchus while others were appalled by the corruption and the deterioration of Confucianism. They bristled and expressed displeasure with Western influence, in the form of banks and companies in the port cities and in the activities of compradors (Chinese who acted as agents for the Western firms). They believed that a reaffirmation of the past and a return to Confucian principles and values were the only means of staving off the decline and disappearance of Chinese culture.