Sometimes a little history is useful- China/Tibet and Imperial Ambitions

[Orwellian_Ghost]

The Yuan Ming Yuan Garden

http://58.246.193.6:8880/tales/peking/ymy1.jpg

http://58.246.193.6:8880/tales/peking/ymy02.jpg
These photographs, taken in 1879, show the ruins of the Old Summer Palace, the Yuan Ming Yuan, destroyed by British and French troops in 1860.

The story of the Yuanmingyuan can be viewed as a infamous testament to foreign barbarism in China, and to the blindness of the Manchu court in its refusal to recognise the power of the foreigners knocking on the doors of China.

Since the 12th century succeeding rulers had developed a collection of classic buildings in the area, including some designed by Jesuit priests in pseudo-Grecian style. Then came the British and French troops in 1860 and razed the place to the ground, looting and destroying everything that it contained. It was an act of vandalism calculated to impress upon the Chinese empire two facts it was still trying to ignore -- the determination of the Western powers that China open its doors, and the helplessness of China to resist. Its destruction caused a great debate at the time, not least among the leaders of the foreign expeditionary force. The French writer Victor Hugo wrote an open letter deploring the action, calling it one of the great tragedies of history.

Yuanmingyuan was actually three separate parks: Yuanmingyuan (Park of Perfection and Brightness), Wanchunyuan (Park of Ten Thousand Springs) and Changchunyuan (Park of Everlasting Spring), centred around the lake, Fuhai (Sea of Happiness). Construction of the complex began in 1709 and took 150 years to complete. The Qing Dynasty assembled the best building materials and employed armies of skilled builders, who dug lakes, shaped hills, planted rare trees and flowers, constructing 40 scenic spots and 145 large buildings, some of which contained art treasures and valuable libraries. Most buildings were in the Chinese courtyard style, but some were Western. The various groups of buildings, connected by long corridors, walls and bridges, embodied the most refined techniques of Chinese art and architecture.

http://www.talesofoldchina.com/peking/btymy.htm

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. The Opium Wars

The Opium War, also called the Anglo-Chinese War, was the most humiliating defeat China ever suffered. In European history, it is perhaps the most sordid, base, and vicious event in European history, possibly, just possibly, overshadowed by the excesses of the Third Reich in the twentieth century.

By the 1830's, the English had become the major drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world; very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even touch the England of the early nineteenth century in sheer size of criminality. Growing opium in India, the East India Company shipped tons of opium into Canton which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea. This trade had produced, quite literally, a country filled with drug addicts, as opium parlors proliferated all throughout China in the early part of the nineteenth century. This trafficing, it should be stressed, was a criminal activity after 1836, but the British traders generously bribed Canton officials in order to keep the opium traffic flowing. The effects on Chinese society were devestating. In fact, there are few periods in Chinese history that approach the early nineteenth century in terms of pure human misery and tragedy. In an effort to stem the tragedy, the imperial government made opium illegal in 1836 and began to aggressively close down the opium dens.

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The English, despite Lin's eloquent letter, refused to back down from the opium trade. In response, Lin threatened to cut off all trade with England and expel all English from China. Thus began the Opium War.
The War

War broke out when Chinese junks attempted to turn back English merchant vessels in November of 1839; although this was a low-level conflict, it inspired the English to send warships in June of 1840. The Chinese, with old-style weapons and artillery, were no match for the British gunships, which ranged up and down the coast shooting at forts and fighting on land. The Chinese were equally unprepared for the technological superiority of the British land armies, and suffered continual defeats. Finally, in 1842, the Chinese were forced to agree to an ignomious peace under the Treaty of Nanking.

The treaty imposed on the Chinese was weighted entirely to the British side. Its first and fundamental demand was for British "extraterritoriality"; all British citizens would be subjected to British, not Chinese, law if they committed any crime on Chinese soil. The British would no longer have to pay tribute to the imperial administration in order to trade with China, and they gained five open ports for British trade: Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Ningpo, and Amoy. No restrictions were placed on British trade, and, as a consequence, opium trade more than doubled in the three decades following the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty also established England as the "most favored nation" trading with China; this clause granted to Britain any trading rights granted to other countries. Two years later, China, against its will, signed similar treaties with France and the United States.

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http://wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. The Taiping Rebellion

While the Chinese entered into conflict with Europe and European culture during the Opium War and after, it was also convulsed by a number of rebellions in mid-century. With rebellion in Nien (1853-1868), several Muslim rebellions in the southwest (1855-1873) and northwest (1862-1877), and, especially, the Taiping rebellion, the consequences for China during this period were devestating. In the Taiping rebellion alone, which lasted for twenty years, almost twenty to thirty million died as a direct result of the conflict. In fact, the period from 1850 to 1873 saw, as a result of rebellion, drought, and famine, the population of China drop by over sixty million people. Along with humiliating defeats at the hands of European powers, the mid-nineteenth century in China was truly tragic.

The Taiping rebellion, though, is, as an internal disturbance, and odd compliment to the conflicts with the west. It combined both European and Chinese cultural patterns in a unique and volatile mix. The person in which this strange mix fermented was Hung Hsiu-ch'üan (1813-1864), the leader of the rebellion.

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By 1864, the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace was coming to an end. Chinese forces had threatened T'ien-ching for months when Hung's central general fled to the south. Hung himself believed that God would defend the Taipings, but in June, 1864, he seems to have lost his certainty of God's protection and poisoned himself. The imperial forces discovered his body, wrapped in the color of the emperor, yellow, wallowing in a sewer beneath the city. At a cost of nearly thirty million lives over a period of twenty years, the Heavenly Peace had come to an end.

http://wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/TAIPING.HTM

[ancient_nomad]

3. Bookmarking to read later...

Am looking forward to reading this, and thank you for posting it. Proud to give the first KnR!

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. Thanks

I'll continue posting material in this thread for folks to use as a reference and hope others will add what they think to be important bits of history and/or comments that can be helpful in understanding the present.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. "Self Strengthening"

The crises of the mid-nineteenth century—the defeat by the British, humiliating treaties imposed on China by Western powers, the Taiping rebellion, the Muslim rebellions, and, most humliating of all, the foreign occupation of Beijing in 1860—all combined to push the Manchu regime to pursue a course of reform. With increased contact with the West brought about the opening of Chinese ports, the new program of reform brought a high level of optimism to the Chinese and the Manchus. This period, from the late 1870's to the 1890's, saw such a flurry of innovation that the Chinese were not averse to referring to these changes as the "revival" or "renewal" of the Ch'ing and China.

The reform that they pursued, which they called "Self Strengthening," had two main components. The first involved learning Western technology, industry, and even language, in order to meet the Western powers as equals. The second component, however, was deeply Chinese and Confucian in nature. Conservative scholars and officials believed that the success against the rebellions and the new revival was largely due to the traditions and institutions of imperial government. They believed that Chinese political institutions, dedicated ideologically to the welfare of the common person (min ) , was the strongest and most moral form of government in the world. When properly administered, such as moral government produced a unity of purpose throughout the nation. In contrast to this, the Western powers were characterized by conflict, aggression, selfishness, anarchy, and disunity. What the times called for was a reform of the moral character of officials. Self-strengthening meant a return to the Confucian ideal of the chün tzu , the "superior man," who excelled in jen , or humaness and all the virtues associated with it. The transformation they sought, then, was a radical transformation of the inward man in order to make him worthy of authority.

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Because of a weak imperial government under the Empress Dowager T'zu Hsi (1835-1908), who had concentrated power in her hands as a regent only by conceding authority to the eunuchs and regional governor-generals, power in the late nineteenth century was largely diffused to the regions. Under the rule of powerful Governor-Generals, such as Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang, Chang Chih-tung, and Tso Tsung-t'ang, the various regional governments began to rebuild themselves after the devestations of the mid-century. They rebuilt infrastructure, reforested, built refugee centers, and dispersed food. As a result of these efforts, most regions in China had recovered by the mid-1890's.

These regional Governors-General were the primary practitioners of self-strengthening. Because they were primarily responsible for the defense of the country with their personal armies, they were the ones that principally adopted Western technologies and practices. Beginning in the 1860's, they began to build arseanals all throughout China and in the 1870's, they began to build commercial industries. The Kaiping Coal Mine was established in 1876 and, the same year, the first telegraph company was established in China. Soon there followed a railroad and cotton factories. These nascent industries were administered by a principle called "government supervision with merchant operation." Major decisions were handled by officials, but the day to day running of the companies was in the hands of merchants.

http://wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/SELF.HTM

[Orwellian_Ghost]

6. The Boxer Rebellion

Carving up the Melon

When China was defeated by Japan in 1895, European powers responded with a policy they called, "carving up the Chinese melon." Following the partitioning of Africa among European powers, they turned their sights to what they saw as a terminally weak Chinese government. European powers and America began to scramble for what was called "spheres of interest." These spheres of interest involved holding leases for all railway and commercial privileges in various regions. The Russians got Port Arthur, the British got the New Territories around Hong Kong, the Germans got a leasehold in Shantung, and the Americans got nothing. Concentrating largely on the Philipines and Guam, the Americans had missed the Chinese boat and so insisted on an "open door" policy in China in which commercial opportunities were equally available to all European powers and the political and territorial integrity of China remained untouched.
The Boxers

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In reality, the Boxer rebellion could hardly be classified as either a rebellion or a war against the Europeans. China was largely under the control of regional Governors General; these regional officials ignored the Empress Dowager's instructions and put forth every effort to prevent disorder or any harm coming to foreigners. The Boxer Rebellion, then, was only limited to a few places, but concentrated itself in Beijing. The Western response was swift and severe. Within a couple months, an international force captured and occupied Beijing and forced the imperial government to agree to the most humiliating terms yet: the Boxer Protocol of 1901. Under the Boxer Protocol, European powers got the right to maintain military forces in the capital, thus placing the imperial government more or less under arrest. The Protocols suspended the civil service examination, demanded a huge indemnity to be paid to European powers for the losses they had suffered, and required government officials to be prosecuted for their role in the rebellion. In addition, the Protocols suspended all arms imports into the country.
Reform

The humiliation of the Boxer Protocols set China on new course of reform that dynamically put into place all of the reforms originally proposed by K'ang Yu-wei. In 1901, the education system was reformed to allow the admission of girls and the curriculum was changed from the study of the Classics and Confucian studies to the study of Western mathematics, science, engineering, and geography. The civil service examination was changed to reflect this new curriculum, and in 1905 it was abandoned altogether. The Chinese began to send its youth to Europe and to Japan to study the new sciences, such as economics, and radical new Western modes of thinking started making their way into China, such as Marxism. The military was reorganized under Yuan Shih-k'ai (1859-1916), who adopted Western and Japanese models of military organization and discipline. Key to this new military was the establishment of the military as a career; a new professional officer corps was created built on a new principle: loyalty to one's commander rather than loyalty to the Emperor.

The provincial assemblies that had originally been proposed by K'ang Yu-wei were established in 1909, the year in which the last emperor, Pu Yi, the Hsüan-tung emperor, ascended the throne. A national, democratically elected Consultative Assembly was established in 1910. Although the Assembly was meant to support the imperial court, in reality it was frequently odds with the interests of the imperial government. This is where things stood in 1911 when an uprising began in Szechwan province in the west. Angered at a government plan to nationalize the railways, the uprising soon grew into a national revolution that would end once and for all imperial rule in China. That, however, is a story for another day.

http://wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/BOXER.HTM