by John Rendace

Created on: October 01, 2009

Belligerence from outside forces had altered both China's views towards, and actions with, the outside world. Gone was the day that China was permitted to simply seal itself from the world, laboring under the apprehension that the rest of the world was made up of inferior peoples. Instead, expansionary forces had lead the Chinese nation into greater contact with, and eventually inequality with, the outside world.

In Modern China, Edward E. Moise states the idea that both Chinese and Manchu populations held was that China was the only true culture. The rest of the world was made up of barbarous peoples who were unable to match the Chinese abilities and practices. Therefore, the only contact necessary with them was to grant foreign populations a period of time in which to apologetically offer tribute to the Imperial Throne (29).

Modern China also states that the Jesuit scholars had gained some level of acceptance within this closed off society when they adopted Chinese methods of living. Their influence declined, however, as they ended this Chinese lifestyle. The system imposed on outsiders, there in, was considered to be brutal and by the early nineteenth century, European societies wished to change this. Foremost among these societies was the United Kingdom, which sought to increase its lot in international trade. Instead of going through the structure of Chinese merchants, British officials removed the East India Company's monopolistic practices and replaced their representatives with direct representatives of the British government. These representatives were not so willing to accept the Chinese practices (Moise 29).

Therefore, the slow steps towards greater Western interaction had lead to an overall weakening of China's external power. The nation was thrown head first into international affairs that it was not yet ready to cope with. Furthermore, there was a growing social problem involving opium and the conflict it would spawn.

R. Keith Schoppa discusses the Opium Wars in his volume Revolution and Its Past. Chinese traders were initially reluctant to purchase Western goods, based on the idea that Western trades had no real cargo that the Chinese wished to procure. However, that changed with opium. Though the Chinese government took great steps to restrict recreational opium use, use only increased over time (52-53).

Revolution and Its Past further mentions the fact that the Chinese, under an official named Lin Zexu, was able to arrest a number of Chinese citizens and confiscate drug paraphernalia. However, these actions greatly angered the British who had been the primary importers of the drug. As China entered into a military conflict, it was forcibly opened up to the rest of the world. Here it began to enter into a sort of so called unequal treaty system. These treaties, such as the Treaty of Nanjing that granted Hong Kong to the United Kingdom and opened up Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai to foreign settlement and trade, were dictated and weakened the overall Chinese power to an even further level (Schoppa 50-54).

Throughout the centuries, China's resistance to foreign intrusion was forcibly chipped away by Western imperialism. The nation was placed into a system of unequal treaties and suffered from intense social problems. Therefore, foreign aggressors were no longer treating the nation equally.



Moise, Edwin E. Modern China, a history. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman,
2008.

Schoppa, R. Keith. Revolution and Its Past Indentities and Change in Modern Chinese History (2nd Edition). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2005.

Learn more about this author, John Rendace.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.