Introduction
The Industrial Revolution caused Europeans to seek out raw materials and new markets
As China entered into the Qing Dynasty, the last of its long dynastic line, it became increasingly challenged by a desire to reaffirm traditional Confucian values while at the same time facing the pressures of a rapidly changing world. As the Manchus conquerors consolidated their minority rule over the country, they reaffirmed Chinese Confucian tradition in order to gain acceptance from the wider Han population. This desire to reassert traditional values was consistent with the desires of the Han Chinese themselves. Many Han Chinese believed that a lapse in Confucian values had been a key cause of the large-scale peasant revolt at the end of the Ming, and the reason why the Han Chinese once again lost the Mandate of Heaven to foreign barbarian invaders. Yet, as China tried fervently to recement historical traditions idealizing a harmonious, everlasting agrarian, hierarchical, patriarchal society, the world around them was quickly changing.
Driving this change was the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The Industrial Revolution caused European powers to become more assertive in their quest for increased international trade. From China, these powers desired porcelain, lacquer ware, silk and tea. While China was willing to engage in limited one-way trade, there was nothing from Europe that China wanted. Eventually, Europeans became impatient with the Qing’s imposed trade restrictions and with their growing trade deficit with China. Taking advantage of their military and technological superiority, the West increasingly forced China to engage in international trade on its terms, much to the significant harm of the country. This Western pressure, along with the challenges of managing significant population growth between the 1700s and the 1900s, eventually brought down the Qing Dynasty and ended dynastic history in China.
The first two Qing Emperors – Kangxi and Yongzheng
The Manchus, Chinese Traditions to rule the Chinese People, Tibet and Contact with Western Barbarians
17th Century painting of Manchu people hunting
Unlike other tribes living outside the Great Wall, the Manchus were not nomadic people. This meant that the Manchus had well-established military and administrative machinery that they could efficiently deploy throughout the country. Where the Chinese people capitulated peacefully to Manchu power, Chinese life and culture continued in peace and prosperity. Where the Chinese resisted Manchu rule, their populations were looted, raped and killed. After years of rebel peasant riots, many scholar-officials welcomed the stability of the Manchus. The one act of subservience required of the Chinese by the Manchus was to adopt the ‘queue’, the Manchu hairstyle in which the front part of the male head was shaved and the remaining hair was worn in a long braid in the back. While a seemingly insignificant gesture, the required shaved head and long braid was a constant reminder of Han subjugation to the Manchus. It took until 1681 before the last remnants of Ming loyalist resistance to Manchu rule were eradicated.
Qing-era silk production image shows workers with Manchu queue hair style
The Kangxi Emperor of the Manchus took control of the government in 1669 and held the throne for 60 years. He was considered to be one of the most effective emperors to ever rule China. As the Manchus made up less than 2% of China’s entire population, the trick for Kangxi was to consolidate his rule in a way that won the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. To this effect, Kangxi recruited committed Chinese officials to the bureaucracy and continued the traditional examination system. Hard-working, and a good judge of character, Kangxi valued and rewarded honesty. Chinese officials who refused to serve the Qing were honored as long as they did not engage in active resistance to his rule. In order to show his respect for Chinese culture, he commissioned the history of the Ming Dynasty, giving those reluctant to serve the Qing directly a way of being involved at court. Similarly, he patronized Chinese art, philosophy and poetry, and commissioned everything from the Kangxi Dictionary of Chinese to the Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty. He also instigated effective tax reform in 1712, replenishing the state treasury and creating a more egalitarian tax system.
Kangxi was a conqueror and an effective military leader. As such he successfully extended the Chinese empire northward and westward, creating borders with Korea and Russia which remain largely in place today. He occupied Tibet and led successful campaigns against the Mongols in Central Asia. Armed with cannons and other modern weapons, Kangxi was able to dominate the steppe nomads who were still armed with only bows and arrows. This military technological advantage effectively ended the millennia of military challenges by the northern barbarians, as the nomads were never again able to gain military superiority.
Painting of the Kangxi Emperor
As a ruler of a now multi-ethnic empire, Kangxi favored Tibetan Buddhism at home, while forming marriage alliances with Mongol princes and ensuring that his court demonstrated moral leadership in terms of Confucian values. Thus, through his political skill, sensitivity to his empire’s diverse cultures and his genuine dedication to Confucian values, Kangxi was able to transform Han resentment of the Manchus into acceptance and loyalty. Areas such as Tibet and the largely Muslim areas of central Asia were ruled lightly. The local population was permitted to maintain their own religious leaders, to keep their own dietary rules and to not wear the queue.
The Kangxi Emperor was also open to Western learning brought by the Christian Jesuits, who were welcomed at the Qing court. In particular, he was intrigued by their theories of astronomy, calendar calculations, mathematics, geography and military technology. Initially, Kangxi had a relaxed attitude toward Christianity and permitted churches to be built in the capital and provinces. The Jesuits were successful in converting many Chinese to Christianity by drawing parallels between Chinese and Christian traditions. However, when Pope Clement I ruled that Chinese folk religion and Confucian rites conflicted with Christian teaching, Kangxi banned Christian missions in China, although he kept the Jesuits at court, largely in secular functions.
St. Sophia Church, Qingdao China
Kangxi was succeeded by Yongzheng in 1736, followed by his son Qianlong. During the 13 years of his reign, Yongzheng undertook a comprehensive reform of the state tax system, enabling Qing fiscal policy to deliver a reliable revenue stream at the local and national levels. The historical system concentrated entirely on providing adequate funds for the central state. The administration of regional government expenses were left entirely up to regional officials which often created much opportunity for corruption. The new system gave local officials an understanding of the funds available to them so that they did not have to personally extract revenue from their populace in order to maintain roads or to carry out granary construction. Additionally, Yongzheng ruthlessly tried to rid his empire of widespread government corruption. Without Yongzheng’s tax reforms and his improvements to the bureaucracy, the prosperity of Qianlong’s reign would not have been possible.
Emperor Qianlong
Painting of Emperor Qianlong riding
Qianlong was emperor for 60 years. He abdicated one year short of his grandfather’s record 61-year reign in a gesture of filial piety, although he continued to retain significant power until his death four years later. Qianlong effectively creating the borders of today’s China by consolidating Qing rule in Tibet, and extending Qing control further west into Mongol regions of Chinese Turkestan – today’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Like his grandfather before him, Qianlong presented different images to the varied ethnic groups within his empire. To the Tibetans, for example, he established himself as the reincarnation of Manjusri, one of the most important bodhisattvas of Tibetan Buddhism. To the Han Chinese, he was a scholar and patron of Chinese learning and art. For instance, Qianlong worked hard to preserve Chinese cultural heritage by creating an enormous art collection of jade, ancient bronzes, seals, paintings, calligraphy and ceramics. Additionally, two of China’s greatest novels were written during the 1700s: Unofficial History of the Scholars and The Dream of the Red Chamber.
More importantly, Qianlong commissioned the Complete Works of the Four Treasures. The anthology was to contain a copy of every significant work ever published in Chinese. Begun in 1772, the Four Treasures took 20 years to finish, and is considered one of the largest single publishing projects in Chinese history. The anthology covered the major categories of traditional Chinese knowledge: classics, history, philosophy, and literature. A total of 13,254 books were collected throughout the empire, and thousands of scholars were engaged in the endeavor. Over four million pages were recorded by thousands of copyists. Even to this day, the Four Treasures remains a valuable resource for academics. Just as importantly, from the Manchu perspective, the Four Treasures enabled the Emperor to carry out a countrywide campaign of censorship that lasted from 1772-1788. All books gathered were examined. Any that held sensitive or offensive anti-Manchu sentiments were delivered to the court. Even books chosen for inclusion in the Four Treasures went through censorship, sometimes having parts rewritten or passages deleted. Problematic scholar-officials could be charged with sedition or other crimes by using, as proof, poems or articles selected from the body of work they had provided to the Emperor from their own libraries.
More Assertive Foreign Powers
China was largely ignorant of European expansion and the accompanying slave trade throughout the 15th to 18th centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century, however, China began to increasingly feel the European presence. Specifically, as British demand for tea, silk and porcelain continued to grow, the British became ever more insistent on expanded trade relations with the Chinese.
Macao during Qing Dynasty
The Portuguese were the first to establish a permanent trading post with China in 1557 in Macao. In 1684, Kangxi allowed four cities, including Canton (Guangzhou), to do business with foreign traders. By 1757, the emperor had scaled those four cities back to just Canton. Additionally, he limited trading to the winter months. He also insisted European traders reside in special quarters along the banks of the Pearl River outside Canton’s city walls. These quarters were known as the thirteen factories, with factory being used to mean a trading house. The thirteen factories remained the principal center for Western trade until the First Opium War in 1839.
Europeans, especially the British, developed a taste for tea. As tea imports rose, the British became frustrated with Sino-British trade for two reasons. Firstly, the British began running a significant trade deficit with China. Secondly, the East India Company increasingly balked at the trade limitations imposed by the Canton system. The East India Company thus petitioned the British government to send a diplomatic mission to China to negotiate better terms of trade. This mission was dispatched in 1793 and led by Lord Macartney. From the British perspective, this mission was unsuccessful. All British requests were refused by the Chinese including greater access to Chinese markets and the deployment of a British ambassador to Peking. Distracted by revolution in continental Europe, Britain did not respond to China’s rebuff until the French threat had been resolved.
Caricature of Lord McCartney before the Chinese emperor
The Chinese had no desire to engage in active international trade. Furthermore, at the end of the 18th century, China still believed itself to be the world’s dominant power. With the exception of the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which determined the border between the Russian and Chinese empires, China had never engaged in equal diplomatic relations with any foreign country and saw no need to begin with Britain.
To some extent, the poor results of the diplomatic effort were also caused by cultural misunderstanding. Lord Macartney refused to kowtow to the Emperor as was the tributary’s custom, upsetting court protocol. Additionally, the carefully chosen presents by the British that were to be given to the Emperor on the occasion of his birthday were dismissed as worthless despite representing the latest in European scientific achievements and craftsmanship. While it is purported that the Emperor secretly treasured the gifts, court officials regarded them as worthless baubles. Moreover, tributary states were to present the Emperor with token gifts. In turn, the Emperor was to present the tributary states with more valuable presents.
Evidence of Dynastic Decline by the End of the 1700s
By the end of the 18th century, signs of dynastic decline were evident. A surge in population put enormous pressure on food production. China became increasingly dependent on sweet potato and maize crops that could grow on drier, less fertile soil. Multiple harvesting, particularly in the rice-growing south, became more commonplace. Yet more effective use of land and new crops alone were not sufficient enough to cope with the rising population. The government thus supported a policy of internal migration, shifting people from densely inhabited lands to remote areas such as Xinjiang.
Han migration into Xinjiang led to deforestation and increased desertification
Having Han Chinese peasants emigrate to basically non-agricultural land such as Xinjiang altered the nature of the local economy and the local way of life. Deforestation and over-cultivation of grasslands for agriculture significantly damaged the already fragile environment, increased the process of the desertification in Northwest China and deepened the problem of water scarcity. Han relocation also had serious political and social consequences, as local populations were forced to compete with Han Chinese for land and other resources.
Compounding the complications of the surging population was a tax harvest that did not keep pace with the increase in the number of Chinese people. Aggravating the insufficient tax harvest was a spectacular case of embezzlement. One of Qianlong’s favorite bodyguards, Heshen, embezzled millions of ounces of silver from the treasury. Heshen was arrested the day after Qianlong died. His stolen wealth was said to have equaled half the value of the entire treasury. This theft and the inadequate tax collection, combined with continuous military expeditions, financially crippled the Dynasty by the beginning of the 19th century. Additionally, by the end of the 1700s, China was again plagued by peasant revolt under the same White Lotus banner that had harassed the Mings.
The Qing in the 19th Century – the First Opium War
Opium den during the Qing Dynasty
As soon as the British had overcome the Napoleonic threat, it once again turned its attention to its growing trade deficit with China caused by its large imports of tea, silk, porcelain and lacquer ware. The East India Company petitioned King George III to dispatch a second delegation to China to negotiate improved trade terms, but China again resisted British exigencies. Britain’s solution to this impasse was to export to China opium grown on its plantations in India. When smoked, opium proved highly addictive, relieving boredom along with physical and mental pain. By the mid-1820s, the success of the British strategy was apparent as its trade deficit turned to surplus. By the 1830s, approximately nine million taels (a tael equals 38 grams) of silver were flowing out of China annually and it was importing up to 13,000 chests of opium, enough to sustain the addiction of about 2 million Chinese. The British skirted Chinese laws forbidding opium trade by exporting the drug into China through smuggling networks.
In 1839, the trade commissioner Lin Zexu determined to suppress the opium trade. Lin arrested 350 Western traders and confined them into their warehouses until all their opium inventory was given to his officials. Ultimately, Lin destroyed more than 20,000 chests. The British retaliated by sending an armada of warships to fight the Chinese. Outclassed by Western military technology, the Chinese were soundly defeated.
The Unequal Treaties and Extraterritoriality
Having no choice but to surrender, the Chinese signed the Treaty of Nanjing which forced China to pay an accumulated $21 million dollars of war reparations, to cede control of the island of Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity, to open four new coastal cities to British trade, and to treat Britain as an equal country in diplomatic negotiations. In a supplementary treaty, China was made to fix its tariff rates on its trade with Western countries at 5%, to exclude Westerners from prosecution under Chinese law under (what was to be termed extraterritoriality), and to allow Britain to also have any new privilege gained from China by other foreign powers under a Most Favored Nation clause. The opium trade continued unhindered.
The Signing of the Treaty of Nanjing
In Chinese eyes, Britain’s actions were a case of the morally repugnant imposing its will on those in China trying to do the right thing. This moral dimension to the war made it more politically and psychologically difficult for the Chinese to adopt any aspects of Western civilization, even when it became increasingly obvious that without western technology, China would never regain control of its country.
Second Opium War or the Arrow War
Between 1858 and 1860, a Second Opium War broke out when Chinese officials boarded the Hong Kong-registered boat The Arrow and arrested twelve Chinese suspected of smuggling. The British demanded their release, arguing that the Chinese vessel was registered in Hong Kong and was thus protected under the Treaty of Nanjing. The Qing government insisted the Chinese sailors were pirate smugglers and refused to release them. In retaliation, the British, requesting the help of the French, Russians and Americans, readied for war. While the United States and Russia supported Britain, they did not go as far as sending military aid. The French, however, joined forces with the British.
Chinese officers tear down the British flag on the Arrow
The British and French launched the Second Opium War by capturing Canton, modern day Guangzhou. They maintained control of the city for four years. They subsequently invaded Beijing, burning the Emperor’s Summer Palace and imposing further so-called “unequal treaties” on the Qing. The 1860 Treaty of Tianjin stipulated the opening of a total of fourteen treaty ports to Western trade, ceding further land in Kowloon to the British, indemnities of eight million taels of silver to France and Britain, the right of Western diplomats to reside permanently in Beijing and the freedom of religious institutions to be established in China. After 1860, Westerners assumed control of the complete administration of China’s taxes on trade and commerce, making the Qing Empire in effect a semi-colony of the West. At the same time, Russia forced China to revise the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which gave Russia the right to establish a port on the Pacific coast. Russia founded the city of Vladivostok in 1860. The Russians also insisted that the Qing sign the Supplementary Convention of Peking in which Russia gained a further 4000 square miles of land from China.
The Nian, Panthay, Muslim and Taiping Rebellion
Compounding Qing dynastic troubles were further internal rebellions. Taxes were paid by peasants in copper, which had a fixed exchange rate with silver. As China began exporting growing quantities of silver to pay for its opium imports, the exchange rate between the copper of the peasants and the silver of the tax collector rose, making it increasingly difficult for the peasants to pay their taxes. This rising tax burden, coupled with famine, population pressure, scarcity of resources, and government corruption sparked a series of rebellions throughout China.
The Nian Rebellion (1853-1868) was initially ignited by the bursting of the Yellow River’s banks in 1853 and 1855, causing widespread flooding and loss of life. Because of its reduced finances, the Qing court was unable to respond to the disaster with sufficient financial and human aid. The Panthay Rebellion (1856-1873) began in Yunnan province as a result of fighting between Han Chinese migrants and the native Hui (Chinese Muslims) over access to mining resources. The Muslim Rebellion (1862 -1877) erupted in the Xinjiang, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces over continued minority resistance to Han Chinese territorial infringement.
Taiping Rebels chased by Manchus
The largest rebellion during this time, however, was the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). In 1850, a failed examination candidate from the Hakka minority group in South China, Hong Xiuquan, had visions during a nervous breakdown which convinced him that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Hong advocated surprisingly modern policies including the abolition of private property, the promotion of a classless society, the advancement of equality between men and women, the suppression of foot binding, and the eradication of opium use. He quickly amassed a dedicated army of peasant followers who, by 1854, had occupied Nanjing, which they proclaimed to be the capital of their new Heavenly Kingdom. By 1855, Hong was within 20 miles of Beijing. At first, Western missionaries were elated at the thought of a Chinese Christian uprising. Yet Hong’s unorthodox Christianity and his opposition to opium were eventually determined to be a threat to Western interests.
Amplifying the magnitude of these rebellions was the fact that many of the restive areas had many more males than females. This was because the traditional Chinese view that valued males over females had led to significant female infanticide. Female infanticide coupled with the Chinese tradition of polygamy meant that there were not enough marriageable women for the available men. This made these “bare branch” men more susceptible to the call of rebellion as they had no family or homestead to lose.
The Qing rallied the government Banner Forces (so named because of the particular flags under which they operated) to put down the rebellion, but by this point the Banner Forces were so ill-trained that they proved ineffective. The Qing Court then had no choice but to disperse power to regional Chinese officials who recruited their own armies from their own home districts. Allowing the amassing of regional armies had historically proved very dangerous to a dynasty’s longevity, and that the Qing court was forced into this strategy was good evidence of its weakness. An estimated 20-30 million died during the rebellion.
Self-Strengthening
Westerners share technology with China to improve access to its markets
By the end of the 19th century, in the face of constant foreign incursions into its territory and infringements of its sovereignty, the Qing Dynasty began a program of self-strengthening. In many ways, the basic idea of this program was a modified version of the traditional yiyi zhiyi (“use barbarians to control barbarians“), although in this case it was more of an instance of using barbarian technology to defeat barbarians. Reformists argued that China should employ Western technology such as railroads, modern weaponry, steamships and telegraph lines in order to modernize China, while learning Western languages in order to gain access to Western technologies. Conservatives at the court argued that such policies would lead to the abandonment of traditional culture for modern barbarism. Reformists countered that China would maintain fundamentally Confucian and Chinese in culture, only using the Western technologies to arrest Western incursion into Chinese territory and Chinese sovereignty.
Yet despite reformists’ enthusiasm for change, few understood the rapidity with which Western science was developing improved technology or that up-to-date weapons alone would not be enough to defend China without modernized training and leadership. What was true was that knowledge of the West was gradually improving. Modern newspapers, with up-to-date coverage of world affairs, began to appear in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Information was also acquired through visits abroad. By 1880, China had embassies in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Washington, Tokyo and St. Petersburg.
At the heart of the Chinese challenge was the fact that no Qing Emperor of the 19th century was very capable, although even an extremely able emperor would have struggled to meet the twin challenges of internal rebellion and external aggression. The lack of effectiveness of these emperors was compounded by the rise of Empress Dowager Cixi, who entered the Qing court as a low-ranking concubine. From 1860 to her death in 1908, she held more power and influence in Chinese politics than had any woman since the Tang Empress Wu. Modern Chinese historians have often blamed the Empress Dowager for promoting her own interests at the expense of the Chinese people. What is true is that she resisted all early self-strengthening reforms which risked undermining the power of the palace.
The Qing Dynasty population boom led to poverty as China struggled to employ and fed its 400 million people
Also, at the essence of Qing’s challenge was China’s huge population surge. In 1800, China had about 300 million people, compared with Russia’s 40 million, Japan’s 30 million, and Britain’s 11 million. From 1800 to 1850, China’s population increased to 400 million. The population explosion had repercussions for every aspect of Chinese life. Villages and towns grew closer, farms grew smaller, deforestation accelerated. Additionally, labor was in surplus, suppressing wages and escalating the competitiveness of everyday life. Until the end of the 18th century, steady population growth had largely been beneficial, as it fostered regional development and commercialization. Yet, by the dawn of the 19th century, the negative consequences of China’s population explosion were becoming more pronounced. Chinese surplus labor would work manually at industries that were now industrialized in Europe at such low rates that industrialized factories could not compete. This impeded China’s industrialization. Additionally, the rise in population exacerbated social tensions, as conflicts over water and other resources surged with population growth. As a result, disputes between ethnic groups, lineages or villages became common. Hard times also supported the practice of female infanticide. The shortage of marriageable women reduced the incentive for young men to stay near home and do what their elders told them. Those who left often joined roving gangs or immigrated to the cities to search for work as boatmen, porters, sedan chair carriers, and rickshaw pullers.
Millions of Chinese chose to emigrate from China completely, heading primarily to Southeast Asia, but also to the US and Europe. In Buddhist countries like Thailand and Vietnam, the Chinese often assimilated, intermarrying with the local population and adopting their language and customs. In Muslim countries and in the US, Chinese immigrants often chose or were forced to live independently from native populations. Those that did not assimilate often organized themselves into voluntary associations such as Triads, as local authorities preferred to let the Chinese govern themselves.
1885 War with France, the 1894-1895 War with Japan
Negotiating the Shimonoseki Treaty after the first Sino-Japanese War
The first sign that China’s reforms had not strengthened China sufficiently to repulse foreign aggression occurred in 1855, when France defeated China in war over Vietnam, a traditional tributary state. More humiliating, however, was Japan’s defeat of China in its battle for influence in Korea, another traditional Chinese tributary state. This defeat shocked both China and the West, as China had always viewed Japan as its inferior, and as Japan was a fraction of China’s size. The resulting Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan to Japan, to pay Japan 200 million taels of silver and to recognize the independence of Korea.
Fearing China’s imminent collapse, Western nations began pressuring China to grant them special trading, taxation, and other privileges in their own spheres of influence, while jockeying with other Western powers in order to extend their territorial reach. The US, preoccupied elsewhere, did not at first join the dash for concessions. In 1889, however, John Hay, America’s secretary of state, fearing the fragmentation of China, issued a series of Open Door Notes to Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Japan, calling on all foreign powers operating in China to allow free trade in all spheres of influence. Eventually, the European powers backed off, not because of Hay’s influence, but because they too feared the break-up of the country. Every country except Russia agreed to the Open Door Policy, although most had no intention of enforcing it.
100 Days of Reforms
Guangxu Emperor
The terms of the humiliating Treaty with Japan were made public at a time when thousands of provincial students were in Beijing to take the metropolitan examination. In December 1898, Kang Youwei, a Confucian scholar, gained an audience with the young Guangxu Emperor. Spurred by the scholar’s suggestions, in the space of 100 days, the Emperor issued a multitude of edicts designed to thoroughly modernize the country, including introducing Western subjects in Chinese education, eliminating thousands of sinecure positions, attacking government corruption and embarking on a rapid and intensive program of industrialization and Westernization. Sensing a threat to the conservative dominance at court, the Empress Dowager crushed the reform movement, and effectively imprisoned the Emperor within the Summer Palace. Kang Youwei fled to Japan, and six of his followers were executed. The court sank again into wider inaction, having preserved its own powerful interests.
The Boxer Rebellion
Execution of Boxers at the end of the Rebellion
Yet inaction would not remain an option for long. Formed initially in Shandong and adjacent areas in Henan and Hebei, a secret society of peasants and illiterate day laborers emerged. They called themselves the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (known as the Boxers in the West), and eventually amassed thousands of followers. The Boxers practiced martial arts and chanted magic spells that they claimed made them impervious to physical pain and bullets. The Boxers believed that their hardship was caused in large part by foreign aggression. Spurred by the severe drought of the summer of 1898 their growing anger and frustration became directed at “foreign devils” who they determined to expel from China.
An obvious target was the Christian missionaries who had moved into many parts of the Chinese countryside by the end of the 19th century. While many missionaries provided the Chinese with social and medical services which brought real benefits to the population, the Boxers nevertheless linked Christianity with the arrival of the same foreigners who spread opium in Chinese society. Aggravating their sense of injustice was the fact that these missionaries lived in walled compounds, were protected by extraterritoriality, and enjoyed higher standards of living than the people to whom they preached.
Return of the Emperess Dowager in 1902
Initially, the Qing court felt obliged to crush the Boxer Rebellion. But by the summer of 1900, the court tried to use the Boxers, whose numbers had swollen to close to a half million, to drive foreigners out of China. An eight-nation invasion force made up of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the US, and Japan responded by rapidly capturing Beijing. In 1901 China sued for peace, agreeing to pay 400 million ounces of silver in damages to the Western invasion force. By the time the rebellion was finally put down in September 1901, more than 70,000 Chinese people, including Chinese Catholics, Protestant missionaries, Chinese Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians and other ordinary Chinese were dead.
During the fighting, the Empress Dowager fled Beijing disguised as a nun. On her flight into the countryside, she was confronted for the first time with the reality of China’s poverty. After peace had been secured, she finally began to promote the same modernization for which she had imprisoned the Emperor. Specifically, an effort was made to create a Western-style army, armed with Western weapons and trained in Western methods. Another was to continue efforts to build a modern railway system. However, these endeavors were too little, too late.
Sun Yat-sen and the overthrow of Qing Dynasty
Sun Yat-sen
Ensnared in an international economic order stacked against latecomers, an order whose rules China had no ability to shape, many Chinese increasingly felt that the Qing Dynasty specifically, and dynastic rule generally, lacked the agility and versatility to successfully negotiate the changing world in which it found itself. In the Qing’s defense, the centralized bureaucratic monarchy, the patriarchal family, and the scholar-official elite, all of whom focused on creating stability through the replication of the agrarian past, were so deeply entrenched in Chinese culture that it took a century of bad news to weaken people’s belief that they represented the best organizational structure for Chinese society.
For the first time, many Chinese began to study abroad, primarily in Japan, but also in Western Europe and the United States. Many of these returned to campaign for the deposition of Qing rule. One of these was Sun Yat-sen (generally known in China as Sun Zhongshan, his name in Mandarin Chinese). A Christian, and trained as a medical doctor, Sun Yat-sen became increasingly involved in politics as he watched China flounder. In all, Sun Yat-sen led ten attempts to overthrow the government, each of which failed. However, his tireless efforts to promote revolutionary fervor within China were a catalyst which led to strengthening revolutionary sentiment throughout the country, including that among the officers and troops of the New Army.
When the Qing dynasty eventually fell, the end came serendipitously, and as a result of a relatively rapid series of events. In 1905, when the examination system was abolished as part of the stipulations imposed upon the Chinese after the Boxer Rebellion, a whole segment of society lost their reason for engaging with the government. In 1908 the Empress dowager died, leaving a three-year-old Imperial Prince on the throne, meaning China yet again had no effective emperor. Additionally, the newly constructed railways had been built using foreign funds and were in the hands of foreign companies. Public opinion advocated that these railways should be in Chinese hands. The Qing court attempted to nationalize the railways, alienating many small Chinese investors, while Western powers insisted that they would continue to build railways within their spheres of influence regardless of Chinese national policy. To many, the railroad management issues were just another example that the Qing dynasty lacked the means to deal with China’s worsening domestic and international situation.
Republic of China presidential election, 1911
Revolutionary discontent continued to build. In 1911, in the Chinese city of Wuchang, a group of revolutionaries loosely affiliated with Sun Yat-sen were secretly stockpiling ammunitions for a revolt, when one of the bombs exploded. Realizing that the police were certain to investigate, they declared war on the Qing state and quickly took control of the city. Word of this revolt rapidly spread, and many newly trained troops joined the rebels. Sun Yat-sen read about the rebellion in Denver, Colorado where he had been trying to raise money from overseas Chinese. The Qing Dynasty looked to the top military official in the Empire, Yuan Shikai, to suppress the rebellion. Instead, he effectively negotiated the end of the Qing dynasty.
Much to the relief of the revolutionaries, the Qing Dynasty was disposed without China breaking into civil war, and without the Western powers and Japan slicing up the country. For his role in overthrowing the dynasty, Sun Yat-sen agreed that Yuan Shikai could become the first president of the new Republic, which was proclaimed on February 12th, 1912. While the revolutionaries were united in their desire to dispose the Dynasty, they remained conflicted on the best way that the country should move forward. Sun Yat-sen and his followers organized a new party, the Guomindang (the Nationalist Party, frequently referred to as the Kuomintang or KMT) which they viewed to be a loyal opposition party designed to compete in electoral politics with the followers of Yuan Shikai. Other parties were formed as well, and Assembly elections were held in December 1912. Approximately 40 million men were eligible to vote – those who owned property, paid taxes and had an elementary school education – about 10% of the population. The Nationalists won approximately 43% of the vote, in an election that succeeded without major incident. Sun Yat-sen, head of the railroad development, was pleased with the outcome.
Yuan Shikai at center with army officers
Yuan Shikai was not. He disliked Nationalist criticisms of his policies and felt that their electoral success threatened his efforts to create a strong central government. In 1913, Song Jiaoren, the Nationalist campaign manager and a Prime Minister-hopeful, was assassinated, probably on the direction of Yuan Shikai. The Nationalist party responded to the murder by calling for Yuan Shikai’s resignation, and soon revolted. Yuan Shikai crushed the revolt, and Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan, once again in exile. Yuan Shikai supported a strong, modern, industrialized state, but he envisioned that this state would be ruled in dynastic fashion, with himself as Emperor. Yuan Shikai eventually died in 1916 of kidney failure, leaving both a power vacuum and no national consensus about how China should move forward politically. Yuan’s generals began to vie with each other for regional control and power. This began a period of warlordism in China, during which the country was once again fragmented.
Dynastic Themes Present in China Today
Themes of Qing history can be seen in evidence in China today. The first is a sense of Chinese culturalism and self-sufficiency. Until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, China had always felt that its rich cultural history was a sufficient source of inspiration from which to develop its foreign policies to deal with barbarians, to provide governmental and societal structure, to manage its economy and to stimulate its artistic achievement. While always convinced of its moral, economic, and technological superiority – which it indeed maintained for thousands of years – China never felt the need to impose its systems on countries outside its immediate sphere of influence.
Confucius Center opening at Khazar University, Azerbaijan
Today, China engages in the world primarily to promote its own economic development. It no longer makes any effort to promote communist revolution abroad (though it did at various stages of the Mao era) or any other value-based revolution arising from its hybrid capitalist-authoritarian society. While it is true that China is building, worldwide, an ever growing number of Confucian Centers designed to promote the learning of Mandarin and the understanding of Chinese culture, these centers are intended to serve China’s economic interests by creating a better understanding of China, as opposed to exposing a Chinese cultural perspective which it hopes will be adopted by local populations in the way that the US, for example, promotes democracy internationally.
The Chinese government today still considers the ‘Century of Humiliation’ (1839-1949) as an inflection point in the way that China engages in the international arena. Indeed, even today, many Chinese and Taiwanese history books still divide Chinese history into the pre- and post-Opium war worlds. From 1939 onwards, China was thrust into a world whose rules it did not understand and could not control. Consequently, during the 1839-1949 period, China was riven by peasant uprisings which were frequently fueled by or were partly in consequence to the growing Western presence in China, and by what was viewed as Qing acquiescence to foreign demands. Additionally, the Century of Humiliation led to the ultimate collapse of its millennia-old dynastic system and China’s loss of sovereignty over almost a third of its territory.
Animal personifications of Russia, England, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Japan fighting over China – the dying dragon – while the US as eagle looks on
The Century of Humiliation today remains essential to the way that China interacts with the world. Both scholars and government officials in China still frequently characterize the international system as one dominated by a West and determined to block China’s rise. Under this view China always needs to be wary of Western intent so that it is never again outmaneuvered and subjugated. Other Chinese scholars feel that China’s progress within the Western built international framework has been so overwhelming that, far from being a tool to benefit exclusively the West and its allies, the current international system is reasonably fair and has very much played to China’s advantages. Other Chinese thinkers feel that China should now use its growing economic and political status to bend the international system to its advantage, so it reflects more of China’s values. Steps in this direction have been taken. In 2016, against the wishes of the United States, China launched its the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China is also spearheading Belt and Road Initiative which, as conceived, will be the world’s most ambitious infrastructure investment effort. If successful, it will also significantly reshape the global balance of power. On some occasions, China has also begun to flout international law. A prime example is its taking control of and reclaiming land on disputed islands in the South China Sea, despite such actions having been ruled illegal by The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
The Century of Humiliation is also essential to China as it is a fundamental to its narrative in the development of Chinese nationalism that the Chinese Communist Party has cultivated since it has switched from a command to market economy. In Xi Jinping’s promotion of the Chinese Dream, the Chinese Communist Party has positioned itself the party who has exercise the Century of Humiliation as the authority that is re-establishing China as a great nation- if not the greatest nation – in the international world order. This narrative helps to legitimize Communist Party rule when it is no longer communist, as it reminds the Chinese people that it was the Communists who pulled China from its lowest point, and is returning the country once again to its natural place of preeminence. Moreover, the Century of Humiliation is also a discourse used by the Communist Party to deflect foreign criticism of its policies. This discourse in effect argues that the West and Japan have always been full of schemes to harm China, and therefore their arguments and actions today still cannot be trusted.
References
Part II – Creation of a Classic, Bureaucratic Empire: Qin Dynasty, 221 – 206 BCE – Han Dynasty, 206 BCE – 220 CE
/in Dynastic History of China /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
Confucius
The end of the Zhou Dynasty, with its decline into the Warring States Period, was a chaotic and violent time. Seven states vied for power across the empire. This government fragmentation ended with the victory of the Qin, resulting in a brief, but hugely important, period of unity for the Chinese. The Qin empire bears much resemblance to the China that we see today and its first emperor, Qin Shihuang, is credited with instigating construction of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. The successive dynasty, the Han, continued the fight with nomadic peoples from the northern frontiers and established crucial trade links through the famous Silk Road. It also underwent a crucial intellectual battle between Confucianists and Legalists that helped to define what we consider to be Chinese culture today.
Qin Dynasty 221-206 BCE – Unification, Legalism, Bureaucracy, The Great Wall
The period before the establishment of the Qin Dynasty was a time of political fragmentation. By 403 BCE, seven major states were all vying for power within what would eventually become known as China (the name China originated from an early Romanization of Qin which was written ‘Chin’.) The Qin state originated on the western edge of developed China. Unlike with other powers within China, this meant that the Qin state was not boxed-in on all sides by competing fiefdoms. This allowed it to expand its territory more easily, incorporating an increasingly large population under its jurisdiction. It was also more open to social, political and cultural innovations, and readily used talented men from other states.
Because the Qin did not enter the feudal domain of the Zhou Dynasty until the reign of Xiang (777-766 BCE), several centuries after the more established states, and because of its North Western location, the Qin was viewed by the other fiefdoms as a less civilized and more barbaric state. Xiao of the Qin (361-337 BCE) was determined to change this image and increase the Qin’s standing in the world. Influenced by the thoughts of Shang Yang, a Legalist reformer, (350-338 BCE) Xiao implemented a largely Legalist style of rule in his domain. Realized Legalist doctrines included promoting by merit as opposed to by noble birth, and the creation of a strict set of laws which applied to all people equally. Written on stone, these laws were sent to all parts of his kingdom. He allowed peasants to buy and sell land, and implemented widespread irrigation projects which resulted in increased agricultural production. This production was taxed fairly to encourage further agricultural development. The resulting wealth gave the Qin the food and economic resources necessary to launch military offensives. By 256 BCE, the Qin conquered the state of Zhou, bringing the Zhou Dynasty to an end. By 221 BCE, the Qin had conquered all seven Warring States, marking out for the first time the beginning of the geographic scope that would become of Chinese nation.
Standardized antique Chinese print characters
The Qin leader Zheng, and his chief minister Li Si, led the final Qin charge to vanquish the competing fiefdoms and unify China. Since no previous royal titles – such as King or Duke – were sufficient to describe the scope of the Qin leader’s enormous power, a new title was devised: Huangdi, meaning ‘august god’, a term that invoked the image of the Yellow Emperor, a legendary Chinese sovereign and cultural hero presented in Chinese mythology whose name had the same pronunciation in Chinese. China’s first emperor was better known by his full title of Qin Shihuang. He followed Li Si’s advice not to make his sons and relatives the kings of the various conquered territories, but to staff them with military and administrative professionals. The Qin leaders then forced 120,000 of the most wealthy and powerful aristocratic families of all the conquered states to move to the Qin capital of Xianyang, just outside modern-day Xi’an, where they were far from their power bases and could be easily watched. Qin Shihuang also had the nobles’ weapons melted down and recast into two large bells and 12 enormous statues which were then placed on his palace grounds.
Imperial handcart
The government was centralized, and the entire Qin kingdom was divided into 36 large administrative units, each of which was further divided into several counties. Each was governed by a civil officer, a military officer and an official inspector who independently reported to the central government. All people in the Empire were graded into a system of 20 non-hereditary ranks where individuals could better their status, essentially go up in rank, with accompanying rights to land, titles, tax remissions and slaves, through military accomplishment and meeting or exceeding agricultural production quotas. The Qin also had the novel idea of organizing families in groups of five or ten. Each family group was responsible for the behavior of all its members so that, if any group member committed a crime, all were held responsible, thus engaging the entire population in policing.
Early on, the Qin administrators realized that maintaining Qin supremacy required a strict husbanding of its human, military, and natural resources. In order to achieve effective accounting, weights and measures, the axle lengths of chariots and carts, and Chinese character writing styles were standardized. Retaining local forms of currency, weights and measures, or writing scripts was made an act of treason and the Qin currency was introduced nationally. Infrastructure projects were a key facet of the dynasty and 4250 miles of roads were built throughout the empire. The Grand Canal was begun, built by thousands upon thousands of conscripted laborers. Conscripted laborers also connected many parts of earlier state walls which extended along almost 4000 miles of the northern border of the empire. This extended wall was eventually to become known as the Great Wall of China.
The Qin bibiliocaust burnt historical Chinese Manuscripts
The Chief Minister Li Si contended that as Qin Shihuang had unified all of China, he had also formed a single source of authority. Dissenting opinions based on classical scholarship were thus a threat to his authority. To prevent this threat, Li Si recommended the infamous Qin bibliocaust, where Qin Shihuang decreed that all historical records, apart from those of the Qin, be burned, along with all copies of the Book of Odes (the earliest existing Chinese collection of poems and songs) and the Book of Documents (a compilation of documentary records of the ancient history of China.) Books concerning forestry, medicine, or divination were exempt. Anyone caught even discussing such books risked execution. Similarly, anyone who disparaged the present by citing ancient precedents also chanced execution, together with all family members. Scholars today believe that the bibliocaust was not as devastating as first thought and many imperial libraries endured intact. Scholars also tended to memorize texts such as the Book of Odes so that textual versions could be constituted from memory and, in the next dynasty, Emperor Wu initiated an empire wide recovery of the ancient texts. In addition to burning books, the emperor also encouraged the eradication of many local traditions of all varieties. Qin Shihuang’s successes resulted in large part from his efforts to manage the detail of government himself. For instance, he set quotas as to the weight of documents he would read each day, not stopping until he completed the paperwork. The disadvantage of his prodigious work effort was that the institutions he had created to concentrate power in the hands of the monarch made the government’s strength and stability dependent upon the authority and character of the occupant of the throne.
Terracotta warriors
Qin Shihuang died unexpectedly in 210 BCE. Having quarreled with his eldest son, the succession to Emperor was not clearly delineated. The eunuch Zhao Gao encouraged a younger, favorite son Hu Hai to usurp his brother for the throne. In order to prevent challenges to his rule, Hu Hai instituted a reign of terror in which he took the already legalist excesses of his father’s reign to new heights. These included a zero tolerance for criticism, severe laws and punishments, and the ruthless mobilization of laborers for construction projects. Historians have argued that the people would have accepted Hu Hai if he had made even moderate attempts to reform his father’s excesses. Instead, he implemented a harsh rule, multiplying laws and the severity of punishments, increasing taxes and executing chief ministers of state, imperial princes and palace attendants.
The hungry, indicted and exploited became so numerous that the rebellion of one man was enough to cause the entire nation to join him. The first revolt began in 209 BCE. By 206 BCE, the Qin dynasty ended with the suicide of the Second Emperor and the break-up of the Qin Dynasty. Qin Shihuang built a lavish tomb with more than 8000 life-sized terracotta warriors and 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. The Xi’an tomb was discovered in the 1970s by peasants digging a well and it has since become a UNESCO heritage site and one of China’s premier tourist attractions. Archaeological excavations at the tomb have shown that the Qin dynasty had continued the Zhou expertise in advanced metal casting technology, especially in metallurgy. Bronze swords were made with a high tin content, resulting in blades of significant sharpness and hardness. The blast furnace technology used to make this high-quality bronze was not employed in Europe for another thousand years.
Han Dynasty 206 BCE-220 CE – Confucianism, the Mandarinate, and Northern Nomadic Barbarians
When the First Emperor of the Qin died in 211 BCE, Qin Dynastic rule rapidly disintegrated. Liu Bang, already head of the Han State in 206 BCE, declared himself the Emperor of the Han dynasty in 202 BCE. The Han is the name of the dominant ethnic Chinese group who form around 92% of the present-day population. Liu Bang was one of only two known emperors of China to come from a peasant background, defeating Xiang Yu, a brilliant aristocratic general. When Liu Bang died in 195 BCE, Empress Lu, the mother of the first heir to the throne, managed to control the court until her death in 180 BCE. Despite ruthless ambition, she proved a competent ruler. She realized that the average peasant needed time to regroup after the civil war, so she fashioned government policies that encouraged people to work on the land. Food and clothing became plentiful again. She also successfully defended the frontier from nomadic invasion. Despite these achievements, Empress Lu was cited by Confucian historians as an example of what happens when women get close to power. Confucians felt that a woman’s place was in the home, obedient and subservient to the male household members.
Northern nomads plagued China for centuries
Attack from nomadic people of Central Asia provided a constant challenge for the Han Dynasty, especially in its early years. The Xiongnu nomads led successful raids within China despite the presence of the Great Wall. Although the Wall covered large parts of China’s northern border, it was never fully connected. The nomads were superior to the Chinese on horseback, especially when shooting, thus making themselves formidable adversaries. The Han Dynasty tried to avoid war by sending the Xiongnu nomads lavish gifts such as gold, grain, and Han brides, which proved to be an expensive and relatively short-term fix. This threat of invasion from the nomad tribes of the north was a constant theme throughout much of Chinese dynastic history. The Chinese tried many strategies to solve the barbarian problem including military domination, bribery, diplomatic relations, intermarriage, and the construction of the Great Wall. None was wholly effective.
In 145 BCE Han Wudi became Emperor and ruled over China for more than 50 years. He improved the army, adopting many of the noamds’ horsemanship and archery techniques, and he increased the dynasty’s stock of horses. In 134 BCE, Han Wudi struck against the Xiongnu nomads, driving them far into central Asia. In the areas that he secured, trade flourished over a whole network of routes that collectively became known as the Silk Road. The Han Dynasty also got access to some of the central Asian grasslands which allowed it to support enough horses to maintain military advantage. Otherwise, China’s geography south of the Mongolian grasslands – dry deserts, steep mountains, cultivated river valleys – provided little open range necessary for the large scale raising of horses.
Wheelbarrows were first invented in China
With the nomadic problem temporarily resolved, Han Wudi worked to improve the administration of his dynasty. Many Chinese dynasties were debilitated by power struggles between the Empress Dowager (the title given to the Emperor’s mother) and family, Confucian bureaucratic officials, military commanders, and court eunuchs; the Han proved no exception. Han Wudi thus worked to curtail the power of his in-laws, Confucian scholar advisers, and eunuchs. He also created central government run monopolies on the production of salt, iron, copper, bronze, and alcohol, which significantly increased state revenues depleted by the nomadic wars. The greater wealth of the dynasty partly contributed to the proliferation of Chinese inventions during this time, including standardized weapons with replaceable parts, the earliest known use of the crank, calipers so precise that they could measure distance with precision to one thousandth of an inch, sophisticated bellows which delivered pressurized air in controlled quantities to heat fires used for metal working, crop experimentation to raise agricultural productivity, the wheelbarrow and rudimentary scientific medicine.
Confucianism
Although Legalist in many ways, Emperor Han Wudi established Confucianism as state doctrine. As a peasant, Liu Bang had received little education. Initially, he had little tolerance for Confucian scholars who underscored the importance of ancient history, institutions, and rituals. Yet, once he became Emperor, Han Wudi began to appreciate the utility of Confucian learning. In the early days of his court, stories are told of how many of his soldier-officials became involved in brawls within the palace walls; one was even caught hacking away at a wooden palace pillar with his sword. His advisors, steeped in Confucian traditions, established simplified court rituals which created an expectation of decorum within the court, and gave dignity and honor to his role of emperor.
Mandarinate – China’s Imperial Examinations and China’s Civil Service System
China’s invention of paper aided the spread of education in Imperial China
Emperor Han Wudi’s advisors argued that one of the reasons that the Qin dynasty had failed was because it had emphasized military conquest, strict laws, and a system of rewards and punishments – Legalist practices – at the expense of creating a moral and civil society. The Emperor’s advisors argued that foundation of the Han State’s morality should be the wisdom of the ancients, and that those schooled in ancient and historical wisdom should run the Han state’s bureaucracy. The Han Dynasty thus put into effect the Chinese public civil service known as the mandarinate, arguably one of the most enduring and successful instruments of administration mankind has ever created.
Acceptance into the mandarinate was dependent on passing official examinations based on the Confucian classics. These classics promoted an optimistic view of humanity. They argued that man, with the right instruction and example, was capable of constant improvement and high moral righteousness. The Han Dynasty became a leading sponsor of Chinese art, scholarship and values. The court also put into effect complex Confucian rites and rituals which had initially been introduced to tame the soldier-officials. The repetition of these rituals tried to capture the idea of an ordered, harmonious universe which continued unchanged forever. The Han emphasis on promotion by education and merit created a relatively flexible society. For example, the Confucians scholars looked down on trade, deeming that it did not adequately incorporate true moral values. Nevertheless, merchants were often able to use their acquired wealth to assure that their sons received the tutoring necessary to pass the classical scholar exams of the government officials. In this way, a merchant family could rise on the achievements of its sons. This emphasis on education was facilitated by the invention of paper in 100 CE.
Chinese Historical Records
The Historical Records of Sima Qian was written during the Han Dynasty and deeply shaped the way in which the Chinese perceived their past and thus themselves. An epic work in 130 chapters, The Historical Records explains history from many perspectives: a chronological narrative of political events; informative accounts of key institutions; and biographies of important individuals. The Historical Records set the prototype for the government-sponsored histories compiled by later dynasties. The composites style-with political narratives, treatises and biographies- became standard. By writing so well and so much, Sima Qian significantly influenced Chinese thinking on everything from government to the best conduct of individuals. For instance, in telling biographies, Sima Qian selected incidents in an individual’s life that showed consistency of a person’s character and how well the person performed a role, rather than turning points in personal development.
Patriarchal Society
Quote from Ban Zhao’s Precept for my Daughters
Chinese dynastic society was to remain patriarchal throughout the ages. The subordinated position of women was supported by Confucian beliefs which argued that a woman’s rightful place was within the home. On occasion, however, some women rose to power and influence. The most famous female scholar in all Chinese history, Ban Zhao, lived in the Han Dynasty. Ban wrote many poems, helped her brother finish a history of the Han Dynasty, and authored Precepts for my Daughters, an instruction booklet for women that has remained well known to this day. The importance placed on filial piety also meant that emperors were often obliged to consider their mothers’ wishes, even after adulthood, giving the Empress Dowager the opportunity to exert considerable influence at Court. The Han Dynasty saw China’s population expand to approximately 60 million people, the equivalent of the Roman Empire at its height. This population lived within a wide-ranging market economy. Trade between regions was one factor which unified China into an integrated whole. Yet, much of this wealth remained concentrated in the hands of the scholar-officials, most of whom came from the old feudal families. The average Han peasant was still desperately poor.
The Past in the Present – Themes of Early Chinese History in the Modern Age
As China moved from the Warring States period into the Qin Dynasty, many of the broad themes of Dynastic China were clearly emerging. One such pattern was the alternating fragmentation and unification of the empire, where imperial control of China was periodically disrupted by the rise of regional powers which led to China being shattered into smaller competing states. Yet these fragmented states remained remarkably cohesive culturally, organizing themselves around fundamental beliefs that formed the essence of Chinese civilization. A key belief was that the family was the basis of Chinese society, and the state was an extension of the family. Ancestor worship and the wisdom of the past were to serve as a guide to the present and to the future. Meritocracy also emerged as a strong theme. Increasingly, bureaucratic officials and military leaders were promoted based on skill rather than birth right. Education to achieve opportunity became an ethos of Chinese society, creating a certain social mobility. Religion was gradually becoming bureaucratized and ritualized.
Imperial Examination Hall, Yunnan University
Early on, great attention was paid to agricultural productivity. The Chinese bureaucracy mobilized its masses to construct irrigation and land clearing projects. This created a feedback loop, where increased agricultural productivity led to a rise in population, requiring further engineering and agricultural innovation to maintain China’s swelling numbers of people. China’s constant battle to feed its population has echoes in the struggles of the twentieth century, while the relative size of its population in comparison with global totals also has stark parallels.
By the end of the Han Dynasty, the themes of Chinese civilization were becoming increasingly engrained, and Confucianism became firmly established as the guiding state doctrine. The Emperor’s wishes were carried out by a bureaucratic government staffed by the best-educated scholars whose places were achieved by examinations in ancient Chinese wisdom. These exams created notable social mobility and reinforced the optimistic belief of humans’ capacity for constant self-improvement through self-cultivation. Today, educational achievement remains an important avenue of social mobility. Competition for university and other academic places is brutal. In 2018, for instance, approximately 9.75 million students took the Chinese National College Entrance Examination, and about 81% were accepted.In recognition of the importance of these exams, construction sites across the country were ordered to suspend works to create a peaceful environment for the exam-taking students.
The Great Wall of China
A belief in human ingenuity and its ability to positively impact the physical world and to solve problems continued as a core Chinese tenet. This is exemplified by its extraordinary engineering feats such as the construction of large parts of the Great Wall of China and digging of the Grand Canal which required the mass mobilization of conscripted labor. The educated started to see that natural laws resulted from “scientifically-explained” physical forces, not just caused by the whims of divine power. Human ingenuity was able to solve problems such as river flooding and irrigation resulting in high agricultural productivity which in turn allowed for the expansion of the population. This ingenuity also led to much technological development. Today, China continues the tradition of using engineering to solve its developmental problems. China has been laying down infrastructure at a breakneck rate as well as undertaking monumental ventures such as the South-North Water Transfer Project. The South-North Water Transfer Project is diverting water from the Yangtze River to the Yellow River in order to solve the North’s water shortage challenges. At an estimated current cost of $79 billion, the aqueduct is one of the largest and most expensive engineering projects ever undertaken.
Many Legalist themes continued throughout the Han Dynasty, including the promotion of soldier-officials based on merit as opposed to noble birth, the institution of a strict rule of law, a focus on agricultural production in order to maintain a large military structure, a fair taxation of production in order to maximize agricultural yield and the standardization of everything from axle sizes to weights. Each of these measures was employed in order to improve economic productivity which could then be marshalled to increase the power of the state. Today, the Chinese leadership still believes that authoritarian political control is the best way to create prosperity and stability for its 1.3 billion citizens. The Qin collectivization of families who were then responsible for self-policing, and the Qin effort to establish itself as the source of intellectual authority foreshadowed efforts of the Communist era.
Mass mobilization of its population to achieve often unparalleled engineering feats remains a Chinese competitive advantage. In the late 1990s, the Chinese government instituted a massive $1.2 trillion public works program to build new bridges, roads, dams, railways, power plants, port facilities and airports all around the country; currently no other country devotes as many resources to infrastructure, and a fifth of all construction in China depends on public works projects. The only thing comparable to China’s infrastructure creation today is the building of the US highway system in the 1950s. China still relies as much on muscle and sweat as machinery to complete its big jobs and this muscle and sweat continues to achieve often impressive results. For instance, a 30 mile stretch of road through rough mountainous terrain between Chengdu and Guanxian, was achieved in a week with the help of 200,000 laborers. Similarly, when a sandstorm buried 350 miles of train track, thousands of laborers had the track cleared in two days. In the closing weeks before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government employed more than 10,000 people in 1000 boats to clear 600 sq km of algae bloom that threatened to disrupt the Olympic sailing events in the port city of Qingdao.
From a climatic point of view, it is also interesting to note that the Han Dynasty likely profited from what is known as the Roman climatic optimum. The Roman climatic optimum lasted from approximately 200 BCE to CE 150. During this time, the climate was relatively warm, wet and stable. In agricultural societies, these favorable weather conditions helped to increase GDP which in turn helped the dynasty to flourish.
What Happened Next?
The collapse of the Han Dynasty led to centuries of division and conflict with numerous competing centers of power. Yet this time also saw the adoption of Buddhism and continued cultural development in various art forms. This was followed by the successful, but brief, unification of China under the Sui Dynasty in the sixth century. The story continues in The Age of Division.
References
Part III – The Age of Division: 220 CE – end of Sui Dynasty 618 CE
/in Dynastic History of China /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
Sui Dynasty sandstone Bodhisattva
The approximately 400 years between the Age of Division and the end of the Sui Dynasty, saw many familiar themes dominate. China endured fluctuating periods of fragmentation and reunification. Confucianism continued to permeate the fabric of Chinese society with its emphasis of filial piety and ancestor worship, and with a value system that allowed for the creation of a strong central government. The Northern Nomads were frequently problematic, and diplomatic and military solutions were constantly being considered. Agricultural productivity remained important not only to feed the population, but also to fill government tax coffers and to create enough surplus food to maintain the military. Sustaining a strong military was always a double-edged sword. Powerful generals in frontier regions often developed significant regional power which was then used as a springboard for a national campaign. The ability for China to stay unified ultimately became significantly effected by the creation of a national, homogeneous culture which taught universal values, such as loyalty, duty, compassion and morality.
New themes also emerged during this period: the introduction of Buddhism, land reform, the extensive colonization and population of Southern China, the beginning of the legal reform and the growing development of poetry. These challenges were often most successfully met when approaching these problems through a shared way of thinking. This shared way of thinking, or common culture, came to define what it meant to be Chinese. In other words, whether a nomad was considered Chinese was dependent not upon his racial origin or the territory into which he was born, but on how well he had assimilated into Chinese thinking, culture, language and customs. Chinese culture acted as a significant unifying force within Chinese society as it gave all regions of China the same principles around which to rally.
From a climatic point of view, tree ring data suggest that the Central Asian climate went through three periods of severe drought – in 360, 460 and 550 CE – each of which would have likely affected Chinese stability. When nomads in central Asia could no longer live off the land there, they migrated. Those migrating east and south would have increased instability in North China as they attacked weaknesses on the border and moved into northern farming lands in order to access the food and water needed to support their herds. From 400 to 570 CE, China suffered from an extended period of dry desertification, forcing farmers to migrate further south. The year 535/536 CE was particularly challenging. It is believed that a volcanic eruption or series of volcanic eruptions filled the atmosphere with ash and other debris, significantly diminishing sunlight and shepherding in a global volcanic winter. Chinese historical records suggest that temperatures were so cold that crops failed resulting in food shortages, famines, disease, population migration and unrest from which continued to affect China negatively for several decades thereafter.
The Age of Division 220-589 CE – Southern Migration, Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism
The Han Dynasty began to disintegrate as the independence of wealthy families increased. Many refused to serve what they regarded as a corrupt imperial center. Eventually, the Han Dynasty fragmented and three rival states – the Sui, Wu, and Wei – took its place. This period is known in Chinese as Sanguo (Three Kingdoms) and their rivalry was immortalized in one of China’s greatest novels, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Yet, try as they did, none of these warlord families was able to conquer all of China. In particular, the north was shattered by continuous fighting between shifting nomadic and northern Chinese groups. Many nomads intermarried and integrated into Chinese society, while Han Chinese began to adopt certain nomadic customs and foods.
Rice paddies, Yunnan Province
Constant fighting in the north caused 2 million people to flee south, abandoning the land of the northern frontier. Many resettled in the Yangtze River valley. This migration transformed the Yangtze valley and southern China into one of the most densely populated and prosperous regions of the country. Much of the south’s prosperity was driven by silk production, the trade of which continued to thrive during the Age of Division. The Yangtze River valley’s climate proved ideal for growing the mulberry bushes on which silkworm feed, as well as for the cultivation of tea and rice. Tea brought many health benefits to the population, not least because of its boiled water which killed water-borne germs. Similarly, rice proved to be an ideal food crop. It tasted good, was highly digestible and when consumed with soy products, offered excellent nutrition. When milled, it stored well. It was easy and cheap to cook, the only cereal that can simply be boiled without becoming mush. But perhaps most significantly, rice almost always yielded more calories per unit of land than other crops, important in a country with limited arable land. In good climates, two or even three crops could be grown in the same field.
Despite the disruption of the Age of Division, scholars and artists flourished, with notable achievements in areas such as astronomy, mathematics, pottery, philosophy and literature. Incidents from history, for instance, presented themes of courage and loyalty that lent themselves to the creation of epic romance and fantasies which were then transformed into plays and operas. Poetry also emerged as an important cultural phenomenon, a role it would continue to play throughout the spread of Chinese History.
Laozi, founder of the Daoism
Daoism (sometimes referred to as Taoism) also became more popular during this time. A belief began to develop that the three spheres – Heaven, Earth and Man – were interconnected by way of a primal substance, called qi (or chi) which made up all things, and that all things within the universe had developed in accordance with the patterns of nature which were the quintessential expressions of The Dao or The Way. If human beings worked harmoniously with these natural cycles, they were most likely to maximize the potential for various forms of well-being such as health, good fortune and fertility. For example, The Dao asserted that state executions should be conducted during the killing seasons of autumn and winter when nature brings an end to the life of plants.
In the face of constant warfare, Chinese again began to extensively debate the correct behavior of man in relationship to family and state. An environment of alienation and personal extravagance pervaded elite circles where Confucian ideals lost much of their hold. Many eschewed court life with its vicious cliques. A search for unaffectedness and spontaneity led to an outpouring of self-expression, especially in poetry. Chinese, with its tones and its plentiful rhymes, is well-suited to verse. The Chinese script, especially Classical Chinese, is equally advantageous to poetry writing because it creates visual associations in ways that purely phonetic scripts do not. Poetry became China’s most important literary form. From the Han time onward there was a strong link between poetry and emotion. Similarly, especially by Tang times, calligraphy came to be recognized as a fine art. The force, balance and movement of the character strokes were believed to indicate the calligrapher’s moral and psychological makeup as well as his momentary emotions. Calligraphy came to be considered so indicative of character that, in Tang times, it was used as a criterion for assigning posts in the civil service.
Among the most gifted poets, writers and musicians of the third century was a group of poets later immortalized as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. The Seven Sages argued that previous unquestioning compliance to Confucianism was, in part, to blame for the fall of the Han Dynasty. Daoist in philosophy, the Seven Sages discussed philosophy and art under a bamboo grove to escape the corruption and oppression of the court.
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, embroidery on blue silk
Buddhism, arriving in China from India during this time, gained quick acceptance in many parts of the country. Intellectually, Buddhism felt harmonious with many Daoist ideas, which was understandable since Daoist terms were employed by early translators to express Buddhist ideas. Buddhism also provided a new focus during a time when it was difficult to have much faith in civil government. It spoke to questions of suffering and death with a frankness that did not exist in native Chinese traditions, advancing a fully expounded vision of the afterlife and of the prospect of salvation. To many, its morality, including the sanction against the taking of life seemed to follow compassion to its logical end. That Buddhist monasteries became exempt from taxation was more controversial; as was monks’ vows of celibacy, since these vows contradicted the filial obligation to provide parents with grandchildren. On the latter point, Buddhists argued that it was the ultimate expression of filial piety to free parents from suffering by performing pious acts in their name. Buddhists believed that this would help ensure that those so honored would be born into a better life in their next reincarnation.
Carved buddhas at the Yungang Caves, Shanxi
In a practical sense, particularly in the south, Buddhist monasteries provided food to poor peasants, built inns for travelers and developed rudimentary lending houses where poor people could leave items of value in exchange for loans for seeds and other needs. The coming of Buddhism also led to an increase in fiction writing as Buddhist teachers discovered that stories made effective teaching tools. In north China, the nomadic tribes competing for control of the Yellow River Valley embraced Buddhism because it gave them a civilized religion of their own. The Northern Wei emperors, from 425-494, funded the carving of thousands of Buddhist statues in cliffs and caves at a place called Yungang, which is now a UNESCO site and can still be visited today. Buddhism also brought to China new ideas about medicine and architecture. The Age of Division also saw much writing on the subject of botany as well as inventions as diverse as tofu, the wheelbarrow and the repeating crossbow.
Sui Dynasty 581-618
Funerary sculpture of a soldier, Sui Dynasty
In 486 the Northern Wei began to institute reforms which significantly increased the effectiveness, and economic power of its state. The most important of these reforms was the creation of the “equal field system” in which the state owned the land, but gave most families lifetime-control over 40 mu (approximately 6.6 acres), ensuring that as much land as possible was occupied by taxpaying farmers. The equal field system helped diminish the power of local Chinese land holders. It increased the government’s tax revenue and raised agricultural productivity. Another important reform was the creation of a divisional militia, i.e. volunteer farmer-soldiers who served in rotation in armies at the capital or on the frontiers. Kitting out soldiers had become expensive because cavalrymen needed both armor to protect both men and horses from powerful crossbows. The cost of this army was minimized by allowing soldiers to farm when not called upon for training or for campaigns.
In 581 CE, Sui Wendi, born Yang Jian, gained control of what is now called Sichuan and the northeast of China in 577 CE. With an army of 500,000 men, and using a combination of naval and land attacks, Sui Wendi eventually conquered the South in 589 CE, reunifying China under the Sui Dynasty. Creating a unified dynasty was difficult because during the Age of Division, the north and south of China had developed in different cultural ways.
Both north and south had conserved Confucian tradition as the basis for their societies. In the north, however, the preservation of Confucian learning took the form of family ethics and rituals. Government service opportunities remained varied and strong, and such service offered standing, power, and contact to elite families from other parts of the country. Many northern elites spent large portions of their careers in the provinces, as they rose from junior posting to commanded forces. Often educated, the real-world experience of these high-ranking Chinese elites made them a real advantage for the northern rulers working to create strong states.
With government salaries guaranteed, and with no northern border which needed defending from militarily skilled, nomadic tribesmen, the South focused their Confucianism on developing the arts. Witty conversation, alcohol and poetry were commonplace in the southern court, as was analyses of the essential features of literary, artistic and philosophical works. Calligraphy and painting developed with the increased interest in individual expression. A Daoist interest in mountains as places of nature and as a mythological home for immortals led to the beginning of landscape painting. Xie He, an early sixth century painter, helped to articulate the qualities on which subsequent landscape painting would be judged. These attributes included the quality of being imbued with vital force and the strength, harmony and adeptness of the brushstroke. The articulation and the nature of these attributes imbued painting and calligraphy with an intellectual content that was not present in the decorative arts of ceramics, lacquer ware or textiles.
Northerners viewed southern artistic sensibilities as effete, while southerners viewed themselves as the true protectors of Chinese civilization and regarded many of the nomadic-influenced customs of the north to be uncouth and barbaric. This was particularly true of the more forward manner of women in their society. The north justified its claims to the status of Son of Heaven and successor to the Han Dynasty by emphasizing its geography. It controlled the region of historic imperial capitals, the land where all the places sacred and memorable in Chinese history were located. The northern court assiduously preserved the ritual tradition of the Zhou and the Han. The southern court could not claim geographical centrality. Instead, it pointed to the indisputably Chinese lineage of its rulers and elaborated a succession theory where the Han imperial seal passed to the Wei, to the Jin, and then to the Southern Song as the legitimate Sons of Heaven.
1687 Latin translation of the Life and Works of Confucius
Yet, when China re-unified in 589 CE, the two different strands of its development were able to cross-fertilize each other. Yang Jian took the title of Wendi, “the cultured Emperor”, to show to the empire that he understood the importance for China of cultural as well as territorial integration. Wendi employed capable officials who justified his efforts in Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist terms. Engaging men who held deep Confucian values of loyalty to the ruler and duty to the people helped concentrate imperial power. To identify Confucians, the Sui reintroduced written examinations, testing knowledge of Confucian classics. The examinations also helped to standardize thought and to diminish the differences between the north-western, north-eastern and southern elites.
Under the Sui dynastic reign, the equal field system was introduced throughout the empire. By establishing uniform and low taxes on grain, cloth and labor services, the Sui were able to double the number of registered households for tax purposes within a few years of taking power. The Sui dynasty also introduced The Kaihuang Code, which attempted to bring order and leniency to the legal systems of the previous ages. It supported all of China’s major religions, particularly Buddhism. Court control over provincial administration was a critical issue to the newly formed court. To consolidate its control, the Sui reduced the number of prefectures and counties, and forbade officials from serving in their home prefecture or serving more than one tour in any county. These policies were designed to curtail the power of locally entrenched families and to keep scholar-officials from allying with them.
Millions of laborers were conscripted to rebuild the Great Wall and lengthen the Grand Canal between Hangzhou and Beijing. The Grand Canal eventually reached 1200 miles in length, 40 paces in width, and of sufficient depth to accommodate boats carrying 800 tons. The Grand Canal facilitated the flow of taxes paid in grain from the south to the imperial capital in the north. This Sui northern capital was situated in situated in Chang’an, close to modern day Xian.
Chinese Culturalism and Historical Themes in Today’s China
Shaolin Monastery
By the end of the Sui Dynasty, China had undergone periods of fragmentation and reunification, yet this instability increasingly did not threaten the overall cultural cohesiveness of the Chinese nation. The foundation of this cultural cohesiveness was Confucianism. Buddhism and Daoism also influenced Chinese thinking, as did the militaristic values of the Legalist thinkers. These values, which formed the cultural heritage of Chinese civilization, were shared through government examinations (although these were intermittently discontinued). Instituting empire-wide exams meant that the ruling elite all learned from the same body of work whose knowledge then trickled down to the general population. These cultural traditions were reinforced through the continued collection and sharing of historical writings and the literature of China’s past. They were also bolstered through the development of new art forms such as Chinese opera.
This cultural tradition underpinned the Chinese people’s self-understanding and shaped its foreign policy until its increasingly difficult encounters with the Western world during the 1800s. The Chinese distinguished themselves from non-Chinese in large part by their adoption of the norms, values and customs of their cultural tradition, as opposed to defining themselves strictly by race or by being a people originating from any specific geographical territory.
Another dynastic theme seen in China today is the resurgence of Buddhism after its decades of suppression under the Communists. The return of Buddhism is most visible in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and in the large cities. Tibetan areas of China remain overwhelmingly Buddhist, particularly among the native population. Many previously destroyed monasteries throughout China are being rebuilt, a notable example being the Shaolin monastery, although some of this reconstruction is also motivated by tourism. Although accurate numbers are still difficult to come by, it is estimated that there were approximately 244 million Buddhist in China 2012. There is also an increase in the publication of Buddhist literature of all kinds, both by the monasteries themselves and by independent presses.
Farmer working her plot, Yunnan Province
Land reform has certainly been a persistent theme in China’s modern history. The 1950s Communist redistribution of land from wealthy landholders to peasant farmers was remarkably like the Equal Field System that was first introduced during the Sui dynasty. China’s further redistribution of land after the failure of the collectivized commune system reflected the recognition that agricultural productivity was highest when peasants were farming for themselves as opposed farming for wealthy landholders or for the Communist state. Today, land distribution issues are often controversial as China’s massive infrastructure projects have forced million people from their homes, often without adequate compensation.
The migration of Chinese into the south of the country began a development that would eventually turn the southeast region of China, especially from the Tang and Song Dynasties onward, into one of China’s strongest economic regions. It remains so today. Guangdong province, for instance, in China’s southeast, is currently the most populous province in China and, since 1989, its GDP has been the highest of all provincial regions. In 2019, Guangdong GDP exceeded 9 trillion yuan or $1.3 trillion dollars which was approximately the size of Australia’s entire GDP.
What Happened Next?
The end of the Sui allowed for the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, considered by many Chinese to be the height of their civilization. After three centuries of cultural development that included the revival of Confucianism, the Tang was replaced by the Song, a relatively weak dynasty that succumbed to foreign invasion.
References
Part IV – The Silk Road – Cosmopolitan and Confucian Revival: Tang Dynasty 618 – 907 CE & Song Dynasty 960 – 1279 CE
/in Dynastic History of China /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
Camels were often used to move goods through the deserts of the Silk Road
As the Tang Dynasty strengthened after the fall of the Sui Dynasty in 618 CE, it confronted what was becoming a familiar set of challenges for all Chinese emperors wishing to consolidate control over a unified China. These challenges included managing the power struggles of court where eunuchs, concubines, official-scholars, and royal family members all jockeyed for power and control. In addition, they had to keep tax coffers filled through high agricultural productivity and maintain a strong military in order to defend northern borders while preventing that same military from challenging imperial authority. Added to all of this was the threat of regional power growth, the execution of large public works for the benefit of the entire Chinese society, and the maintenance of moral cultural authority in order to earn the loyalty of its subjects. As ever, it was a tall order.
The underpinning of this moral cultural authority was increasingly challenged during the Tang and Song Dynasties as the Chinese encountered greater cultural diversity than they had in previous eras. Specifically, the Tang court was one of the most cosmopolitan courts in all of China’s history. During the Tang Dynasty, the Silk Road flourished and sea trade with Southeast Asia developed as more and more Chinese migrated south. The influence of Buddhism continued to grow, causing in turn a revival of Daoist thought and study. In 1127 CE, the Song Dynasty in the north was ultimately overrun by nomadic tribes, causing the Chinese courts to flee south. Yet, despite all of these international influences, China continually returned to the values of its ancient Confucian culture as the best way to create a homogeneous, unified, prosperous and stable society.
Tang Dynasty 618-907 – Reform
Expensive and failed military campaigns against the northern part of what is now Korea led to excessive tax increases which eventually caused revolt against the Sui Dynasty. Li Yuan, a major military Sui commander, eventually turned against the Sui and conquering the country for himself. He founded the Tang Dynasty in 618. It took until 624 for all of China to come under his rule. Once reunification had been achieved, Li Yuan demobilized his armies, preventing the rise of powerful regional generals that, much as he had done, might lay claim to the throne. Powerful southern families were forced to move north and the Sui’s “rule of avoidance” was implemented, so that no official could serve in his home district. The first Tang emperor continued the equal field system, ensuring that land was allocated equally to adult male taxpayers based on an annual census.
Buddhist monk practicing in China today
One of Li Yuan’s more controversial policies was his attempt to limit the power of the Buddhist and Daoist centers which were formerly beyond the reach of imperial tax collection. Exemption from taxation enabled the monasteries to establish huge landholdings and large numbers of tenant farmers. From Li Yuan’s point of view, these great religious estates transcended political boundaries, threatened the new regime, and represented a potentially significant tax base which could be used to restore depleted imperial coffers. By mid-626, the Emperor ordered that only one Daoist and three Buddhist monasteries were permitted in the capital and only one of each faith in each prefecture. This was a spectacular restriction given that it was estimated that within the capital and surrounding areas alone were over 120 Buddhist and 12 Taoist monasteries. Yet the order was never fully enacted. Li Yuan was deposed by his second son, Tang Taizong, who reversed his father’s order.
Building on the civil and military achievements of his father, Tang Taizong embarked on a program of civil reform tempered by Confucian principles. He also launched military campaigns which succeeded in expanding the territorial boundaries of the empire. At the heart of the civil reform was the expansion of the Sui’s legal reform. The result was the creation of a far-reaching legal code, the oldest surviving code in China today. The Tang code persisted as the foundation of Chinese legal practice until the 14th century. It also served as model legal codes for Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
The Tang Dynasty – Innovation
Replica of an ancient Chinese mechanical clock
The Tang Dynasty – The Silk Road
Silkroutes
The Silk Road thrived under the Tang Dynasty. As the camels and caravans traversed west and east, traders brought many foreign ideas and goods into China. This international exposure made the Tang court one of the most cosmopolitan in China’s history. Buddhism also flourished under the Tang. The Dynasty generously supported Buddhist monasteries and commissioned further Buddhist sculptures. The renowned Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, made a 17-year trip to India to bring back to China Buddhist scriptures and teaching. His work provided the Chinese with a deeper understanding of the religion and the differences of the different Buddhists schools. His journey was later recounted in the famous Chinese fiction work Journey to the West.
Due in part to the Tang’s nomadic influences, women were given a relatively high status during the Tang Dynasty. One of China’s most powerful women, Empress Wu, ascended the dynastic throne in 690 as emperor, the only female in China to formally take the title Emperor. She ruled until 705.
Tang Poetry and Art
Tang-era poet Du Fu
Poetry became increasingly important in the Tang era. It was viewed as the most authentic and revealing way to articulate feelings and thoughts. Poems were recited at banquets, used to court women, recorded people’s daily activities, and described historic events or scenes of natural beauty. The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty contains over 48,000 poems written by 2200 Tang poets. Three Hundred Tang Poems contains samples from all the great Tang poets, including two of China’s greatest poets Li Bo and Du Fu. In fact, many Chinese consider the Tang to be the height of their civilization, particularly culturally. Tang-era costume dramas are frequently shown on Chinese TV. China towns in the West are often referred to by Chinese people as Tangren Jie meaning “Tang people’s street”.
What life was like for the subjects of the Tang who lived far from the imperial capital has been revealed, in part, by a large number of documents found in a cave temple at Dunhuang, in the northwest of China where the Silk Road starts to cross the desert. These documents showed that Tang imperial policies, such as the equal field system, were established even in the far reaches of its empire. The documents also revealed that the state exerted at least some control over local markets, as fragments of official price lists showed that authorities established prices for three qualities of a wide range of goods traded in government-supervised markets, including foodstuffs and textiles. Primary books found with the documents showed that Confucian social ethics primers were used even in schools run by Buddhist monasteries.
Northern Song Dynasty 960-1127 – Northern Rebellion, Regionalism and Reunification
Emperor fleeing the rebellion of An Lushan 755
Period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms
The fifty years between the Tang and Song dynasties is called the ‘Period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms’ because of the five fleeting regimes in the North and the 10 minor kingdoms competing for power in the South. Interestingly, the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms was marked by renewed militarism. Indeed, in order to gain advantage and build large, loyal armies, some generals shared his family name with his soldiers. This practice allowed military generals to build up an elite army of adopted sons whose kinship was not given by birth, but was earned through sharing the hardship in achieving a common goal.
China Reunified – Founding of the Song Dynasty
Song Taizu founder of the Song Dynasty
One of Taizu’s biggest achievements was to disband the regional armies that had plagued the Tang. After Taizu had consolidated control, he encouraged commanders to retire on generous pensions and gradually replaced provincial military governors with civil officials. To avert the rise of new regional strongmen, the Emperor eventually put the whole army under civilian control and ensured that his officers were regularly rotated. Despite this military reorganization and because the Song deemphasize the importance of the military, the Song was constantly challenged by northern nomads. By 1004, a northern nomadic tribe, the Khitans, managed to occupy much of the Yellow River Valley, forcing the Song to sign a peace treaty with the nomads as equals. In exchange for retreating from the lands surrounding the Yellow River Valley, the nomads extorted huge annual payments from the Chinese in silk and silver, which placed enormous pressure on imperial resources.
The creation of the Song Dynasty was accompanied by more favorable climatic conditions. From 960 to 1250, China enjoyed a stronger and wetter monsoon which meant in turn greater agricultural productivity. However, while China was enjoying a return to normal rain levels, tree ring data indicates that the North Mongolian steppes lands underwent significant periods of reduced rainfall extending between 900-1064, 1115-39, and 1180-90. These periods of diminished rainfall resulted in an increase in nomadic incursions into China.
Weaknesses of the Song Imperial Governments
Despite its efforts at military reform, and its ample supply of worthy emperors and statesmen, the Song Dynasty faced two main weaknesses. The arrival of printing allowed bureaucratic regulation to multiply, so that governing and reforming the government became increasingly cumbersome. For example, rules about the use of one imperial ritual hall filled 1200 volumes. Court struggles also hindered effective rule. Disputes among officials seeking to influence the Emperor often escalated; each party lined up allies, and focused their energies on devising ways to oust their opponents. Eunuchs, concubines, and members of the emperor’s extended family constantly vied for power and advantage, often at the expense of what was best for the country.
Song’s Flourishing Economy
Song Dynasty coin
The Southern Song Dynasty 1127-1279 – Cultural Conservatism and Foot Binding
Drawing of a bound foot with broken arch and bent under toes
Expanding Southern Song Economy
Song Dynasty red lacquer tray with gold engraving
The invention of the printing press also helped fuel economic growth and served to tie the distant regions of China more closely together, China’s northern occupation notwithstanding. Printing also contributed to the spread and standardization of ideas and practices. Handbooks on agriculture, childbirth, pharmacy, divination and Daoist rituals all became more widely available.
The Song’s invention of the compass helped the expansion of long-distance trade between China, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. The compass is considered one of China’s four greatest inventions and was symbolically acknowledged during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics along with paper, the printing press and gunpowder. Sea trade from China’s southeast coast to India introduced many spices into the Chinese diet, including pepper, cloves and saffron, and generated additional economic growth.
Southern Song Art
Song Dynasty landscape painting
The Past in the Present – Historical Themes in Today’s China
Scene from Journey to the West, Summer Palace, Beijing
The Tang Dynasty remains a source of pride among Chinese today, viewed as the high point in Chinese civilizational development and responsible for the invention of one of China’s four great inventions, block printing. Some of the most popular television series in China today are set in the Tang Dynasty era and Journey to the West is one of the most enduring stories in China’s history, with myriad adaptations on stage and screen.
Just as it was difficult for the elite of the Tang and Song dynasties, today maintaining control over China’s provinces as the Chinese economy expands remains a key challenge for Chinese leaders. As China has transformed from a communist to a largely-capitalist economy, it has ceded much control to its regional centers. This growth in regional provincial power has manifested in many ways, the most important of which may be the challenges Beijing has encountered when trying to force national legislation at the local level. An improving but still insufficient legal system and lack of press freedoms has meant that it has sometimes been tricky for Beijing to exert its authority, especially over more wealthy areas. Growing inequality as a result of its rapid economic expansion has also caused regional dissatisfaction, as poor regions see already-wealthier regions get even richer, while they struggle to feed, employ, and educate their populations.
Women with bound feet, Beijing 1900
What Happened Next?
After being driven south by the northern frontier nomadic peoples, the Song were eventually defeated by a Mongol army led by Kublai Khan, grandson of the great Genghis Khan. Kublai established the first non-Han Chinese led dynasty, the Yuan. He also expanded Chinese territory to include Tibet and what is now Xinjiang, giving the Yuan Dynasty borders very close to the China we see today. The story continues in The Mongol Empire.
References
Part V – The Mongol Empire: Yuan Dynasty 1279 – 1368
/in Dynastic History of China /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
Map of the Mongol Empire
Before the Yuan – Conquest of Northern China by the Tribal Dynasties of the Liao and Jin 907-1234
Over the course of four centuries, parts of China were increasingly conquered by nomads who each formed their own dynasties – the Khitan’s Liao Dynasty, (907-1125), the Jurchen’s Jin Dynasty (1125-1234), climaxing with the Mongol’s Yuan Dynasty (1234-1368) which eventually encompassed all of China when the Southern Song finally capitulated to the Mongol conquest in 1276.
Mongol soldiers training for battle
During the time leading to the formation of the Yuan Dynasty, the changing border zone between the steppe and China-proper was a large, fluid frontier settled by both nomads and ethnic Chinese where differences of ethnicity and ways of life between the two were not always clear-cut. Frontier non-Chinese might remain as herdsman, or they might become farmers or soldiers in Chinese military units, while the ethnic Chinese continued farming, engaged in forced government service, or served in the military, much as they had in the past. Some non-Chinese viewed themselves as part of their ethnic tribe, while others acknowledged the Chinese government and assimilated into the Chinese population.
The nomads’ ultimate success in conquering and ruling China derived in part from the skills and experience they acquired co-habituating with the Han Chinese in these frontier areas. The Khitan, for example, adopted hereditary succession on the Chinese model so that son would succeed father. They also adopted many governing institutions from Chinese practices. Ultimately, the reigning elite of the Khitan became culturally ambidextrous, adroit in both Khitan and Chinese ways. Nevertheless, they remained distinct from the Chinese population, predominantly preserving their tribal customs.
Khitans hunting with eagles
The Khitans were eventually brought down by the Jurchens, a tribal people originating in the mountains of eastern Manchuria whose descendants would later found the Qing Dynasty. The Jurchens’ military success derived in part from their use of Chinese experts in military siege warfare. Like the Khitans before them, the Jurchens found that Chinese political institutions were effective not only at ruling the Chinese majority, but also at controlling their own nobles. Unlike the Khitans, the Jurchens were quick to adopt Chinese language, dress, and rituals. Nevertheless, by the 1100s, there was a growing backlash from some Jurchen elite against the Jurchen’s increasing adoption of Chinese ways. In 1161, for instance, Jurchen military commanders executed the Jin emperor and then implemented efforts to revitalize the Jurchen heritage, including the use of Jurchen as a written language, the translation of Confucian classics into Jurchen, civil service examinations testing mastery of Jurchen and punishment of those Jurchens practicing Chinese customs. Despite these efforts, sinification of the Jurchens continued. By the end of the Jin dynasty, most Jurchens spoke Chinese, wore Chinese clothes, had adopted Chinese-style surnames and had married with the local population.
Yuan Dynasty 1279-1368 – International Dynastic Court, Silk Road, Western Contact and Marco Polo
While the Jin Dynasty had successfully managed to conquer and rule Northern China, they never fully managed to pacify the Mongolian steppe. This was to prove their downfall. When a drop in the mean annual temperature reduced the supply of steppe grass for grazing animals, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan solved his people’s subsistence crisis by attacking the Jurchens.
Ghengis Khan
Coronation of Ghengis Khan
Ghengis’ career as the Great Khan, or Mongolian overlord, began in 1206 when he was selected by a Mongolian assembly of military leaders. Genghis proceeded to organize Mongolian society into one of the most effective military machines the world has ever known. He built his army on diverse units of 1,000 horsemen whose members included varied tribal affiliations. He also created an elite bodyguard of 10,000 sons and brothers of commanders, which served directly under him. To minimize internal strife under his command, he created simple but draconian laws; robbery, for instance, was punished by death. Despite being illiterate, in order to communicate his orders more effectively, he also started to employ the Uyghur script to write the Mongol language.
Capable of enduring extreme privation, and travelling at astonishing speeds, his Mongols were superb warriors. Most of his soldiers travelled with several ponies and all were expected to shoot accurately at full gallop. Using terror effectively, Ghengis’ troops looted resisting cities. Genghis Khan was said to have declared that there is no greater joy than slaughtering one’s enemies, taking their horses and cattle and raping their women. Cities that did not resist were left untouched. Those that resisted were devastated. When the Mongol armies first swept across the North China plain in 1212-1213, for instance, Ghengis’ armies left 90 cities in rubble. When Ghengis captured Zhongdu (roughly present day Beijing) in 1215, it was said to have burned for more than a month.
Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan
By 1226, Ghengis was close to defeating the Jin in Northern China when he unexpectedly died. As a result, the Mongols halted their advancement to select a new Khan, as all Khans needed to be decided by assembly. In 1234, the Mongols finally defeated the Jin and took control of northern China. By 1253, the Mongols began to advance on the south. This military assault was led by Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai, among others. The Song raised large armies to fight the Mongols and employed the best available military technology, including simple handguns, rockets and flamethrowers. Both sides had sophisticated military catapults which hurled incendiaries and other loads. Nevertheless, the Song’s lack of horses proved a major disadvantage. Without a large cavalry force to face its enormously mobile enemies, Song defenders were largely restricted to positional warfare, fighting behind enormous fortressed walls. These were easily isolated. For a time, such fortresses blocked Mongol access to parts of the Song-held interior. Yet, by 1279, Kublai Khan had conquered all of southern China. In total, the Mongols numbered no more than 1.5 million. Their ultimate success derived in part by their willingness to incorporate other ethnic groups into their armies and government. In their efforts to conquer the Jurchens, for instance, the Mongols recruited both the Khitan and Chinese. Regardless of their ethnic group, those who served the Mongols faithfully were repaid with both wealth and position.
Having conquered China, Kublai Khan proclaimed himself the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty and the rightful recipient of the Mandate of Heaven. Kublai Khan formed a court that practiced both Mongol and Chinese traditions. He employed Confucian ministers, created a Chinese style government, adopted a dynastic calendar and chose the name Yuan from The Book of Changes, the classical work esteemed by the Chinese. Nevertheless, Kublai and his court, like the Khitans before them, purposely avoided many Chinese social and political practices. The Mongol elite conducted their business in Mongolian and passed their summers in Mongolia. Mongols were discouraged from marrying Chinese, and Kublai himself took only Mongol women into the palace. Some Mongol princes erected their tents in the palace grounds as opposed to sleeping in palace accommodation. Mongols also continued to choose the rulers by competition, which was often bloody.
Kublai encouraged the creation of an international Chinese court culture where officials spoke Mongolian, Persian and Turkic dialects as well as Chinese. He also encouraged the creation of a highly international official cuisine, which reflected influences from the regions throughout the extended Mongolian empire. In terms of religion, Kublai Khan preferred native religious practices focused on shamanism, rain–making, and fertility magic, but he also showed royal patronage and support to the Chinese Daoists and Buddhist missionaries from Tibet. In particular, Tibetan Buddhism grew rapidly during the Yuan Dynasty.
Begtse, Protector of Mongolian Buddhism
The ethnic hierarchy of the Yuan’s diverse society was particularly complex. The Mongols enjoyed the most advantage, followed by the allies of the Mongols from areas outside China such as the Uyghurs and Tibetans. Former subjects of the Jin such as the Jurchens, sinified Khitans, and the Jin Chinese had second position. At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the former subjects of the Song. Each of the ethnic groups experienced different methods of taxation, judicial process and appointments to office. The Chinese from the North, for instance, were taxed in ways that reflected Jin practices, whereas the Chinese in the south were taxed in accordance with Song precedents. Each ethnic group was also judged and sentenced according to its own legal traditions. The Chinese, for instance, were the only ethnic group to be tattooed if convicted of theft.
Other ethnic divisions reflected the Mongols efforts to maintain dominance over the Chinese majority. The Chinese were not allowed to own weapons or to gather in public. It was also illegal for them to trade in bamboo, as it was used to make bows and arrows. If a Mongol murdered a Chinese, he was usually freed by paying a fine. If a Chinese murdered a Mongol, however, he was subject to severe penalties, usually execution.
Chinese Traditions to rule Chinese People
Yuan-era Temple of Mencius, Confucius most important follower
Although it would not have been the first choice of the Chinese to be ruled by ‘barbarians’, Confucianism argued that being a Barbarian was not in itself a barrier to receiving the Mandate of Heaven. The Chinese belief in their own superiority emanated not so much from a sense of ethnic supremacy, but from one of cultural pre-eminence. If the barbarians adopted Chinese ways – Confucian values, ancestor worship, Chinese civil bureaucracy and Chinese clothes and customs – they could become superior just like the ethnic Han Chinese.
However, neither the Khitans nor the Mongols became fully sinified. The Mongols were able to finesse this to some extent because ancestor worship stated that one’s obligations to one’s forebears meant that it would be a violation a filial piety if a sinified barbarian’s ancestors were not accorded the greatest respect. Worshipping with respect often meant that the barbarians needed to preserve and to worship in a manner that was consistent with their ancestral traditions. The Confucian obligation of loyalty to one’s ruler also tended to foster obedience to the barbarian emperors.
Nevertheless, many Han Chinese scholar-elites engaged in a desperate struggle to save Chinese civilization from what they viewed as the corrupting forces of their barbarian rulers. The Mongols’ policies favoring other ethnic groups over the Chinese further aroused Chinese ethnic consciousness and hostility. Yet, while the concept of a Chinese ethnic identity was undoubtedly developed and explored during this time, these explorations were still far from the equivalent of modern nationalism. Loyalty to one’s ruler remained, to many, the higher virtue.
Trade and the Silk Road
Dunhuang, Gansu Province, once a major stop on the Silk Road
Westerners Come to China – Marco Polo
Marco Polo statue in Hangzhou, China
Increasingly, Western clerics and important trading families began visiting China. Although the facts of Marco Polo’s visit to China are still hotly debated, there is evidence to suggest that Marco Polo spent 17 years in Kublai’s China from 1275-1292. Whatever the actual extent of Polo’s exposure to China, he later wrote about his (fictional or non-fictional) travels in a book which became very popular in the West. It also served as an important contribution to Western understanding of China for centuries to come.
The Art of the Yuan Dynasty
Vase, Yuan Dynasty
The art of the Yuan Dynasty blended Chinese and other traditions. Porcelain production thrived during this era, with cobalt blue, the official color of the imperial court, dominating porcelain design. This porcelain became widely sought after as far away as Europe. In fact, its trade represented the first international art craze. Another significant cultural development in Mongol times was secular literature. Vernacular drama thrived – being written in the vernacular made it accessible to the illiterate – and some 167 Yuan plays survive today. Vernacular fiction also became increasingly popular, made available to a wide range of people through cheap printed editions. Yuan opera – four or five act dramatic operas – were also developed. They used mime, song, dance, and acrobatics to tell stories of love, war and politics.
Kublai Khan’s Death
Kublai Khan ruled China for 23 years. The 30 years following his death in 1294 marked the high points of Mongol rule in China. During this time, the Mongol government continued to be effective, and the Mongols had few enemies. This situation changed as conflict between members of the Mongol ruling elite, and a series of unimpressive emperors limited the Mongols’ ability to effectively rule. Climate change also worked against the dynasty. Between 1295-97, 1324-30 and 1342-45 China’s climate deteriorated drastically. Professor Brook of the University of British Columbia identified these three periods as part of what he called the Nine Sloughs, where climatic factors combined over several years in a sustained way to have catastrophic effects on the population. Globally, temperatures fell precipitously from 1270 onward as the Medieval Warm Period ended and the Little Ice Age began to extend its icy grip. Additionally, within China itself, during a famine in 1286, approximately 25% of China’s grain was lost at sea during its transport from southern China to northern China. The sea route was being used as the Grand Canal had fallen into disrepair. Additionally, in 1295, there was significant flooding along the Yangtze River. In 1296, both the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers broke through their levees causing disastrous flooding along their banks. In 1297, the Dynasty was plagued by locusts. In 1303, China suffered severe earthquakes centered around Shanxi, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands and leaving many more homeless. These and other negative climatic events compromised the ability of the ruling Yuan Dynastic elite to maintain control and equilibrium throughout the Empire. They also caused people to consider whether they were an indication that the Yuan Dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Southern China, always a bastion of Chinese conservatism and the protector of Chinese cultural values, began to engage in passive resistance against the Mongols. Many Han elite refused to serve within the Mongol government, depriving it of much-needed cadres. Stoking the fires of popular resistance was the ubiquitous corruption that is common in all waning dynasties. Mongol favoritism of Tibetan Buddhists over Confucians also aggravated ethnic tensions. By the 1340s, bandits began to seize Southern Chinese towns and to form alliances with local elite to raise private armies. Eventually, sporadic rebellions gained enough momentum to precipitate the end of Mongol rule over China.
Dynastic Themes Present in China Today
Battle between Mongols and Chinese
The centrality of Confucianism to the Song Dynasty helped to sustain its rule in China-proper but served to leave it vulnerable to attack from the north. The disregard for military training at the expense of book learning may have been considered virtuous by Chinese elites, but a focus on scholarship resulted in a weak nation. This left China vulnerable to military defeat from a significantly smaller, but ultimately stronger military power. Though in present day China it can be argued that this is no longer a concern – China’s current relative military position cannot be compared with that of the Song’s – a similar error of judgment did occur during the Qing Dynasty, when it was assumed that the British could not be superior to the great Middle Kingdom. This misjudgment led to a series of costly military defeats.
Yet, despite the failings of Confucianism as a ruling ideology from the point of view of military preparedness, the success of the Yuan in subjugating the Chinese lay in the acknowledgement of Confucianism’s cultural value. This return to Confucianism as a cultural norm would also be echoed in the Qing Dynasty when another foreign race, the Manchus, conquered China and proceeded to rule the Dynasty for over three centuries.
Despite the Yuan Dynasty originating from the conquering of the Chinese by a barbarian force, Kublai Khan is considered in China to have been Chinese. That he was Mongolian is no barrier to his recognition as a Chinese Emperor, as Mongolians are seen as one of China’s official 56 ethnic groups. Furthermore, the shape of the Yuan Dynasty is extremely close to territory of the modern day People’s Republic of China and this is often cited by Chinese scholars and government officials as historical evidence that Tibet is an inalienable part of China. Whether or not this is an acceptable argument depends to some extent on whether one accepts the Yuan Dynasty as a Chinese Dynasty or if, as some argue, it should be considered a foreign occupation of Chinese lands.
What Happened Next?
The demise of the Mongol empire in China was concluded when Zhu Yuanzhang, a peasant-born military leader, drove the remnants of the Yuan back into the Mongolian grasslands. An autocratic regime followed. During the Ming Dynasty the Chinese ventured across the seas and discovered far off lands but elected not to engage in the kind of colonization favored by the European powers. Instead, eventually the Ming Dynasty turned in on itself, ushering in a period of isolation from international influence. The story continues in Exploration, Consolidation, Isolation.
References
Part VI – Exploration, Consolidation, Isolation: Ming Dynasty 1368 – 1644
/in Dynastic History of China /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
Zhu Yuanzhang founder of the Ming Dynasty
By the mid-1300s, local rebellions had broken out in large parts of Yuan China. Into this increasingly unstable China, the Ming Dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang, better known by his temple name Taizu, was born into a poor peasant family. Taizu was familiar with poverty through firsthand experience. His parents regularly moved to look for work or to avoid rent collectors. They were forced to give away several of their children because they could not afford to raise them. When Taizu was sixteen in 1344, the Yellow River flooded, causing famine and disease which took the lives of both his parents. At first, he sought refuge in a Buddhist monastery. When the Buddhist temple was destroyed by the Yuan military, Taizu joined a rebel group which fought against the Yuan rule. Taizu rose rapidly to military commander, and eventually recaptured Shangdu, the Yuan capital, located close to today’s Beijing. He drove the Mongols back into the northern grasslands in 1368, founding the Ming dynasty. He became the second peasant in all of Chinese history to become emperor.
The First Ming Emperor Taizu 1368-1398
Conservative Confucian Revival, Imperial Consolidation and the Ming Code
Ming-era drawing of Confucius and his students
On founding the Ming dynasty, Taizu proclaimed the Mandate of Heaven for himself. Taizu was shrewd, hard-working and ruthless. Influence by Daoist notions of heavenly autocrats, Taizu endeavored to exalt the role of Emperor. He wished to create a dynasty where subjects obeyed their superiors, and where those who committed crimes were promptly punished. He called for a conservative restoration of Confucian order. He denounced the Mongols for their failure to respect Chinese moral standards, both in their familial relations and in their political practices. In particular, he condemned the Mongol marriage institution by which a widow was passed to other members of the husband’s family. Taizu was also against the constant succession struggles that marked Mongol power. He outlawed the many unorthodox cults that had thrived during the end of the Yuan Dynasty, instead encouraging Confucian social hierarchy, particularly filial piety and undivided loyalty to the emperor. At the same time, however, the Ming Dynasty held possessively the new frontiers which the Mongols had conquered.
Taizu was committed to seeing that the people of China should not have to experience the poverty of his family and worked sympathetically to improve the plight of the poor. He collected villages into self-regulating units of 110 households and made village elders responsible for tax collection and records, as the first step toward allocating service and tax liabilities more fairly. He cut government expenses wherever he could in order to reduce tax burdens further. The two million strong army, for instance, was made largely self-supporting by allocating land to soldiers’ families to farm. Taizu also established local schools so that the sons of commoners could learn to read and write. His work was advanced by decades of relatively climate weather.
His peasant background made him wary of official scholars. Taizu passed legislation that centralized political control, creating a significant expansion of imperial power at the expense of civil officialdom. He imposed high tax rates on the rich and forced thousands of wealthy families from the Southeast to settle elsewhere, especially in the capital. In order to repopulate areas devastated by warfare, famine and disease, Taizu ordered great numbers of Chinese people to relocate from the south to the north. He was ruthless to those subordinate officials he distrusted, executing over 100,000 people during his 30-year rule. Unable to have confidence in any Prime Minister, Taizu dealt directly with officials on matters large and small. Like the first Emperor of the Qin, Taizu worked through huge piles of paperwork daily.
Ming-era painting of rice farming
By the early 1400s, some 200,000 soldier-farmers brought an additional 350,000 acres under the plow. In the frontier areas, the Ming government followed a policy of dual administration. Places with large Han populations were governed by nationwide Ming law codes and tax regulations. In places where native tribes were clearly in control, the Ming identified tribal rulers as hereditary chieftains. The tribal chiefs were expected to maintain order and were required to help the Ming if nearby tribes were problematic and were to send tribute in return for which the tribal chief would receive significant gifts in exchange.
Despite the mutual benefits of this system to both local chiefs and the Ming government, violent conflict between settlers and indigenous populations was not uncommon.
An enduring Ming achievement was the Great Ming Code known as the Da Ming Lu of 1397. The code had 460 articles organized by sections on personnel, revenue, rites, military affairs, penal affairs and public works. The code was conceived to maintain an idealized social hierarchy, so the punishments were most severe for those who transgressed their superiors. Wishing to consolidate social stability, it was legislated that the code never be altered. The code underpinned a Ming government that at the time was the largest and most rationally organized administrative system in the world. The government was divided into parallel military and civil hierarchies, where civil officials were recruited through the traditional examination system, and military officials were recruited through a combination of examinations and heredity.
Taizu’s new dynasty faced two major challenges. Its capital on the Yangtze River was far from the northern border where potential rivals essentially had a free hand. The court’s many imperial princes could also prove a threat to the throne as, for some, their hunger for power was greater than their loyalty to the emperor. Taizu’s solution was to legislate that only the oldest son, the heir apparent, was allowed to stay in the capital, with the rest being sent to frontier regions where they participated in defense and oversaw the military commanders on the emperor’s behalf. Yet, when the heir apparent died before becoming emperor, the ensuing struggle for power led to civil war. Zhu Di, a senior surviving uncle, eventually won the throne and took the reigning name Yongle – meaning Eternal Happiness.
Ming Emperor Zhu Di – The Yongle Emperor
Forbidden City, Grand Canal, Zheng He’s Naval Voyages and Consolidation Inward
Forbidden City, Beijing
In order to bolster his legitimacy domestically, and to enhance China’s standing internationally by demonstrating China’s wealth and power overseas, Yongle created what was the largest naval fleet in the world. Under a Chinese Muslim, Admiral Zheng He, Yongle sent his fleet on seven expeditions between 1405-1433, ranging as far away as Arabia and Africa, and perhaps even as far away as North and South America (exactly how far the fleet went remains a matter of historical debate). The world today may have been a very different place if Yongle used his fleet to conquer and control foreign territory, as the Europeans did 200 years later, instead of using it to create diplomatic engagement and exchange.
Grand Canal
Yongle also personally led five military campaigns into Mongolia where he was eventually killed. After his death, Ming power was never again projected into Mongolia, and the Ming defense policy against the northern “barbarians” shifted instead to a reliance on static walls, fortifications and outposts. For example, the Great Wall was significantly rebuilt and extended during this period and many of the most famous sections that still exist today were constructed during this time.
Yongle’s diplomatic sea voyages were discontinued due to expense and due to a general closing inward of court policy. Instead, the Ming consolidated its foreign relations around the tributary system where vassal states recognized Chinese superiority and where China recognized paternalistic obligations to come to the aid of loyal vassal states. The Ming made good on these paternal obligations, sometimes at considerable cost. In 1407, for instance, the Ming sent military assistance to Vietnam to bolster the collapsing Tran Dynasty. Faced with a rapidly deteriorating situation, the Ming tried to annex the territory outright, but was forced to retreat due to widespread armed resistance.
Ming-era Commentaries of the Analects of Confucius
Nevertheless, the examinations continued to provide Chinese citizens with real opportunity for advancement. In order to ensure that the richest areas of the country did not monopolize the civil service, provincial quotas were instituted. As importantly, the Ming added a lower tier to the degree system, thus greatly expanding the numbers of degree holders. By the 16th century, there were over 100,000 government students, about one out of every 3-400 adult males. These men dressed in demarcated caps and sashes, were freed from labor service and were sometimes given incomes. Their titles distinguish them as community leaders and enabled them better access to jobs if their needs so required.
The Ming Dynasty after Yongle
Foreign Trade, Growing Population, European Missionaries, Court Struggles and Financial Stress
After Yongle died, foreign trade slowly continued to grow. China’s population more than doubled during the Ming dynasty, from between 60-80 million to between 150-200 million. Small market towns emerged all over the country. Regional specialization rose as villages benefited from the availability of cheap water transport to engage in cash cropping. By the 17th century, the Yangtze River Delta area had become the center for cotton and silk production, coastal Fujian specialized in tobacco and sugarcane, and Jiangxi was known for its porcelain manufacturing. This market-driven economic activity occurred despite a continued Confucian suspicion of profit and governmental disregard of economic growth beyond the state’s narrow objectives.
Peanuts, first introduced to China during the Ming Dynasty, are still farmed in China today
This international sea trade was, at times, hampered by both Japanese and Chinese piracy. By the mid-1500s, European traders also became more influential in China’s trade system. By 1557, the Portuguese had established a permanent trading post on Macao. The Spanish took possession of the Philippines in the 1570s, and a large Sino-Spanish trade was established in Manila. By 1622, the Dutch had established a base on the island of Taiwan from which they raided the Chinese coast and looted Chinese ships. The English and Japanese also stepped up their own efforts to expand their maritime trade.
Jesuit Missionary in China
The development of European trade and piracy in the region also brought with them European missionaries intent on converting the Chinese to Christianity. This was particularly true of the Catholic Jesuits. As part of their missionary, the Jesuits engaged in an exchange of knowledge with the Chinese court. The Jesuits sought an understanding of the history, geography, languages and literatures of the East, while seeking to spread Christianity and the best of European culture. China benefitted from learning about advances in Western science and technology.
By making parallels between the Chinese worship of one Supreme Being which the Chinese called the King of Heaven, Catholic Jesuits argued that the Chinese could continue their own rites and rituals, particularly ancestor worship, while converting to Christianity. Their efforts at conversion might have significantly succeeded if a series of Papal Bulls issued from 1704-1742 did not condemn Chinese Rites and forbid any further accommodation of Chinese tradition. Nevertheless by 1700, there were an estimated 200,000 Christians within China.
By the beginning of the 1600s, the fabric of the Ming dynasty was beginning to fray. Age-old infighting between scholar-officials and eunuchs once again increasingly paralyzed the court. In 1625 for instant, the eunuch Wei Zhongxian gained significant influence. He had thousands of scholar-officials jailed, tortured and killed. Greater urbanization, increased literacy, and an expanding publishing industry created greater social mobility. It also fueled a dynamic which both questioned and undermined existing neo-Confucian orthodoxies. A rapid rise in population also put stress on the social fabric. Perhaps most problematically, the Ming court was locked into the idea of preserving a golden age of agrarian, Confucian simplicity in a world that was beginning to change rapidly around them.
Compounding these issues was the fact that the Ming Dynasty was becoming increasingly bankrupt by the turn of the seventeenth century. Ming government expenses increased as its population and as its bureaucracy became less efficient. Additionally, maintaining the imperial clan was increasingly ruinous. In 1619, for example, 23,000 clansmen were given incomes. Military campaigns were also a huge drain. Between 1592-1598, China launched a massive campaign into Korea in order to defend it against a Japanese invasion, eventually costing the treasury 26,000,000 ounces of silver.
Eunuchs living in the Forbidden City were castrated
These fiscal problems were aggravated by the collapse of silver flows into the country. In 1639, the Japanese refused to let traders from Macau into Nagasaki, eliminating a large source of silver for China. A few months later, Sino-Spanish tensions interrupted the inflow of silver from trade with the Philippines. The interruption of the silver trade caused rapid deflation within the economy, leading to the hording of the silver that remained. This in turn led to the stockpiling of grain, creating artificial famines. Tax defaults became extensive as did peasant riots. In such difficult conditions, the Ming government failed to successfully collect its usual taxes, much less the additional revenue required to put down peasant rebellions and to address famine.
In 1642 a group of rebels cut the dikes of the Yellow River, killing several hundred thousand people by the ensuing flood and by the subsequent famine and disease. China’s population dropped by tens of millions during these decades. The rebels’ leader, Li Zicheng, eventually managed to capture Beijing, and in face of this defeat, the last Ming emperor hanged himself.
In order to combat the rebellion, the Ming military commander, Wu Sangui, requested the assistance of a formidable army of Manchu nomadic troops to help him reclaim Beijing. The Manchus were descendents of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty rulers who had captured North China during the Song Dynasty. Instead of retreating with the wealth they had been promised after having restored stability to Beijing, the Manchus claimed the Mandate of Heaven for themselves and proclaimed the creation of Qing Dynasty.
Dynastic Themes present in China Today
China’s north remained a continual preoccupation for Chinese leaders of the Ming dynasties. There was a constant need to protect China from Mongol and other nomadic incursions. One result of this was the resettlement of the imperial capital to Beijing, where the Forbidden City was constructed. Today, the Forbidden City is a UNESCO heritage site, and one of the most visited attractions in China. It is a powerful symbol of the importance of China’s dynastic past and the entrance gate, Tian’anmen, was the site from which Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Prestigious Peking University
While the second Ming emperor, Yongle, involved China in international expeditions, both in Mongolia and through extensive naval expeditions, subsequent emperors retreated within China’s borders, focusing instead on the propagation of the traditions of their ancestors. This point in China’s history proved to be pivotal as the Chinese lost a valuable opportunity to learn about the wider world and its threats. When the Chinese finally came face-to-face with global powers, they eventually succumbed to the greater firepower of the Europeans. That the Chinese had invented gunpowder centuries before the Europeans began to use it provides a stark illustration of their failure to use their early advances to prepare themselves for the world ahead.
However, there is another side to this story of apparent missed opportunity. The rise of China today has caused much concern in a rapidly changing economic and political world. Much debate has been given to China’s ultimate intentions. China’s expansionist territorial ambitions in the Islands in the East and South China Seas have raised much concern. That said, in Africa for example, China enjoys much credibility with former Western colonies, by promoting the narrative that, although it reached Africa with the largest naval force in the world of the 1400s, it never tried to conquer African land or enslave its people.
The Ming Court focused on preserving the past
As it was during the Ming dynasty, China’s engagement in the world today will be largely driven by economic concerns. It wishes to acquire resources and technology from abroad and to find markets for its products. Otherwise, one of its most important foreign policy principles – that no country should engage in the internal affairs of another country – reflects China’s overwhelming desire that its domestic affairs remain the preserve of Beijing alone; at least to some extent, this in turn acts as a restraint on China’s ability to interfere with the sovereignty of other nations.
What Happened Next?
The success of the Manchus in crushing the remnants of the Ming Dynasty led to the establishment of China’s second non-Han Chinese led dynasty, the Qing. Though it survived over two and a half centuries, it proved to be the last in China’s long dynastic history. A series of military defeats by foreign powers and concomitant internal rebellions precipitated the 1911 revolution that brought about China’s First Republic.
References
Part VII – China’s Last Dynasty: Qing Dynasty 1644 – 1911
/in Dynastic History of China /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
The Industrial Revolution caused Europeans to seek out raw materials and new markets
As China entered into the Qing Dynasty, the last of its long dynastic line, it became increasingly challenged by a desire to reaffirm traditional Confucian values while at the same time facing the pressures of a rapidly changing world. As the Manchus conquerors consolidated their minority rule over the country, they reaffirmed Chinese Confucian tradition in order to gain acceptance from the wider Han population. This desire to reassert traditional values was consistent with the desires of the Han Chinese themselves. Many Han Chinese believed that a lapse in Confucian values had been a key cause of the large-scale peasant revolt at the end of the Ming, and the reason why the Han Chinese once again lost the Mandate of Heaven to foreign barbarian invaders. Yet, as China tried fervently to recement historical traditions idealizing a harmonious, everlasting agrarian, hierarchical, patriarchal society, the world around them was quickly changing.
Driving this change was the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The Industrial Revolution caused European powers to become more assertive in their quest for increased international trade. From China, these powers desired porcelain, lacquer ware, silk and tea. While China was willing to engage in limited one-way trade, there was nothing from Europe that China wanted. Eventually, Europeans became impatient with the Qing’s imposed trade restrictions and with their growing trade deficit with China. Taking advantage of their military and technological superiority, the West increasingly forced China to engage in international trade on its terms, much to the significant harm of the country. This Western pressure, along with the challenges of managing significant population growth between the 1700s and the 1900s, eventually brought down the Qing Dynasty and ended dynastic history in China.
The first two Qing Emperors – Kangxi and Yongzheng
The Manchus, Chinese Traditions to rule the Chinese People, Tibet and Contact with Western Barbarians
17th Century painting of Manchu people hunting
Unlike other tribes living outside the Great Wall, the Manchus were not nomadic people. This meant that the Manchus had well-established military and administrative machinery that they could efficiently deploy throughout the country. Where the Chinese people capitulated peacefully to Manchu power, Chinese life and culture continued in peace and prosperity. Where the Chinese resisted Manchu rule, their populations were looted, raped and killed. After years of rebel peasant riots, many scholar-officials welcomed the stability of the Manchus. The one act of subservience required of the Chinese by the Manchus was to adopt the ‘queue’, the Manchu hairstyle in which the front part of the male head was shaved and the remaining hair was worn in a long braid in the back. While a seemingly insignificant gesture, the required shaved head and long braid was a constant reminder of Han subjugation to the Manchus. It took until 1681 before the last remnants of Ming loyalist resistance to Manchu rule were eradicated.
Qing-era silk production image shows workers with Manchu queue hair style
The Kangxi Emperor of the Manchus took control of the government in 1669 and held the throne for 60 years. He was considered to be one of the most effective emperors to ever rule China. As the Manchus made up less than 2% of China’s entire population, the trick for Kangxi was to consolidate his rule in a way that won the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. To this effect, Kangxi recruited committed Chinese officials to the bureaucracy and continued the traditional examination system. Hard-working, and a good judge of character, Kangxi valued and rewarded honesty. Chinese officials who refused to serve the Qing were honored as long as they did not engage in active resistance to his rule. In order to show his respect for Chinese culture, he commissioned the history of the Ming Dynasty, giving those reluctant to serve the Qing directly a way of being involved at court. Similarly, he patronized Chinese art, philosophy and poetry, and commissioned everything from the Kangxi Dictionary of Chinese to the Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty. He also instigated effective tax reform in 1712, replenishing the state treasury and creating a more egalitarian tax system.
Kangxi was a conqueror and an effective military leader. As such he successfully extended the Chinese empire northward and westward, creating borders with Korea and Russia which remain largely in place today. He occupied Tibet and led successful campaigns against the Mongols in Central Asia. Armed with cannons and other modern weapons, Kangxi was able to dominate the steppe nomads who were still armed with only bows and arrows. This military technological advantage effectively ended the millennia of military challenges by the northern barbarians, as the nomads were never again able to gain military superiority.
Painting of the Kangxi Emperor
As a ruler of a now multi-ethnic empire, Kangxi favored Tibetan Buddhism at home, while forming marriage alliances with Mongol princes and ensuring that his court demonstrated moral leadership in terms of Confucian values. Thus, through his political skill, sensitivity to his empire’s diverse cultures and his genuine dedication to Confucian values, Kangxi was able to transform Han resentment of the Manchus into acceptance and loyalty. Areas such as Tibet and the largely Muslim areas of central Asia were ruled lightly. The local population was permitted to maintain their own religious leaders, to keep their own dietary rules and to not wear the queue.
The Kangxi Emperor was also open to Western learning brought by the Christian Jesuits, who were welcomed at the Qing court. In particular, he was intrigued by their theories of astronomy, calendar calculations, mathematics, geography and military technology. Initially, Kangxi had a relaxed attitude toward Christianity and permitted churches to be built in the capital and provinces. The Jesuits were successful in converting many Chinese to Christianity by drawing parallels between Chinese and Christian traditions. However, when Pope Clement I ruled that Chinese folk religion and Confucian rites conflicted with Christian teaching, Kangxi banned Christian missions in China, although he kept the Jesuits at court, largely in secular functions.
St. Sophia Church, Qingdao China
Kangxi was succeeded by Yongzheng in 1736, followed by his son Qianlong. During the 13 years of his reign, Yongzheng undertook a comprehensive reform of the state tax system, enabling Qing fiscal policy to deliver a reliable revenue stream at the local and national levels. The historical system concentrated entirely on providing adequate funds for the central state. The administration of regional government expenses were left entirely up to regional officials which often created much opportunity for corruption. The new system gave local officials an understanding of the funds available to them so that they did not have to personally extract revenue from their populace in order to maintain roads or to carry out granary construction. Additionally, Yongzheng ruthlessly tried to rid his empire of widespread government corruption. Without Yongzheng’s tax reforms and his improvements to the bureaucracy, the prosperity of Qianlong’s reign would not have been possible.
Emperor Qianlong
Painting of Emperor Qianlong riding
Qianlong was emperor for 60 years. He abdicated one year short of his grandfather’s record 61-year reign in a gesture of filial piety, although he continued to retain significant power until his death four years later. Qianlong effectively creating the borders of today’s China by consolidating Qing rule in Tibet, and extending Qing control further west into Mongol regions of Chinese Turkestan – today’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Like his grandfather before him, Qianlong presented different images to the varied ethnic groups within his empire. To the Tibetans, for example, he established himself as the reincarnation of Manjusri, one of the most important bodhisattvas of Tibetan Buddhism. To the Han Chinese, he was a scholar and patron of Chinese learning and art. For instance, Qianlong worked hard to preserve Chinese cultural heritage by creating an enormous art collection of jade, ancient bronzes, seals, paintings, calligraphy and ceramics. Additionally, two of China’s greatest novels were written during the 1700s: Unofficial History of the Scholars and The Dream of the Red Chamber.
More importantly, Qianlong commissioned the Complete Works of the Four Treasures. The anthology was to contain a copy of every significant work ever published in Chinese. Begun in 1772, the Four Treasures took 20 years to finish, and is considered one of the largest single publishing projects in Chinese history. The anthology covered the major categories of traditional Chinese knowledge: classics, history, philosophy, and literature. A total of 13,254 books were collected throughout the empire, and thousands of scholars were engaged in the endeavor. Over four million pages were recorded by thousands of copyists. Even to this day, the Four Treasures remains a valuable resource for academics. Just as importantly, from the Manchu perspective, the Four Treasures enabled the Emperor to carry out a countrywide campaign of censorship that lasted from 1772-1788. All books gathered were examined. Any that held sensitive or offensive anti-Manchu sentiments were delivered to the court. Even books chosen for inclusion in the Four Treasures went through censorship, sometimes having parts rewritten or passages deleted. Problematic scholar-officials could be charged with sedition or other crimes by using, as proof, poems or articles selected from the body of work they had provided to the Emperor from their own libraries.
More Assertive Foreign Powers
China was largely ignorant of European expansion and the accompanying slave trade throughout the 15th to 18th centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century, however, China began to increasingly feel the European presence. Specifically, as British demand for tea, silk and porcelain continued to grow, the British became ever more insistent on expanded trade relations with the Chinese.
Macao during Qing Dynasty
The Portuguese were the first to establish a permanent trading post with China in 1557 in Macao. In 1684, Kangxi allowed four cities, including Canton (Guangzhou), to do business with foreign traders. By 1757, the emperor had scaled those four cities back to just Canton. Additionally, he limited trading to the winter months. He also insisted European traders reside in special quarters along the banks of the Pearl River outside Canton’s city walls. These quarters were known as the thirteen factories, with factory being used to mean a trading house. The thirteen factories remained the principal center for Western trade until the First Opium War in 1839.
Europeans, especially the British, developed a taste for tea. As tea imports rose, the British became frustrated with Sino-British trade for two reasons. Firstly, the British began running a significant trade deficit with China. Secondly, the East India Company increasingly balked at the trade limitations imposed by the Canton system. The East India Company thus petitioned the British government to send a diplomatic mission to China to negotiate better terms of trade. This mission was dispatched in 1793 and led by Lord Macartney. From the British perspective, this mission was unsuccessful. All British requests were refused by the Chinese including greater access to Chinese markets and the deployment of a British ambassador to Peking. Distracted by revolution in continental Europe, Britain did not respond to China’s rebuff until the French threat had been resolved.
Caricature of Lord McCartney before the Chinese emperor
The Chinese had no desire to engage in active international trade. Furthermore, at the end of the 18th century, China still believed itself to be the world’s dominant power. With the exception of the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which determined the border between the Russian and Chinese empires, China had never engaged in equal diplomatic relations with any foreign country and saw no need to begin with Britain.
To some extent, the poor results of the diplomatic effort were also caused by cultural misunderstanding. Lord Macartney refused to kowtow to the Emperor as was the tributary’s custom, upsetting court protocol. Additionally, the carefully chosen presents by the British that were to be given to the Emperor on the occasion of his birthday were dismissed as worthless despite representing the latest in European scientific achievements and craftsmanship. While it is purported that the Emperor secretly treasured the gifts, court officials regarded them as worthless baubles. Moreover, tributary states were to present the Emperor with token gifts. In turn, the Emperor was to present the tributary states with more valuable presents.
Evidence of Dynastic Decline by the End of the 1700s
By the end of the 18th century, signs of dynastic decline were evident. A surge in population put enormous pressure on food production. China became increasingly dependent on sweet potato and maize crops that could grow on drier, less fertile soil. Multiple harvesting, particularly in the rice-growing south, became more commonplace. Yet more effective use of land and new crops alone were not sufficient enough to cope with the rising population. The government thus supported a policy of internal migration, shifting people from densely inhabited lands to remote areas such as Xinjiang.
Han migration into Xinjiang led to deforestation and increased desertification
Having Han Chinese peasants emigrate to basically non-agricultural land such as Xinjiang altered the nature of the local economy and the local way of life. Deforestation and over-cultivation of grasslands for agriculture significantly damaged the already fragile environment, increased the process of the desertification in Northwest China and deepened the problem of water scarcity. Han relocation also had serious political and social consequences, as local populations were forced to compete with Han Chinese for land and other resources.
Compounding the complications of the surging population was a tax harvest that did not keep pace with the increase in the number of Chinese people. Aggravating the insufficient tax harvest was a spectacular case of embezzlement. One of Qianlong’s favorite bodyguards, Heshen, embezzled millions of ounces of silver from the treasury. Heshen was arrested the day after Qianlong died. His stolen wealth was said to have equaled half the value of the entire treasury. This theft and the inadequate tax collection, combined with continuous military expeditions, financially crippled the Dynasty by the beginning of the 19th century. Additionally, by the end of the 1700s, China was again plagued by peasant revolt under the same White Lotus banner that had harassed the Mings.
The Qing in the 19th Century – the First Opium War
Opium den during the Qing Dynasty
As soon as the British had overcome the Napoleonic threat, it once again turned its attention to its growing trade deficit with China caused by its large imports of tea, silk, porcelain and lacquer ware. The East India Company petitioned King George III to dispatch a second delegation to China to negotiate improved trade terms, but China again resisted British exigencies. Britain’s solution to this impasse was to export to China opium grown on its plantations in India. When smoked, opium proved highly addictive, relieving boredom along with physical and mental pain. By the mid-1820s, the success of the British strategy was apparent as its trade deficit turned to surplus. By the 1830s, approximately nine million taels (a tael equals 38 grams) of silver were flowing out of China annually and it was importing up to 13,000 chests of opium, enough to sustain the addiction of about 2 million Chinese. The British skirted Chinese laws forbidding opium trade by exporting the drug into China through smuggling networks.
In 1839, the trade commissioner Lin Zexu determined to suppress the opium trade. Lin arrested 350 Western traders and confined them into their warehouses until all their opium inventory was given to his officials. Ultimately, Lin destroyed more than 20,000 chests. The British retaliated by sending an armada of warships to fight the Chinese. Outclassed by Western military technology, the Chinese were soundly defeated.
The Unequal Treaties and Extraterritoriality
Having no choice but to surrender, the Chinese signed the Treaty of Nanjing which forced China to pay an accumulated $21 million dollars of war reparations, to cede control of the island of Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity, to open four new coastal cities to British trade, and to treat Britain as an equal country in diplomatic negotiations. In a supplementary treaty, China was made to fix its tariff rates on its trade with Western countries at 5%, to exclude Westerners from prosecution under Chinese law under (what was to be termed extraterritoriality), and to allow Britain to also have any new privilege gained from China by other foreign powers under a Most Favored Nation clause. The opium trade continued unhindered.
The Signing of the Treaty of Nanjing
In Chinese eyes, Britain’s actions were a case of the morally repugnant imposing its will on those in China trying to do the right thing. This moral dimension to the war made it more politically and psychologically difficult for the Chinese to adopt any aspects of Western civilization, even when it became increasingly obvious that without western technology, China would never regain control of its country.
Second Opium War or the Arrow War
Between 1858 and 1860, a Second Opium War broke out when Chinese officials boarded the Hong Kong-registered boat The Arrow and arrested twelve Chinese suspected of smuggling. The British demanded their release, arguing that the Chinese vessel was registered in Hong Kong and was thus protected under the Treaty of Nanjing. The Qing government insisted the Chinese sailors were pirate smugglers and refused to release them. In retaliation, the British, requesting the help of the French, Russians and Americans, readied for war. While the United States and Russia supported Britain, they did not go as far as sending military aid. The French, however, joined forces with the British.
Chinese officers tear down the British flag on the Arrow
The British and French launched the Second Opium War by capturing Canton, modern day Guangzhou. They maintained control of the city for four years. They subsequently invaded Beijing, burning the Emperor’s Summer Palace and imposing further so-called “unequal treaties” on the Qing. The 1860 Treaty of Tianjin stipulated the opening of a total of fourteen treaty ports to Western trade, ceding further land in Kowloon to the British, indemnities of eight million taels of silver to France and Britain, the right of Western diplomats to reside permanently in Beijing and the freedom of religious institutions to be established in China. After 1860, Westerners assumed control of the complete administration of China’s taxes on trade and commerce, making the Qing Empire in effect a semi-colony of the West. At the same time, Russia forced China to revise the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which gave Russia the right to establish a port on the Pacific coast. Russia founded the city of Vladivostok in 1860. The Russians also insisted that the Qing sign the Supplementary Convention of Peking in which Russia gained a further 4000 square miles of land from China.
The Nian, Panthay, Muslim and Taiping Rebellion
Compounding Qing dynastic troubles were further internal rebellions. Taxes were paid by peasants in copper, which had a fixed exchange rate with silver. As China began exporting growing quantities of silver to pay for its opium imports, the exchange rate between the copper of the peasants and the silver of the tax collector rose, making it increasingly difficult for the peasants to pay their taxes. This rising tax burden, coupled with famine, population pressure, scarcity of resources, and government corruption sparked a series of rebellions throughout China.
The Nian Rebellion (1853-1868) was initially ignited by the bursting of the Yellow River’s banks in 1853 and 1855, causing widespread flooding and loss of life. Because of its reduced finances, the Qing court was unable to respond to the disaster with sufficient financial and human aid. The Panthay Rebellion (1856-1873) began in Yunnan province as a result of fighting between Han Chinese migrants and the native Hui (Chinese Muslims) over access to mining resources. The Muslim Rebellion (1862 -1877) erupted in the Xinjiang, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces over continued minority resistance to Han Chinese territorial infringement.
Taiping Rebels chased by Manchus
The largest rebellion during this time, however, was the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). In 1850, a failed examination candidate from the Hakka minority group in South China, Hong Xiuquan, had visions during a nervous breakdown which convinced him that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Hong advocated surprisingly modern policies including the abolition of private property, the promotion of a classless society, the advancement of equality between men and women, the suppression of foot binding, and the eradication of opium use. He quickly amassed a dedicated army of peasant followers who, by 1854, had occupied Nanjing, which they proclaimed to be the capital of their new Heavenly Kingdom. By 1855, Hong was within 20 miles of Beijing. At first, Western missionaries were elated at the thought of a Chinese Christian uprising. Yet Hong’s unorthodox Christianity and his opposition to opium were eventually determined to be a threat to Western interests.
Amplifying the magnitude of these rebellions was the fact that many of the restive areas had many more males than females. This was because the traditional Chinese view that valued males over females had led to significant female infanticide. Female infanticide coupled with the Chinese tradition of polygamy meant that there were not enough marriageable women for the available men. This made these “bare branch” men more susceptible to the call of rebellion as they had no family or homestead to lose.
The Qing rallied the government Banner Forces (so named because of the particular flags under which they operated) to put down the rebellion, but by this point the Banner Forces were so ill-trained that they proved ineffective. The Qing Court then had no choice but to disperse power to regional Chinese officials who recruited their own armies from their own home districts. Allowing the amassing of regional armies had historically proved very dangerous to a dynasty’s longevity, and that the Qing court was forced into this strategy was good evidence of its weakness. An estimated 20-30 million died during the rebellion.
Self-Strengthening
Westerners share technology with China to improve access to its markets
By the end of the 19th century, in the face of constant foreign incursions into its territory and infringements of its sovereignty, the Qing Dynasty began a program of self-strengthening. In many ways, the basic idea of this program was a modified version of the traditional yiyi zhiyi (“use barbarians to control barbarians“), although in this case it was more of an instance of using barbarian technology to defeat barbarians. Reformists argued that China should employ Western technology such as railroads, modern weaponry, steamships and telegraph lines in order to modernize China, while learning Western languages in order to gain access to Western technologies. Conservatives at the court argued that such policies would lead to the abandonment of traditional culture for modern barbarism. Reformists countered that China would maintain fundamentally Confucian and Chinese in culture, only using the Western technologies to arrest Western incursion into Chinese territory and Chinese sovereignty.
Yet despite reformists’ enthusiasm for change, few understood the rapidity with which Western science was developing improved technology or that up-to-date weapons alone would not be enough to defend China without modernized training and leadership. What was true was that knowledge of the West was gradually improving. Modern newspapers, with up-to-date coverage of world affairs, began to appear in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Information was also acquired through visits abroad. By 1880, China had embassies in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Washington, Tokyo and St. Petersburg.
At the heart of the Chinese challenge was the fact that no Qing Emperor of the 19th century was very capable, although even an extremely able emperor would have struggled to meet the twin challenges of internal rebellion and external aggression. The lack of effectiveness of these emperors was compounded by the rise of Empress Dowager Cixi, who entered the Qing court as a low-ranking concubine. From 1860 to her death in 1908, she held more power and influence in Chinese politics than had any woman since the Tang Empress Wu. Modern Chinese historians have often blamed the Empress Dowager for promoting her own interests at the expense of the Chinese people. What is true is that she resisted all early self-strengthening reforms which risked undermining the power of the palace.
The Qing Dynasty population boom led to poverty as China struggled to employ and fed its 400 million people
Also, at the essence of Qing’s challenge was China’s huge population surge. In 1800, China had about 300 million people, compared with Russia’s 40 million, Japan’s 30 million, and Britain’s 11 million. From 1800 to 1850, China’s population increased to 400 million. The population explosion had repercussions for every aspect of Chinese life. Villages and towns grew closer, farms grew smaller, deforestation accelerated. Additionally, labor was in surplus, suppressing wages and escalating the competitiveness of everyday life. Until the end of the 18th century, steady population growth had largely been beneficial, as it fostered regional development and commercialization. Yet, by the dawn of the 19th century, the negative consequences of China’s population explosion were becoming more pronounced. Chinese surplus labor would work manually at industries that were now industrialized in Europe at such low rates that industrialized factories could not compete. This impeded China’s industrialization. Additionally, the rise in population exacerbated social tensions, as conflicts over water and other resources surged with population growth. As a result, disputes between ethnic groups, lineages or villages became common. Hard times also supported the practice of female infanticide. The shortage of marriageable women reduced the incentive for young men to stay near home and do what their elders told them. Those who left often joined roving gangs or immigrated to the cities to search for work as boatmen, porters, sedan chair carriers, and rickshaw pullers.
Millions of Chinese chose to emigrate from China completely, heading primarily to Southeast Asia, but also to the US and Europe. In Buddhist countries like Thailand and Vietnam, the Chinese often assimilated, intermarrying with the local population and adopting their language and customs. In Muslim countries and in the US, Chinese immigrants often chose or were forced to live independently from native populations. Those that did not assimilate often organized themselves into voluntary associations such as Triads, as local authorities preferred to let the Chinese govern themselves.
1885 War with France, the 1894-1895 War with Japan
Negotiating the Shimonoseki Treaty after the first Sino-Japanese War
The first sign that China’s reforms had not strengthened China sufficiently to repulse foreign aggression occurred in 1855, when France defeated China in war over Vietnam, a traditional tributary state. More humiliating, however, was Japan’s defeat of China in its battle for influence in Korea, another traditional Chinese tributary state. This defeat shocked both China and the West, as China had always viewed Japan as its inferior, and as Japan was a fraction of China’s size. The resulting Treaty of Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan to Japan, to pay Japan 200 million taels of silver and to recognize the independence of Korea.
Fearing China’s imminent collapse, Western nations began pressuring China to grant them special trading, taxation, and other privileges in their own spheres of influence, while jockeying with other Western powers in order to extend their territorial reach. The US, preoccupied elsewhere, did not at first join the dash for concessions. In 1889, however, John Hay, America’s secretary of state, fearing the fragmentation of China, issued a series of Open Door Notes to Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Japan, calling on all foreign powers operating in China to allow free trade in all spheres of influence. Eventually, the European powers backed off, not because of Hay’s influence, but because they too feared the break-up of the country. Every country except Russia agreed to the Open Door Policy, although most had no intention of enforcing it.
100 Days of Reforms
Guangxu Emperor
The terms of the humiliating Treaty with Japan were made public at a time when thousands of provincial students were in Beijing to take the metropolitan examination. In December 1898, Kang Youwei, a Confucian scholar, gained an audience with the young Guangxu Emperor. Spurred by the scholar’s suggestions, in the space of 100 days, the Emperor issued a multitude of edicts designed to thoroughly modernize the country, including introducing Western subjects in Chinese education, eliminating thousands of sinecure positions, attacking government corruption and embarking on a rapid and intensive program of industrialization and Westernization. Sensing a threat to the conservative dominance at court, the Empress Dowager crushed the reform movement, and effectively imprisoned the Emperor within the Summer Palace. Kang Youwei fled to Japan, and six of his followers were executed. The court sank again into wider inaction, having preserved its own powerful interests.
The Boxer Rebellion
Execution of Boxers at the end of the Rebellion
Yet inaction would not remain an option for long. Formed initially in Shandong and adjacent areas in Henan and Hebei, a secret society of peasants and illiterate day laborers emerged. They called themselves the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (known as the Boxers in the West), and eventually amassed thousands of followers. The Boxers practiced martial arts and chanted magic spells that they claimed made them impervious to physical pain and bullets. The Boxers believed that their hardship was caused in large part by foreign aggression. Spurred by the severe drought of the summer of 1898 their growing anger and frustration became directed at “foreign devils” who they determined to expel from China.
An obvious target was the Christian missionaries who had moved into many parts of the Chinese countryside by the end of the 19th century. While many missionaries provided the Chinese with social and medical services which brought real benefits to the population, the Boxers nevertheless linked Christianity with the arrival of the same foreigners who spread opium in Chinese society. Aggravating their sense of injustice was the fact that these missionaries lived in walled compounds, were protected by extraterritoriality, and enjoyed higher standards of living than the people to whom they preached.
Return of the Emperess Dowager in 1902
Initially, the Qing court felt obliged to crush the Boxer Rebellion. But by the summer of 1900, the court tried to use the Boxers, whose numbers had swollen to close to a half million, to drive foreigners out of China. An eight-nation invasion force made up of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the US, and Japan responded by rapidly capturing Beijing. In 1901 China sued for peace, agreeing to pay 400 million ounces of silver in damages to the Western invasion force. By the time the rebellion was finally put down in September 1901, more than 70,000 Chinese people, including Chinese Catholics, Protestant missionaries, Chinese Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians and other ordinary Chinese were dead.
During the fighting, the Empress Dowager fled Beijing disguised as a nun. On her flight into the countryside, she was confronted for the first time with the reality of China’s poverty. After peace had been secured, she finally began to promote the same modernization for which she had imprisoned the Emperor. Specifically, an effort was made to create a Western-style army, armed with Western weapons and trained in Western methods. Another was to continue efforts to build a modern railway system. However, these endeavors were too little, too late.
Sun Yat-sen and the overthrow of Qing Dynasty
Sun Yat-sen
Ensnared in an international economic order stacked against latecomers, an order whose rules China had no ability to shape, many Chinese increasingly felt that the Qing Dynasty specifically, and dynastic rule generally, lacked the agility and versatility to successfully negotiate the changing world in which it found itself. In the Qing’s defense, the centralized bureaucratic monarchy, the patriarchal family, and the scholar-official elite, all of whom focused on creating stability through the replication of the agrarian past, were so deeply entrenched in Chinese culture that it took a century of bad news to weaken people’s belief that they represented the best organizational structure for Chinese society.
For the first time, many Chinese began to study abroad, primarily in Japan, but also in Western Europe and the United States. Many of these returned to campaign for the deposition of Qing rule. One of these was Sun Yat-sen (generally known in China as Sun Zhongshan, his name in Mandarin Chinese). A Christian, and trained as a medical doctor, Sun Yat-sen became increasingly involved in politics as he watched China flounder. In all, Sun Yat-sen led ten attempts to overthrow the government, each of which failed. However, his tireless efforts to promote revolutionary fervor within China were a catalyst which led to strengthening revolutionary sentiment throughout the country, including that among the officers and troops of the New Army.
When the Qing dynasty eventually fell, the end came serendipitously, and as a result of a relatively rapid series of events. In 1905, when the examination system was abolished as part of the stipulations imposed upon the Chinese after the Boxer Rebellion, a whole segment of society lost their reason for engaging with the government. In 1908 the Empress dowager died, leaving a three-year-old Imperial Prince on the throne, meaning China yet again had no effective emperor. Additionally, the newly constructed railways had been built using foreign funds and were in the hands of foreign companies. Public opinion advocated that these railways should be in Chinese hands. The Qing court attempted to nationalize the railways, alienating many small Chinese investors, while Western powers insisted that they would continue to build railways within their spheres of influence regardless of Chinese national policy. To many, the railroad management issues were just another example that the Qing dynasty lacked the means to deal with China’s worsening domestic and international situation.
Republic of China presidential election, 1911
Revolutionary discontent continued to build. In 1911, in the Chinese city of Wuchang, a group of revolutionaries loosely affiliated with Sun Yat-sen were secretly stockpiling ammunitions for a revolt, when one of the bombs exploded. Realizing that the police were certain to investigate, they declared war on the Qing state and quickly took control of the city. Word of this revolt rapidly spread, and many newly trained troops joined the rebels. Sun Yat-sen read about the rebellion in Denver, Colorado where he had been trying to raise money from overseas Chinese. The Qing Dynasty looked to the top military official in the Empire, Yuan Shikai, to suppress the rebellion. Instead, he effectively negotiated the end of the Qing dynasty.
Much to the relief of the revolutionaries, the Qing Dynasty was disposed without China breaking into civil war, and without the Western powers and Japan slicing up the country. For his role in overthrowing the dynasty, Sun Yat-sen agreed that Yuan Shikai could become the first president of the new Republic, which was proclaimed on February 12th, 1912. While the revolutionaries were united in their desire to dispose the Dynasty, they remained conflicted on the best way that the country should move forward. Sun Yat-sen and his followers organized a new party, the Guomindang (the Nationalist Party, frequently referred to as the Kuomintang or KMT) which they viewed to be a loyal opposition party designed to compete in electoral politics with the followers of Yuan Shikai. Other parties were formed as well, and Assembly elections were held in December 1912. Approximately 40 million men were eligible to vote – those who owned property, paid taxes and had an elementary school education – about 10% of the population. The Nationalists won approximately 43% of the vote, in an election that succeeded without major incident. Sun Yat-sen, head of the railroad development, was pleased with the outcome.
Yuan Shikai at center with army officers
Yuan Shikai was not. He disliked Nationalist criticisms of his policies and felt that their electoral success threatened his efforts to create a strong central government. In 1913, Song Jiaoren, the Nationalist campaign manager and a Prime Minister-hopeful, was assassinated, probably on the direction of Yuan Shikai. The Nationalist party responded to the murder by calling for Yuan Shikai’s resignation, and soon revolted. Yuan Shikai crushed the revolt, and Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan, once again in exile. Yuan Shikai supported a strong, modern, industrialized state, but he envisioned that this state would be ruled in dynastic fashion, with himself as Emperor. Yuan Shikai eventually died in 1916 of kidney failure, leaving both a power vacuum and no national consensus about how China should move forward politically. Yuan’s generals began to vie with each other for regional control and power. This began a period of warlordism in China, during which the country was once again fragmented.
Dynastic Themes Present in China Today
Themes of Qing history can be seen in evidence in China today. The first is a sense of Chinese culturalism and self-sufficiency. Until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, China had always felt that its rich cultural history was a sufficient source of inspiration from which to develop its foreign policies to deal with barbarians, to provide governmental and societal structure, to manage its economy and to stimulate its artistic achievement. While always convinced of its moral, economic, and technological superiority – which it indeed maintained for thousands of years – China never felt the need to impose its systems on countries outside its immediate sphere of influence.
Confucius Center opening at Khazar University, Azerbaijan
Today, China engages in the world primarily to promote its own economic development. It no longer makes any effort to promote communist revolution abroad (though it did at various stages of the Mao era) or any other value-based revolution arising from its hybrid capitalist-authoritarian society. While it is true that China is building, worldwide, an ever growing number of Confucian Centers designed to promote the learning of Mandarin and the understanding of Chinese culture, these centers are intended to serve China’s economic interests by creating a better understanding of China, as opposed to exposing a Chinese cultural perspective which it hopes will be adopted by local populations in the way that the US, for example, promotes democracy internationally.
The Chinese government today still considers the ‘Century of Humiliation’ (1839-1949) as an inflection point in the way that China engages in the international arena. Indeed, even today, many Chinese and Taiwanese history books still divide Chinese history into the pre- and post-Opium war worlds. From 1939 onwards, China was thrust into a world whose rules it did not understand and could not control. Consequently, during the 1839-1949 period, China was riven by peasant uprisings which were frequently fueled by or were partly in consequence to the growing Western presence in China, and by what was viewed as Qing acquiescence to foreign demands. Additionally, the Century of Humiliation led to the ultimate collapse of its millennia-old dynastic system and China’s loss of sovereignty over almost a third of its territory.
Animal personifications of Russia, England, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Japan fighting over China – the dying dragon – while the US as eagle looks on
The Century of Humiliation today remains essential to the way that China interacts with the world. Both scholars and government officials in China still frequently characterize the international system as one dominated by a West and determined to block China’s rise. Under this view China always needs to be wary of Western intent so that it is never again outmaneuvered and subjugated. Other Chinese scholars feel that China’s progress within the Western built international framework has been so overwhelming that, far from being a tool to benefit exclusively the West and its allies, the current international system is reasonably fair and has very much played to China’s advantages. Other Chinese thinkers feel that China should now use its growing economic and political status to bend the international system to its advantage, so it reflects more of China’s values. Steps in this direction have been taken. In 2016, against the wishes of the United States, China launched its the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China is also spearheading Belt and Road Initiative which, as conceived, will be the world’s most ambitious infrastructure investment effort. If successful, it will also significantly reshape the global balance of power. On some occasions, China has also begun to flout international law. A prime example is its taking control of and reclaiming land on disputed islands in the South China Sea, despite such actions having been ruled illegal by The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
The Century of Humiliation is also essential to China as it is a fundamental to its narrative in the development of Chinese nationalism that the Chinese Communist Party has cultivated since it has switched from a command to market economy. In Xi Jinping’s promotion of the Chinese Dream, the Chinese Communist Party has positioned itself the party who has exercise the Century of Humiliation as the authority that is re-establishing China as a great nation- if not the greatest nation – in the international world order. This narrative helps to legitimize Communist Party rule when it is no longer communist, as it reminds the Chinese people that it was the Communists who pulled China from its lowest point, and is returning the country once again to its natural place of preeminence. Moreover, the Century of Humiliation is also a discourse used by the Communist Party to deflect foreign criticism of its policies. This discourse in effect argues that the West and Japan have always been full of schemes to harm China, and therefore their arguments and actions today still cannot be trusted.
References
Sino-Japanese Relations: In the Shadow of History
/in Politics /by ChinaFolioAn Overview
There can be no doubt that China and Japan are the giants of East Asia, both in economic and political terms. The bilateral relationship is, therefore, of great importance to both the region and the wider world. Despite a mainly cordial relationship over two thousand years of known interaction, Sino-Japanese relations have been complex and difficult for over a century. After a brutal invasion and occupation of the Chinese mainland during its expansive war of the 1930s and 1940s, Japan was defeated and found itself firmly in the anti-Communist bloc during the Cold War. A thaw in the 1970s, driven by the Chinese split with the Soviets led to the normalization of diplomatic relations but the Chinese and Japanese never truly reconciled this history. As a result, the question of history remains one of the biggest thorns in the side of the Sino-Japanese relationship. Compounding this emotional problem is a series of territorial disputes in the East China Sea, most notably around the Diaoyu (in Chinese) or Senkaku (in Japanese) islands. There are also ground for optimism; China has been Japan’s largest trading partner since 2007 and the two countries have worked together to promote regional cooperation and low level institutionalization. Nevertheless, the difficult shared history casts a constant shadow over the relationship.
The Historical Relationship
China’s relationship with Japan has a long and complex history, with interaction between the two cultures stretching back over at least two millennia. There can be no doubt that much of Japanese culture has its roots in that which it borrowed from the Chinese. This is most notable in the written form of Japanese, which uses both Chinese characters and two other scripts that are derived from written Chinese (though the oral language is entirely distinct from Mandarin). The other major similarity lies in philosophy and religion; the adoption of Confucianism and Buddhism, both of which were learned through interaction with the Chinese over many centuries, is still clearly evident in modern Japan. This adoption of aspects of Chinese culture took place across several of China’s dynastic periods, during which interaction was predominantly cordial with the Japanese paying tribute to the Chinese emperors without ever really becoming a “vassal state” in the way that many other areas of East Asia did during this time.
The relatively cordial interaction was brought to an end during the Edo period in Japan (1603-1868) during which it effectively closed itself to dealings with other states. The end of this period coincided with several of China’s military defeats to Western powers, including the Opium Wars, which led to various parts of China becoming “concessions”, effectively miniature colonies within China. These defeats were part of the long decline of China’s final dynasty, the Qing, and Japan, like several Western powers, sought to take advantage of the chaos and confusion that ensued. After the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, which had initially been fought over control of Korea, China was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, under the terms of which Japan occupied Taiwan and the Penghu Islands. This defeat is considered by many Chinese to have been a huge psychological blow to the nation. After millennia of perceived Chinese superiority in the region, just a few short decades had seen China’s military humiliation at the hands of various “barbarians” from outside of East Asia and now at the hands of the Japanese, over whom the Chinese had always considered themselves to be both culturally and militarily superior.
However, by far the most significant conflict between the two powers, both in terms of the
number of deaths and the continuing impact on the bilateral relationship, was the invasion of China by Japan that occurred in the 1930s. After first colonising Manchuria, in the Northeast of China, Japanese forces went on to occupy almost half of Chinese territory, committing widespread atrocities along the way. The most notorious of these atrocities was the Nanjing Massacre, a six-week orgy of violence and destruction during which as many as 300,000 Chinese, many of them civilians, were killed. Almost as notorious was the work of Unit 731, a Japanese research unit that conducted chemical testing on live Chinese prisoners of war. The occupation, including the colonisation of Manchuria, lasted a total of fourteen years, only coming to an end with Japan’s defeat in 1945.
With the dawning of the Cold War era, the PRC and Japan did not normalise relations until 1972, following Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing. During the negotiations to establish mutual diplomatic recognition the Chinese agreed to forgo any war reparations or compensation from Japan for its wartime atrocities. For the remainder of the 1970s the two enjoyed a warm relationship, culminating in the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1978 and, following China’s decision to embark on market reform, the initiation of a series of low-interest loans (frequently referred to as “Yen loans”) from Japan to China to fund development of industry and infrastructure. While never explicitly acknowledged as such by either party, these were widely considered to be in lieu of war reparations.
The “History Issue”
Despite the apparent thaw in relations it is widely acknowledged that the reconciliation between China and Japan was only ever at a superficial level. This is evidenced by the
recurrence of what has come to be termed “the history issue” in the relationship. Though the countries normalized relations in 1972, the history issue did not rear its head until the early 1980s. An apparent revision of Japan’s history textbooks in the early 1980s, which seemed to downplay Japan’s invasion of China, sparked an angry response from China at both the societal and political levels. Though it transpired that this was a misunderstanding caused by reporting errors in the Japanese media, the damage had been done and this issue recurs each time Japan’s Education Ministry approves a set of history textbooks, normally every four years. In 2001 and 2005, this issue caused widespread anger in China when a book was approved that apparently downplayed the Nanjing Massacre and referred to the invasion of China has merely an “advance”. What is rarely understood in China is that the textbooks in question are produced by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a very narrowly focused right wing group that attracts little support in the wider Japanese society, and that they only appear on a list of books approved to be used, rather than being the set text. As a result, only a handful of Japanese schools have adopted these books with a reported 0.03% of Junior High School students actually studying them, a figure that would have been much lower were it not for the campaign group issuing free copies to schools for disabled students. Nevertheless, the approval sparked angry demonstrations across China with protest marches attracting in excess of ten thousand in several different cities and violent attacks on Japanese business interests and the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. Though some reports at the time suggested that the Chinese government played a role in organizing and inspiring these protests, later research showed this not to be the only driving force behind the outpouring.
Another particularly sensitive matter is Yasukuni Shrine, a highly controversial Shinto shrine in Tokyo that honors all of Japan’s war dead. Under Shinto beliefs it is believed to be the resting place for the kami (loosely translated as souls) of all those who have died fighting for the Emperor of Japan since the shrine’s inception in the 1860s. This includes Class A war criminals that were convicted after Japan’s occupation of China of war crimes. Most notorious among these is Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister. After the Class A war criminals were enshrined in 1978 in a secret ceremony that was revealed a year later, the Emperor refused to visit the shrine again until his death a decade later. His successor has continued the policy of staying away in order not to offend Japan’s neighboring states. However, there have been several high profile visitors that have caused consternation in China (and other East Asian countries, most notable South Korea). In the early 1980s, it was commonplace for Prime Minister Nakasone to visit, until he did so on August 15th 1985, the fortieth anniversary of Japan’s surrender. In response to opposition in China, the General Secretary of the CCP, Hu Yaobang, personally requested that Nakasone stop these visits. Though two other prime ministers visited the shrine in the following 15 years, the issue was largely put to rest until Prime Minister Koizumi returned to the shrine in August 2001. He fulfilled his pledge to visit the shrine once a year while he was in office at great cost to the Sino-Japanese relationship at the highest political level and also at the societal level; bilateral summits were suspended and his actions created the impression among many Chinese that Japan had not fully repented for its previous wrongs and even a fear that it might return to its militaristic past. By the end of Koizumi’s tenure in 2006 the political relationship between the two powers had almost completely broken down and on several occasions popular Chinese anger spilled over into protest and even violence against Japanese in China. Subsequent prime ministers elected not to visit the shrine, allowing the political relationship to thaw once more, but this period serves to highlight that the issue of history is never far from the surface of Sino-Japanese relations. In fact, during the three years that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) led the country from 2009 to 2012, the issue took a back seat in the relationship. However, it has begun to rear its head once more since the LDP (Koizumi’s party, and the overwhelmingly dominant force in Japanese politics since the end of the US occupation) regained power. In December 2013 Shinzo Abe, now in his second stint as prime minister, visited the shrine on the first anniversary of his return to the post. The act was greeted with anger from across the region but most notable in China and South Korea (with whom Japan has also had a difficult relationship in recent years). Abe has since refrained from visiting the shrine, though he has repeatedly sent offerings under his own name. Objections from the US that have become public since his December 2013 visit might provide an incentive for him not to return in person but even if it is a one-off it has put the shrine issue firmly back on the agenda of Sino-Japanese tension. To mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Abe made a significant and closely observed speech, repeating aspects of previous apologies but insisting that future generations should not be “condemned” to repeatedly apologize for actions in which they had no part. This was a clear indication that he wanted to move Japan away a position that he – and his supporters – consider to have been overly deferential to China in this area for too long. Such a shift does not go down well in China and this was underscored by Xi Jinping’s speech at its own commemorations of the 70th anniversary a few weeks later.
Slips of the tongue from Japanese politicians (that are not always unintentional) often cause anger and resentment in China as well. In his first period in office immediately succeeding Koizumi, Shinzo Abe managed to offend both China and South Korea by claiming that the issue of ‘comfort women’ – a euphemism for the thousands of women forced into sex slavery at the hands of the Japanese military during their occupation of East Asia – had been exaggerated, earning himself a telling off even from the US. More recently, the mayor of Nagoya declared that he did not believe that the Nanjing Massacre happened. This was particularly insensitive as he made the claim when welcoming a delegation from Nagoya’s sister city: Nanjing. It is this level of insensitivity – displayed by only a minority of Japanese but often by those who make themselves most well heard – that continues to cause frustration, bemusement and resentment among the Chinese. Even more recently, similar views have been expressed by one of the governors of NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster.
Territorial Disputes
The other major issue that threatens the stability of the bilateral relationship from time to time is the dispute over sovereignty of the Diaoyu Isalnds (known as Senkaku in Japanese). These uninhabited islands are currently administered by Japan, but are claimed by both countries (and also by Taiwan). It is widely believed that significant levels of resources, including oil and gas, may lie underneath the islands, as well as within the maritime EEZ that would accompany recognition of the sovereignty of the islands. Complicating the issue is China’s exploitation of the Chunxiao gas field; although there is no dispute over the sovereignty of the gas field itself, it is within four kilometres of what Japan considers to be its EEZ and it argues that China may siphon resources from its side. China disputes that this is likely and, in any case, does not accept Japan’s demarcation of its EEZ as it is based on Japanese sovereignty of the islands.
Attempts to resolve the dispute have been largely unsuccessful; during the negotiations for the Treaty of Peace and Friendship it was determined that the matter should be shelved and left for future generations to resolve. However, nationalist activists on both sides have sought to push forward their respective country’s claims to the islands, often leading to heightened diplomatic tensions between the two. One of the most serious incidents in recent times occurred in September 2010 when a Chinese fishing boat collided with a Japan Coast Guard ship that was patrolling the area. The captain and crew of the boat were all arrested and imprisoned in Japan, leading to a major diplomatic dispute between the two countries, with both governments accusing the other of violating sovereignty. The captain was eventually released without charge after Japanese prosecutors determined that action against him would harm Japan’s national interests, though a video was leaked to the media that showed the captain, apparently under the influence of alcohol, intentionally ramming his boat into the Japanese ship. The strength of China’s reaction shocked many in Japan as several Japanese businesspeople were arrested on fairly dubious grounds and exports of rare earths to Japan were apparently halted, though Beijing insisted that the issues were unconnected.
However, the nationalization of the islands proved to be a particularly hot topic in China and the response from Chinese society was the most serious that has been seen in any international issue in living memory. A series of scathing diplomatic attacks from the government served as a backdrop to widespread anti-Japanese protests across China. In total, 85 cities on the mainland witnessed large protests with many of these becoming violent. Japanese businesses and citizens were harassed, with even the ambassador’s car coming under attack in Beijing. Calls for boycotts of Japanese produce – a common response from nationalistic Chinese whenever a dispute with Japan occurs – appeared to have a greater effect than ever; in one bizarre demonstration of support for this idea a man set fire to his own Honda car in the middle of a Shanghai street. The economic relationship was demonstrably affected, with Japanese firms temporarily closing factories in China and laying off tens of thousands of workers. Sino-Japanese trade had previously been thought to be almost immune to the repeated spats between the two countries, but annual trade dropped by 4% in 2012. Two-way tourism figures fared even worse, with Chinese visitors to Japan down 33% in October 2012 compared with the previous year while the numbers of Japanese visitors to China fell by two thirds in the second half of 2012.
Since the nationalization China has stepped up “surveillance” of the areas surrounding the islands. Where once an unwritten agreement not to enter Japan’s de facto contiguous zone around the islands had kept the prospect of conflict to a bare minimum, China has since regularly flouted this norm. Though the incursions are frequently “Marine Surveillance” vessels rather than military ships, the possibility of conflict has been raised to its highest level since the two countries normalized relations in 1972. This was brought into sharp focus in December 2012 when a Chinese “Maritime Surveillance” plane entered the airspace of the islands, leading to the Japanese scrambling jets in response. A further escalation of the dispute in January 2013 occurred when the Japanese claimed that a Chinese PLAN frigate (a navy warship) had locked its radar onto a Japanese ship in the waters, suggesting that the first shots were about to be fired. Though China subsequently denied the incident the fact that such ships are now in frequent and close contact has significantly raised the possibility of a miscalculation that might trigger actual armed conflict between the two powers. The seriousness of the situation was heightened by a declaration from Hilary Clinton in January 2013 that the US’ joint security treaty with Japan covers the islands, thus obliging it to defend Japan if attacked by China. This raises the possibility of direct conflict between China and the US for the first time since the Korean War and is a stark reminder to all involved of the gravity of the situation. This was again brought into sharp focus in April 2013 when Prime Minister Abe issued a warning that Japan would respond with force to any attempt by China to land on the islands. Though this is would clearly be a war that would benefit nobody, it remains an unpalatable possibility.
In October 2013 China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) above the East China Sea, including directly above the islands. This requires aircraft entering the zone – which is separate from China’s territorial airspace – to identify themselves to the Chinese authorities, log a flight path and retain open communications for the duration of the period of time in the zone. Although the zone is not unique – several of China’s neighbors have similar zones, including Japan – the sudden declaration and the more stringent requirements imposed by China have made this a controversial move that is clearly linked to the islands dispute. Aircraft from both Japan and the US have so far ignored the rules without serious consequence but the potential for miscalculation has clearly been raised even further by this development.
The islands issue has calmed somewhat in recent months but remains a potential flashpoint between the two countries. Certainly no resolution of the issue appears imminent and it has clearly played a role in Japan’s moves to reinterpret its Constitution in order to allow its military to play a role in collective self defense, a move that has caused a great deal of unease in a number of countries in the region, not least in China and South Korea.
The Taiwan Issue
When Japan defeated the Qing in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, one of its major prizes was the ceding of the island of Taiwan. Taiwan has not been ruled by Beijing since then, despite its continued claims of sovereignty. Though the Japanese were expelled after their defeat in 1945, its role and position within the Taiwan issue remains a cause of consternation for the Chinese. In particular Japan’s continued hosting of US forces on Okinawa, an island that is of clear strategic importance should the US ever seek to defend Taiwan in a conflict with China, causes friction with Beijing, though it should be noted that it is even more controversial in Okinawa itself where local people have long campaigned for the complete withdrawal of US forces.
Though Japan is firmly committed to the ‘one China’ policy that all countries with which Beijing has diplomatic ties must affirm, it continues to have close ties with the island. These ties are particularly evident in the field of business and Japan is Taiwan’s second largest trading partner with bilateral trade topping $70 billion in 2011. Japan also continues to have a close cultural relationship with the island, with Japanese pop music and television programs particularly popular. This successful ‘soft power’ irks the Chinese who see a continued threat to their claims of sovereignty from a power that has not only demonstrated a willingness to colonize in the past, but which also has a motivation for preventing or delaying the process of the ‘reunification’ of Taiwan and the mainland.
Bilateral Trade
Bilateral trade is the biggest area for optimism in the relationship, and it has been argued that the main factor in preventing open conflict from erupting has been the level of trade between the two. Japan has consistently been one of China’s biggest trading partners since early in the reform era, and has also been a source of significant inward FDI. In 2007 China became Japan’s biggest trading partner and, though Japan’s significance to China has declined relative to other major partners, the two remain closely interlinked. In 2010, bilateral trade reached $300 billion. Such interdependence was forged from a high level of complementarity between the two economies – China was in a position to provide plenty of cheap labor in return for investment and technological transfer at a time that Japanese firms found the need to expand and outsource away from Japan – in combination with a geographic proximity that allows relatively quick transport of both people and goods. In June 2012 direct trading between the RMB and the Yen began, bypassing the US dollar for the first time and making bilateral trade even easier. The trading relationship has remained robust through some of the most heated political disputes, and the relationship during the early 2000s, characterized by political spats over the history issue and popular anti-Japanese protests in China, came to be referred to as “zhengleng jingre” (cold politics, hot economics), though it could also be argued that such problems do impact on bilateral trade that could have been even more spectacular against the backdrop of smoother political ties. Notably, when China chose the partners for its high speed rail network it felt compelled to shun Japanese firms in response to domestic pressure from nationalists angered at Japan’s perceived continued provocations over the history issue. As a result, China’s network of high speed train network was put together by a combination of firms from France, Germany, Canada and China, among others. This represented a negative outcome for both sides, with the Japanese unable to cash in on Chinese investment in its infrastructure that has totaled $300 billion by 2012 and is expected to continue to rise as the network is expanded, while the Chinese ended up with a system that fell short of its original expectations and may have contributed to the fatal train crash in Wenzhou in 2011.
East Asian Regionalization
In recent years there has been some limited progress toward regional integration and institutionalization in East Asia. In some areas this has actually been a source of competition for influence between China and Japan such as in the development of ASEAN +1 and ASEAN +3, whereby the two countries have sought to engage with Southeast Asian countries in order to further their own interests rather than to develop frameworks for dealing directly with each other. However, the two countries’ involvement in the six-party talks over the North Korean nuclear issue that also included both of the Koreas, Russia, and the US, was a first step in the creation of a significant regional forum. Though not formally related to the six-party process which has now stalled, China and Japan, along with South Korea, now hold annual three-way summits, hosted on a rotational basis, that have begun to foster a much greater sense of understanding and cooperation between the three powers. While it is significant that South Korea is involved in this, it is the engagement of China and Japan that has the greatest potential for positive impact on the region going forward. However, the islands dispute between China and Japan (as well as another territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea) the erupted again in 2012 has stalled the process. The 2013 summit was indefinitely postponed and although never formally abandoned, there has not been a summit since 2012.
Future Trends
The Sino-Japanese relationship is, arguably, the most important bilateral relationship in
East Asia. Many tensions remain, particularly over the history issue and the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute. While the former of these problems has appeared to have been handled sensibly on both sides since the resignation of Koizumi, it remains a deeply-rooted issue that retains the potential to be the cause of significant mistrust and ill-feeling, something that was potently demonstrated by Abe’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine in 2013. That mistrust of Japan’s apparent moves towards normalization of its military forces is played out in the arena of this historical ill-feeling underlines how important the interpretation of history is in the bilateral relationship, even when considering contemporary issues. The territorial dispute appears equally unlikely to be wholly resolved any time soon, with the positions of both countries entrenched and apparently irreconcilable. The trawler incident in 2010 demonstrated how easily this issue can come to the fore and become a major stumbling block in improving Sino-Japanese relations. Furthermore, the nationalization and subsequent flare-up of tensions from 2012 onwards has shown how dangerous this issue is. However, both sides have ordinarily demonstrated the political resolve to prevent either of these two issues from spilling over into open conflict, and a return to military warfare seems highly unlikely, even if it is no longer entirely unthinkable. The strength of the economic relationship, while declining in relative importance to China, continues to grow and remains both a motivation for, as well as a method of, mitigating the undoubted tensions that do exist between the two powers.
China’s Island Disputes – A lot at Stake
/in Politics /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
Map of the South China Sea
Among the numerous causes of friction between China and its neighbors, the continued failure to resolve a series of territorial disputes regarding islands in the East and South China Seas remains one of the most pressing. Threatening to destabilize the entire region, the disputed islands bring China into potential conflict with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and, most worryingly for regional security, Japan. Though virtually all the islands are uninhabited and largely uninhabitable, the islands carry with them issues of military strategic importance as well as access to a wealth of natural resources.
The East and South China Seas islands are not China’s only historical land disputes. China formerly had land-based territorial disputes with each of the fourteen countries with which it shares a border. However, it has worked hard to resolve these in a peaceful and frequently generous manner, accepting less than 50% of the disputed area in most cases. The only exceptions to this were with Russia, in which each side settled for precisely half of the disputed territory, and India, with whom several disputes are outstanding, complicated by the Tibet issue.
A Chinese surveillance ship and a Japan Coast Guard vessel at close quarters
By contrast, almost no progress has been made towards resolution in any of the island disputes since the foundation of the PRC in 1949. Indeed, developments in recent years have seen a more assertive Chinese position causing serious friction and concern for regional stability. This seemingly belligerent stubbornness is rooted in a complex web of motivations that includes strategic considerations, access to natural resources and fish stocks, the psychological importance of national unification and territorial integrity, and a genuine sense of historical ownership.
Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands
Map showing the location of the disputed islands
One of China’s most talked about maritime dispute – certainly in recent times – is in the East China Sea, where it contends with Japan for the sovereignty of what it calls the Diaoyu islands, known to the Japanese as the Senkaku islands. The islands have occasionally been referred to in English as the Pinnacle Islands, but as this is a translation of the Japanese name it is normally not used unless expressing an opinion that the islands are Japanese territory. The rocky, uninhabited islands are located approximately 80 miles northeast of Taiwan and 250 miles west of Okinawa, an island over which there is no dispute and Japan’s most southerly prefecture. The five islands in the group have a total combined area of just 2.7 square miles and have no official residency or significant infrastructure. Nevertheless, although uninhabited, the islands remain important strategically. Not only are the waters surrounding the islands important for sea land control purposes given the amount of maritime traffic that passes through the area, but they are also important from the point of view of their fish stocks and their untapped hydrocarbon energy reserves. Additionally, from an international and domestic perspective, as each country claims sovereignty over the territory, it is hard for either nation to relinquish sovereignty rights without losing face and risking domestic political backlash. The dispute is complicated somewhat by Taiwan’s involvement, as it also claims the islands. However, this is not a challenge to China’s position as it considers the islands to be a part of the province of Taiwan, which is internationally recognized to be a part of China.
History
The islands are known to have been used by Chinese fishermen during the Ming Dynasty as shelter during storms, but were never permanently inhabited and their use by the Chinese appears to have come to an end at some time during the Qing Dynasty. Japanese historians argue that the islands were historically a part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, whose territory included a small chain of islands that Inc. Okinawa which operated as a relatively independent state until the late eighteenth century. However, there is evidence that shows the Ryukyu Kingdom itself acknowledged the islands to be a part of the Chinese realm, though this is disputed by some. By the time the Ryukyus were annexed by Japan in 1879 there was no mention of the Senkakus. The islands were re-discovered by a Japanese businessman named Koga in 1884, after which the Japanese surveyed the islands over a ten-year period, before fully incorporating them into Japanese administration in 1895.
Respective Positions
The Chinese position on the sovereignty of the islands has two bases: a historical claim; and a geographical claim. The historical claim refers to the first established use of the islands as outlined above. From this perspective, since the islands were first discovered and then used on a frequent basis by the Chinese as early as the 14th century, there can be no dispute as to the original sovereignty of the islands. Given their geographical location it is entirely logical that they would be a part of the province of Taiwan. However, this province was ceded to Japan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War ended with the Treaty of Shimonoseki that awarded Taiwan to the Japanese “in perpetuity”. Taiwan remained a colony of Japan until its defeat in the Second World War in August 1945, at which point the Potsdam and Cairo Declarations – both accepted by Japan as conditions of its surrender – decreed that Japan should return Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty. As the Diaoyu Islands are considered to have historically been part of Taiwan, they should be included in this. The second basis of China’s claim is somewhat tenuous in international law and refers to the nature of the East Asian continental shelf. China claims that the shelf is part of Chinese territory and extends out into the East China Sea, incorporating the Diaoyu Islands. Though it is true that the continental shelf is exceptional in its extension, it is worth noting that such a claim has never been used by any other country in the world, and there is little to suggest that it has any basis in law.
The Japanese position on the islands is based on a claim of “continuous occupation or administration”. From the Japanese perspective the uninhabited and entirely undeveloped islands were rediscovered in 1884 by Koga, and an appropriate survey conducted over the following decade. They were then incorporated into Okinawa Prefecture as sovereign Japanese territory. After Japan’s surrender in August 1945, the islands remained under the administration of the occupying US forces, who maintained control of Okinawa until 1972, fully twenty years after handing back control of the Japanese mainland. For the Japanese, the Senkaku Islands were restored to Japanese sovereignty at this point and had not been separated from Okinawa Prefecture at any time since 1895.
Though China never acknowledged Japanese claims over the islands, it never challenged US administration of them during the almost three decades following the end of the war, though this is complicated by the presence on Taiwan of US allies the Kuomintang (Guomindang, KMT). However, it is notable that serious diplomatic noises surrounding the sovereignty issue only emerged after a UN report was released in 1968 suggesting that significant reserves of oil and gas may lie under the water surrounding the islands. Despite these noises, when the PRC and Japan normalized relations in 1972 the matter was shelved, as it was in 1978 during negotiations over the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, with Deng Xiaoping confidently declaring that “the next generation will be wiser”. Since then, no significant negotiation has taken place over the issue, with the Japanese exercising de facto control of the islands through regular patrols by the Japanese Coast Guard.
Modern Day Controversies
A Chinese poster showing the islands with superimposed Chinese flags signifying sovereignty
A diplomatic spat between China and Japan was sparked in 1996 when the Japan Youth Federation returned to the islands to conduct maintenance on its lighthouse. However, what is notable about the controversy is that it was not publicized in China until it had been resolved. The People’s Daily – the most widely circulated newspaper in China that also functions as the CCP’s mouthpiece – did not report on the issue, even in pieces that criticized Japan over other issues. There was a clear desire in China not to provoke the public over the issue, and the matter was dealt with relatively swiftly at the diplomatic level.
The issue continued to be one of several sources of tension between China and Japan throughout the rest of the 1990s and into the 2000s, without sparking serious incident. It remained a matter of dispute that was brought up during virtually every bilateral meeting and no solution has ever appeared close but neither side had sought to change the status quo. There were minor sources of irritation, including the arrest of a Chinese fisherman near the islands in 2004, but he was swiftly released without charge by the Japanese who sought to play down the significance of the incident.
However, in 2010, the matter returned to centre stage in Sino-Japanese tension. In September of that year a Chinese fishing boat was spotted in what Japan considers to be its waters. A patrolling Japan Coast Guard (JCG) ship ordered it to leave the waters immediately, but the fishing boat instead changed course to head directly towards the Japanese ship. Though the Chinese side later disputed this version of events a video taken from the JCG vessel that was later leaked by a disgruntled employee clearly showed that the fishing boat intentionally rammed into the Japanese boat twice. At this point the entire crew was arrested, sparking a major diplomatic dispute between the two countries.
Japan Coast Guard Vessel Yashima
Though the crew was released almost immediately, the captain of the boat was detained for a total of 17 days, on possible charges under Japanese law. The Chinese response was vociferous, both at the governmental and societal levels, with strongly worded diplomatic protests and apparently spontaneous street demonstrations against Japan. There were reports that China had suspended exports of rare earths to Japan in response, though academic analysis has later disputed this version of events. A group of Japanese businessmen were also arrested in the aftermath of the boat captain’s detention, on seemingly spurious charges that appeared to be a tit-for-tat retaliation. The diplomatic standoff finally came to an end when Japan apparently blinked first, with the Chief Prosecutor announcing the release of the captain without charge on the grounds of “Japan’s national interests”, something that caused a debate over the legality of the Chief Prosecutor’s actions within Japan. While this brought an end to this chapter of the dispute, it served to bring the islands to the forefront of Sino-Japanese tensions.
Japanese Nationalization
In 2012, Shintaro Ishihara, then the mayor of Tokyo and a right-wing firebrand who had long campaigned for a tougher policy towards China, launched a campaign to nationalize the islands. The three largest islands had been in private ownership since Japan integrated them into its territory at the end of the eighteenth century. The family that held the rights to them had been keen to sell them but was not willing to do so if there could be any threat to Japan’s sovereignty claims. As a result, Ishihara launched a bid to raise enough funds to buy the islands and vowed to take them under the umbrella of the Tokyo government. His plans also included the building of a harbor on the largest island, a move that would unquestionably have inflamed tensions with China and possibly have provoked a military response. When Ishihara’s campaign achieved its goal of raising sufficient funds, the national government decided it had no option but to move on the issue. The then-Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced that the national government would purchase the islands and quickly struck an agreement with the family that owned them. This move was, without doubt, driven by a desire to lessen the tension with China as Ishihara’s plan was deemed highly provocative. Under the national government’s ownership, no development of the islands would occur and the status quo would effectively be maintained. Noda clearly hoped that this move would be recognized by the Chinese and the response would be proportionate.
Anti-Japan protest in Beijing in 2012
Since the nationalization China has stepped up “surveillance” of the areas surrounding the islands. Where once an unwritten agreement not to enter Japan’s de facto contiguous zone around the islands had kept the prospect of conflict to a bare minimum, China has since regularly flouted this norm. Though the incursions are frequently “Marine Surveillance” vessels rather than military ships, the possibility of conflict has been raised to its highest level since the two countries normalized relations in 1972. This was brought into sharp focus in December 2012 when a Chinese “Maritime Surveillance” plane entered the airspace of the islands, leading to the Japanese scrambling jets in response. A further escalation of the dispute in January 2013 occurred when the Japanese claimed that a Chinese PLAN frigate (a navy warship) had locked its radar onto a Japanese ship in the waters, suggesting that the first shots were about to be fired. Though China subsequently denied the incident, the fact that such ships are now in frequent and close contact has significantly raised the possibility of a miscalculation that might trigger actual armed conflict between the two powers. The seriousness of the situation is heightened by a declaration from Hilary Clinton in January 2013 that the US’ joint security treaty with Japan covers the islands, thus obliging it to defend Japan if attacked by China. This raises the possibility of direct conflict between China and the US for the first time since the Korean War and is a stark reminder to all involved of the gravity of the situation.
In October 2013 China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) above the East China Sea, including directly above the islands. This requires aircraft entering the zone – which is separate from China’s territorial airspace – to identify themselves to the Chinese authorities, log a flight path and retain open communications for the duration of the period of time in the zone. Although the zone is not unique – several of China’s neighbors have similar zones, including Japan – the sudden declaration and the more stringent requirements imposed by China have made this a controversial move that is clearly linked to the islands dispute. Aircraft from both Japan and the US have so far ignored the rules without serious consequence but the potential for miscalculation has clearly been raised even further by this development.
South China Sea Disputes
In addition to China’s dispute with Japan in the East China Sea, it has competing claims with several countries of Southeast Asia for islands and maritime rights. China’s famous “nine dashed line” details its claim to virtually every single island and rock in the South China Sea, stretching to within 50 miles of the mainlands of Malaysia and the Philippines despite being more than a thousand miles from China’s mainland in several instances. There are two main groups of islands within this vast area of sea claimed by the PRC. The first is the Paracel Islands, which is disputed with Vietnam. The second is the Spratly Islands, which are wholly claimed by China, and which are partly claimed by each of Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, and Vietnam, with Indonesia also claiming maritime rights in the area without actually staking a claim to any territory. Additionally, there are disputes with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal and Macclesfield Bank. As with the East China Sea, each of the disputes is complicated by matching claims from Taiwan which are based on the same justifications as the PRC.
The Paracels
Known as Xisha Qundao (West Sand Islands) in Chinese and Hoàng Sa (Yellow Sand) in Vietnamese, the Paracel Islands are located approximately 200 miles south of Hainan Island (China’s most southerly province) and a similar distance east of central Vietnam. The group is made up of more than 30 islands, islets, reefs and sandbanks. Their significance lies mostly in access to significant fishing stocks, though it is thought that oil and gas deposits may also be present.
From a Vietnamese perspective, the islands have been sovereign territory since the 15th century, when harvesting of sea produce was conducted on the islands. This claim is supported by some historical evidence in the form of records kept by several of the Vietnamese dynasties that detail continual use of the islands throughout the following centuries. The islands were claimed by France in the mid-19th century after the colonization of Indochina, and this claim met with no objection from China. However, it is important to note that China was challenged politically at this time as it was facing the prospect of colonization itself for the first time in its history. The French reasserted their claim to the islands in 1930, this time meeting with resistance from what was then the Republic of China. The islands were annexed by Japan in 1939 as its military rolled across East Asia. Following Japan’s defeat in 1945, the status of the islands was left ambiguous by the post-War treaties, until Japan itself completed an agreement with Vietnam for the return of sovereignty over the islands 1952. Though this was complicated further by the partition of Vietnam two years later, the present-day reunified Vietnam considers this treaty to be valid and still in force, demonstrating its continued sovereignty over the islands.
China’s claims actually predate those of Vietnam, with record from the Song Dynasty suggesting that some Chinese habitation of the islands occurred during this time. The islands were also included in maps produced during later dynasties, including the Yuan and the Ming. Though the use of the islands appears to have subsided during the Qing Dynasty, no Chinese government ever renounced the claims and the Republic of China formally objected to the French colonial government of Indochina building a weather station on the largest of the islands in 1932. Additional evidence of China’s claim, perversely, comes from the Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Japanese foreign ministry demanded that France desist from activities on the islands on the basis that they were part of the administrative prefecture of Hainan Island, then under Japanese occupation. After Japan’s defeat, China considers sovereignty to have been returned to it under the terms of Japan’s surrender.
In 1974, while North Vietnam and South Vietnam were still engaged in war with each other for control of the two countries, the south fought a battle with China for the Paracel Islands. The battle was sparked by attempts from the South Vietnamese navy to expel Chinese fishing vessels from the surrounding waters, leading China to take military action in support of its fishing rights. After a brief naval battle and aerial bombardment, the Chinese forces launched an amphibious assault on several of the islands that it had not previously occupied, securing a decisive victory that established a permanent military presence on the islands. The battle lasted only a couple of days and Vietnamese casualties were relatively small, with around 50 deaths and a similar number of injuries, but the result was highly significant in the dispute over the islands as it established Chinese de facto control of the archipelago. A recurrence of military activity in 1988 left a further 70 Vietnamese dead, though this incident is frequently dismissed as nothing more than a ‘skirmish’.
The dispute remains unresolved and has been at the root of sporadic incidences of diplomatic difficulties between the two countries, usually sparked by disagreements over fishing rights. These spats have become more commonplace since China established a symbolic administrative region that incorporated the Paracels in 2007. In 2010 China announced plans to develop tourism to the islands in a move that the Vietnamese condemned as a “serious violation” of its sovereignty. A potentially serious flashpoint occurred in June 2011 when a Vietnamese oil survey ship was apparently rammed by a Chinese patrol vessel in waters close to Vietnam, seemingly outside of what even China considers to be its waters. Chinese military vessels have also detained Vietnamese fishermen on numerous occasions in recent years. For example, in March 2012 a total of 21 fishermen were arrested by Chinese patrol boats, after a fleet of around 100 Vietnamese boats entered what China considers to be its waters surrounding the islands. Though they were released a few weeks later the reaction sparked angry and violent protest against China in Vietnam, notably in the capital, Hanoi. Though both governments have sought to develop friendlier ties in many other areas of their relationship in recent years, the dispute over the islands remains a constant thorn in bilateral ties and a conduit for ugly nationalist sentiment in both countries.
In May 2014, China moved an oil rig from a part of the sea that was undisputed into an area that Vietnam considers to be its territorial waters. This sparked an angry response from both state and society in Vietnam with violent anti-Chinese protests breaking out across the country, resulting in several serious injuries to Chinese workers and the evacuation of hundreds of foreign workers (including many non-Chinese caught up in the protests). Though no direct military confrontation has followed, the dispute has taken Sino-Vietnamese relations to their lowest point for decades.
The Spratlys
Map of Spratly Island
The Spratly Islands are a group of around 750 islands, islets, reefs, and sand banks, totaling a little over one square mile of land but are actually spread out across in excess of 100,000 square miles of the South China Sea. They are largely uninhabited, but several countries have succeeded in establishing military presences on some of the islands in their respective claims. Thus, 45 of the islands are home to military forces from China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Brunei also claims one island but has not established a military presence on it. China refers to the islands as Nansha Qundao (South Sand Islands) and considers them to be part of the same symbolic administrative region as the Paracels. It is the only country (except for Taiwan, whose own claims overlap the PRC’s for historical reasons) to claim the entire archipelago, which includes islands that are within 50 miles of the mainlands of Malaysia and the Philippines but more than 1000 miles from China’s own mainland. The economic value of the island is questionable at best, with initial surveys suggesting that oil and gas may be present but in unknown quantities. However, from a strategic perspective, as well as for reasons of national pride and for access to fishing stocks, the islands retain a high level of importance to all parties in the dispute.
As with the Paracels, China’s claims rests on historical usage of the islands during dynastic times, stretching back to the Yuan Dynasty, while Vietnamese claims are also rooted in their own historical use and supported by the French colonization of the area that purported to include the archipelago in its empire. Claims from Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei are more geographical than historical, with each citing the proximity of uninhabited and undeveloped islands to their own undisputed sovereign territory as justification for their claims. The dispute is complicated by the lack of native populations and the previous colonization of several of the competing countries in the claims.
The dispute has remained unresolved and, particularly in recent years, has led to heightened tension with potential for military conflict in the region. Indeed, in May 2011 it was reported that vessels from the Chinese navy (PLAN) had fired upon several Vietnamese ships in the region, including two oil survey ships and at least one fishing boat. The incident contributed to a serious deterioration of ties between the two nations during that time and sparked further angry anti-China protests in major Vietnamese cities. Around the same time the Philippines government began to express concerns about China’s increased activity around the islands and openly warned the visiting Chinese Defense Minister, Liang Guanglie, that his country “risked sparking an arms race” in the region if China did not seek to ease tensions swiftly.
Scarborough Shoal and Macclesfield Bank
Macclesfield Bank: a tiny, uninhabitable ridge in the South China Sea
Outside of the Paracels and the Spratlys, the South China Sea is also home to Scarborough Shoal and Macclesfield Bank which are disputed between China and the Philippines. Both are significant for strategic reasons and for the implications that any acknowledged sovereignty claim might have on other disputes in the Spratly Islands.
Macclesfield Bank, known as Zhongsha Qundao (Central Sand Islands) is a completely submerged chain of reefs that does not qualify as territory under international law since it cannot be inhabited by human beings. Nevertheless, both the PRC and Taiwan claim it to be part of Chinese territory. The position of the Philippines government is less clear; in 2012 it objected to Chinese activity in the area but has never lodged a formal claim to sovereignty. In any case, since the atoll is entirely submerged it is not clear how such a claim would be made and what effect it could have.
Scarborough Shoal, known in Chinese as Nanyan Dao (South Cave Island) is actually a group of small islets or rocks, all uninhabited. Its sovereignty is disputed between China and the Philippines (as well as Taiwan) in the same way that the Spratly Islands are, though are considered geographically separate. Claims from all sides are somewhat patchy in their historical evidence, particularly as there is no evidence of inhabitation on any of the rocks at any point in history. Nevertheless, it remains a sore point in bilateral relations as both China and the Philippines seek access to fishing stocks and potentially other natural resources.
The dispute came to international attention in 2012 when eight Chinese fishing boats were apprehended by a Filipino naval vessel which accused the crews of illegally catching sharks and taking coral. China sent in two “Marine Surveillance” ships to block the Filipinos from taking further action and a standoff ensued, leading to heightened diplomatic tensions between the two countries and tit-for-tat protests in major cities. Strong winds ultimately led to the Philippines having to temporarily withdraw its presence, after which Chinese surveillance ships set up a naval blockade, preventing any further access to the shoal. Though no direct conflict occurred, the situation is ongoing with the blockade remaining in place to the chagrin of the Philippines.
China’s Construction of Artificial Islands in the South China Sea
From this new position of power, China has become increasingly vociferous against the US and other national military patrols within the South China Sea waters, claiming that such patrols are in breach of its sovereign rights. Washington and its allies take the point of view that the South China Sea is not China’s exclusive sovereign waters, and therefore their navigation through the South China Sea is consistent with the freedom of navigation principle through these waters is still applicable.
Were the US and its Southeast Asian allies to forfeit complete dominion of the South China Sea to Beijing, they would be relinquishing their ability to effectively protect and monitor over approximately $5.3 trillion worth of shipping trade that travels through the sea each year, an estimated $1.2 trillion of which belongs to the United States. (Burgers, 2019) Southeast Asian claimants would also be ceding control of fishing stocks representing 10-12% (Kaplan, 2014) of the annual global catch. Currently, China consumes approximately 18% of the global marine catch, but this is expected to grow to 38% of the global marine catch by 2030. Southeast Asian claimants would also lose access to oil reserves estimated to be at 11 billion barrels and gas reserves estimated to equal 190 million cubic feet.
The South China Sea Tribunal
In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in the Philippines favor. Specifically, the tribunal stated that the rocky outcrops claimed by China, some of which could only be seen during low tide, could not be the basis for China’s territorial claims; that China’s extensive claim to sovereignty over South China Sea waters as expressed by its nine dash line had no legal basis; that some of the waters claimed by China were well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic and that China could not use its artificial islands as a basis to claim rights over the Philippines exclusive economic zone; that its construction of artificial islands was illegal; and that China had breached the Philippines sovereign rights in those waters by obstructing Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration.
While the decision is legally binding, there is no mechanism for enforcing it. For China’s part, Beijing not only refused to participate in the tribunal’s proceedings, but it also stated that it would not abide by ithe Tribune’s decision. Since then, using the promise of economic reward being offered through China’s Belt and Road Initiative- which acts as both a political and economic initiative – China is using geoeconomic instruments such as loans, investment, and infrastructure development to blunt any impact of the ruling. For instance, China has leveraged the election of Philippine President Duarte to undermine the ruling’s impact. Specifically, China is working to negotiate an agreement with the Philippines to share oil and natural gas resources in the disputed waters. This agreement would be both a significant economic and policy victory for Beijing both by allowing it to share resources that were ruled to be exclusively Philippine but also by enabling it to potentially lock Western oil companies out of oil and gas development contracts in the region. It also sets a precedent for China that may ease the negotiation of similar agreements with other Southeast Asian countries.
In 2018, Brunei and China also announced that they would be exploring oil and gas resource extraction together. Part of Brunei’s motivation in agreeing to partner with China might be that the oil and gas reserves that have been the bedrock of its economy are projected to be depleted within the next several decades. Brunei’s oil and gas sector has historically accounted for approximately 60% of the country’s GDP and 95% of its exports. In anticipation, Brunei’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal, is seeking to diversify its economy and improve its domestic infrastructure while also seeking to identify new revenue sources. China’s Belt and Road initiative is providing the country with the technical, engineering and investment resources to help the country achieve its diversification objectives. The two countries are also creating the Brunei-Guangxi Economic Corridor as a mechanism to increase trade between the two countries. In 2017, China became Brunei’s largest source of imports, overtaking both Malaysia and Singapore. In return for this investment and economic aid, Brunei it is not only agreeing to develop offshore oil and gas resources with China, but it is also remaining quiet Beijing’s South China Sea claims, while not specifically relinquished its own claims publicly. It is also demurring to negotiate with China regarding the South China Sea claims through ASEAN multilateral mechanisms. This significant strengthens China’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the other Southeast Asian claimants. Divisions within ASEAN not only create ruptures between countries that Beijing can exploit, but it also gives Beijing further time to improve its de facto dominion over contested waterways. For its part, Beijing hopes to showcase Brunei as an example of the mutual benefits that can come from the mutual cooperation and joint development that is at the heart of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Trends
It is quite clear that an expansion of China’s naval capabilities achieved through its rapid military modernization has allowed China to become more assertive in its various maritime disputes with its neighbors. China’s more aggressive stand in the South China Sea represents a significant departure from the policy that China pursued when settling the various land disputes. This change of stance over the maritime disputes has had several implications for the region as a whole as well as for China itself.
Firstly, it has led to a worsening in bilateral ties with several of China’s neighbors. The most serious of these is the ongoing dispute with Japan. This has inflamed nationalist tensions on both sides. These nationalist tensions have left little room for compromise on this issue. Similarly, its relationship with Vietnam has also particularly suffered.
However, offsetting this greater military cooperation is the fact these countries have significantly increased their economic ties with China as their military cooperation has also risen. Additionally, Cambodia, Laos and Pakistan are not actively seeking to balance against China but are instead accepting the benefits that they are enjoying from a larger Chinese economic and military footprint. Going forward, increasing economic dependency on China means that East and South East Asian countries will be strongly motivated to maintain good relationships with Beijing even at the risk of some political and sovereign infringements. As China continues to roll out its Belt and Road Initiative, it can be expected that its economic ties to the region will continue to multiply over the next decades.
Strong economic ties between countries means that the cost of military confrontation is greater than it would be if countries share no economic bonds. Therefore, in addition to forming stronger alliances, many of these countries are seeking to maintain their sovereignty and autonomy by strengthening international norms and laws, promoting a rules-based order, and highlighting the importance of maintaining a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. Examples of these norms include freedom of navigation, peaceful dispute settlement, and support for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
To the extent that this rule-based order undermines China’s political and economic objectives, China has indicated a willingness to ignore rulings or create divisions in multinational institutions. For instance, China has worked to create discord within ASEAN not because it fears a unified ASEAN’s economic and military strength, but because it does not want to appear as an outsider in the midst of regional consensus. Similarly, it is in China’s interest to undermine a coalition of smaller powers allied with the United States that might seek to contain China economically or strategically.
In the light of China’s more aggressive stance in the South China Sea, some of China’s Asian neighbors are also becoming more cautious regarding China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Some are wary to augment their economic vulnerability to China if they significantly increase the amount of money that they borrow from Beijing to implement infrastructure and other projects. Other Belt and Road Initiative concerns include losing sovereignty over parts of their territory due to extended leases granted to the Chinese as part of Belt and Road contracts. Concerns are also being raised regarding the secretive nature of many of these Belt and Road contracts and the lack of economic and environmental impact assessments that do not seem to accompany many of these projects. Finally, some expressed concerns about an increase of Chinese residents in their country that invariably seemed to accompany Belt and Road projects. It is expected that these concerns will become more vocal in the coming decade.
Thirdly, China’s hardline stance in the South China Sea is undermining its efforts to project an image of a responsible power in the region, where its rise can be counted on to be peaceful and not threatening. China counters this argument by stating that its claims to the South China Sea are indeed peaceful as the sea is and always has been Chinese territory; its greater military presence in the area reflects its desire to protect its territory from international encroachment. From China’s point of view, the South China Sea is China’s near abroad.
References
China and Southeast Asia: Waking up the Neighbors
/in Politics /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
In recent years, China has made many efforts to gain Southeast Asia’s trust, and to
progress its economic and political ties with the region. A key form of engagement with the countries of Southeast Asia has been through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Founded in 1967, ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (the geographical term ‘Southeast Asia’ is generally considered to include these countries as well as Timor L’Este, which has held tentative discussions about joining the group). ASEAN states its main purpose as being “to accelerate economic growth, social progress, and cultural development in the region” as well as “to promote regional peace and stability”. Although it has worked towards the development of a cultural Southeast Asian identity in recent years, most would agree that its greatest achievements have been in the field of economic cooperation and regional stability. While Indonesia is the giant of the group, it has been careful not to dominate the organization. ASEAN prides itself on conducting its business through the ‘ASEAN way’, which involves building consensus among all members and maintaining a commitment to mutual non-interference. ASEAN gives the less powerful countries the benefit of collective bargaining, which serves to balance to some extent the relationship of these countries with China. Settling issues of mutual interest within the ASEAN framework has eased many tensions between member countries and has promoted overall cooperation within the region. Despite real successes with China, ASEAN itself has not been a silver bullet and many difficult issues remain between China and the region. In addition to ASEAN, engagement between the countries of Southeast Asia and China has also been facilitated through the large Chinese emigrant populations in most of the Southeast Asia countries, many of whom maintain strong business and cultural ties with their ancestral home.
Historical Context
Throughout much of China’s dynastic history it maintained regional hegemony in East Asia (East Asia refers to the territory of what today is Southeast Asia, China, the two Koreas, and Japan) by instigating a ‘tributary system’. Regional East Asian rulers would seek the patronage of the Chinese emperor of the day in order both to legitimize their own rule and to ensure that peace was maintained with their powerful neighbor. This system had a profound effect on many parts of Southeast Asia, particularly the areas that are now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, where the cultural influence of China is palpable. This is evidenced, for example, by the presence of Chinese characters on many older buildings although they are no longer used in the writing systems in these countries and by the pervasion of Confucian values in the respective societies. Equally important as the political ties was the trade between China and many of the countries of Southeast Asia. Chinese merchants, following trade routes, gradually immigrated to various Southeast Asian countries, where they settled and assimilated. Thus, every single country in Southeast Asia now has significant Chinese communities, many of whom maintain strong cultural links to their ancestral home. This is especially noticeable in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia but can be observed across the region.
The legacies of this history are complex. The cultural links that have been created between many parts of Southeast Asia and China, both in terms of shared norms and values and because of the ethnic Chinese still living in these countries (referred to in Chinese as huaqiao, which literally means ‘Chinese bridges’), provide a huge opportunity for China to extend its influence throughout the region. In recent years, China has sought to exploit this both through economic integration and by the development of ‘soft power’. For example, China has promoted the study of Chinese language and culture by bestowing scholarships for poorer students to come to China to study. While this program to promote the teaching of Chinese culture and language is worldwide, China has concentrated its main focus on Southeast Asia. Specifically, a large proportion of the recipients are huaqiao. This awarding of scholarships to ethnic Chinese has been controversial, reminding some in the region of a Mao-era tendency to interfere in countries with large ethnic Chinese communities on the premise that these populations remained, in effect, part of the Chinese nation. Such interference was a source of serious friction with both Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. Another legacy of this shared and complex history is the issue of territory. Although China has now resolved virtually all of its outstanding land border disputes (only those with India and Bhutan remain), it still has numerous disputes with several countries in Southeast Asia over sovereignty of islands in the South China Sea.
A particularly significant event in China’s relations with the region occurred in 1979 when Deng Xiaoping gave the order for the PLA to invade Vietnam. The invasion was in response to the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia after defeating the Khmer Rouge, a Chinese ally, as well as a reaction to internal Vietnamese policies that discriminated against ethnic Chinese and had resulted in a flood of refugees into China. Deng announced, during a trip to America, that China would “teach Vietnam a lesson”. The war was brief but bloody, lasting only three weeks but resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands. Some Western academics have put Chinese casualties as high as 20,000 though this figure is disputed by China, while Vietnam claims 10,000 civilians were killed (it gives no figures for military casualties but it is widely believed that these number in the region of 50,000). Chinese forces withdrew from all areas that had been briefly occupied, claiming success in their mission, but there is no question that they suffered much heavier losses than they had envisioned and that China’s reputation suffered tremendous harm as a result. The damage was both in terms of its perceived relative power, as well as to its image as a trustworthy and peaceful neighbor. Vietnamese perceptions of the war are of another successful repulsion of a foreign invasion, following soon on from the defeats of both the Americans and the French.
Territorial Disputes
The most serious political and security issue that exists between the nations of Southeast Asia and China is the continued failure to resolve to numerous territorial disputes. By far the most grave of the disputes is that of the Spratley Islands, which are situated in the South China Sea close to the Philippines and the northern coast of Malaysia. The PRC claims sovereignty over the entire archipelago of more than 30,000 largely uninhabited islands that constitute the Spratleys. However, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Taiwan all claim some of this area. To complicate matters further, some of these claims are overlapping and so there is no unified Southeast Asian position from which to argue with China. In order to protect their claims, military installations from all the claimants, except for Brunei, are stationed within the archipelago, making the area one that is fraught with multilateral tensions. Although all countries are rhetorically committed to resolving the dispute peacefully, the presence of so many different militaries means that low-level conflict from time to time is almost inevitable. This is particularly true with regard to the two largest presences, China and Vietnam. For example, several Vietnamese fishing boats were captured in 2007 in an area that is claimed by both countries. In May 2011, there were reports that Chinese patrol boats had escorted a Chinese fishing boat when it rammed a Vietnamese survey ship in the area. The other major dispute is over the Paracel Islands, a chain of around 30 islets roughly equidistant from China’s Hainan Island and the east coast of Viet Nam. This dispute is largely a bilateral one, between China and Viet Nam, although Taiwan also has a claim. The islands were occupied by both Chinese and Vietnamese forces until battle in 1974 which resulted in control over the entire archipelago being taken by the PRC. Viet Nam, however, has never renounced its claim to the islands and sporadic incidents involving fishing boats in the area have continued. Two other disputes, both with the Philippines, persist over two small groups of islets and this spilled over in early 2012 when Chinese patrol boats prevented Philippines police patrols from boarding Chinese fishing boats in the region. A stand-off between the two nations ensued that escalated tensions in the region, leading to anti-Chinese protests in Manila. Though the situation appeared to be resolved in June 2012, the withdrawal of all concerned may have had more to do with the coming typhoons than any diplomatic breakthrough. Certainly this issue has not yet gone away for good.
2014 brought another serious outbreak, but this time with Vietnam. In May 2014 China moved an oil rig from a part of the sea that was undisputed into an area that Vietnam considers to be its territorial waters. This sparked an angry response from both state and society in Vietnam with violent anti-Chinese protests breaking out across the country, resulting in several serious injuries to Chinese workers and the evacuation of hundreds of foreign workers (including many non-Chinese caught up in the protests). Though no direct military confrontation has followed, the dispute has taken Sino-Vietnamese relations to their lowest point for decades.
ASEAN
The ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has developed into one of the most successful regional organizations in the world, arguably second only to the EU in terms of its coherence, levels of cooperation and weight in the international arena. Formed in 1967, ironically as a foil against the spread of communism in Asia, its five founding members were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Its success in terms of promoting economic cooperation and development among its members led to applications from other states to join. The end of the Cold War allowed for even those states against which the alliance had originally been aimed to become full members and the organization now incorporates the whole of Southeast Asia, with the exception of Timor L’Este. While China is not a member, it, uniquely in East Asia, recognized from an early stage both the importance of the institution and the need for its own engagement with it. Specifically, China spotted a double opportunity with regard to Southeast Asia, and ASEAN proved to be the vehicle through which it could exploit it. The two aspects of the opportunity that China seeks to exploit are: the development of economic growth and integration; and the promotion of its ‘soft power’ in a region it considers to be its own ‘backyard’.
The creation of ASEAN+1 (which includes China) and ASEAN+3 (which includes China, South Korea and Japan) shows how China has stolen a march on its East Asian rivals in
gaining leverage with the Southeast Asian states. That there is a forum which is basically dedicated to China-ASEAN relations, in which other states have no part, as well as a forum dedicated to ASEAN-East Asia relations, in which China still has a key role, shows how it has positioned itself as a key player in this process of ASEAN-centered regionalization. Despite interest from both Japan and South Korea in increasing trade ties with Southeast Asia, it was China that managed to secure a Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN, which came into force on January 1st 2010. Theoretically, this created the largest free trade area in the world by population (1.9 billion people), though it ranks third in terms of actual volumes of trade. There are also many more exemptions than one might ordinarily expect in such an agreement. Each country lists dozens of areas where tariffs may continue, and four ASEAN countries (Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar) are completely exempt until 2015. It should also be noted that a similar, though less extensive, agreement between ASEAN and India came into force on the same day. Nevertheless, the establishment of the agreement represents a public relations coup for China and the economic benefits for all involved should not be underestimated. By December 2010, China-ASEAN trade reportedly increased by almost 40% and two-way FDI topped $10 billion, with two thirds of that figure flowing into China. The slated 2015 opening of high-speed rail links between mainland Southeast Asia and China, linking the southwest of China with Laos and part of China’s enormous and ambitious high speed rail network project, should increase integration even further.
China has also involved itself in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) that is designed to promote security dialogues and confidence building between states around the Asia Pacific region. The forum involves 27 members, including all ASEAN members, China, Japan, the US, the EU and every other major actor in the region – excluding, at China’s behest, Taiwan. It is through this forum that China has sought to ease the fears of its smaller neighbors over its own rise and expansion of power, particularly with regard to its military expansion and the previously mentioned maritime territorial disputes. Generally, China balks at being pinned down by any broad-spectrum ASEAN-China negotiations, preferring instead to deal bilaterally to solve issues between countries. Nevertheless, it has agreed in principle to a ‘Declaration on the Conduct of Parties’ which would commit all signatories to peaceful resolution of these disputes. While this is not yet signed and sealed, China’s agreement has helped ease some tensions with its Southeast Asian neighbors.
Water
China has tried to offset complaints and the potential creation of anti-Chinese alliances by its downstream neighbors by using trade and development incentives – developing the Southeast Asian electricity grid and building sewage and road infrastructure in Cambodia for example – to weaken their ability to challenge China’s dam-building activities. It also engages in a public discourse that not only advocates the importance of hydro-power to its national security, but emphasizes exclusively the benefits of the dams without considering how they will disrupt downstream ecosystems and water access. Specifically, it talks about flood control, reduction of Chinese CO2 emissions, and the benefits of improved navigation and water flow during the dry season. In many cases, it is also helping to fund and construct dams downriver in places such as Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. Their own independent construction of dams with Chinese financing has weakened downstream riparian neighbors’ ability to protest the ecological destruction that China’s upstream dams are causing.
Future Trends
China’s relationship with Southeast Asia is one of its key foreign policy priorities. If it is to establish itself as a global power then it must first be a genuine regional leader. It can only achieve this through engagement with the ASEAN countries at both the economic and political levels. It has shown a clear understanding of the importance of this through its engagement with the ASEAN institutions in which it was ahead of the competition, specifically Japan and South Korea. It can be expected that China will continue to increase its ties with ASEAN in the future.
The increased economic integration with the region has been facilitated both by this willingness to become involved in ASEAN’s structures and also by the myriad cultural ties that bind China to Southeast Asia. It seems likely that both of these factors will continue to contribute a close relationship and this, on the face of it, appears to be a positive development in China’s quest for acceptance as a regional leader and, therefore, a global power.
However, the continuing territorial disputes represent a major threat to China’s goal of
attaining regional leadership. China’s national interests will likely dictate that its claims over the islands continue to be non-negotiable; driven by both strategic concerns and the demands of domestic nationalists it would be virtually unthinkable for China to acquiesce on any of its claims now. One unwelcome side-effect of this from China’s perspective is that the developments have driven several Southeast Asian countries to renew and strengthen their ties with the US. Notable among these have been Vietnam and the Philippines. Such close ties are clearly not in the interests of China’s own national security, nor its ambition to be the regional hegemon. While the recent moves within the ASEAN framework to establish formalized dialogue on the issue are welcome and positive, the prospect of a compromised resolution seems remote and, particularly in the case of the islands, China continues to insist that each individual dispute be resolved bilaterally. With China continuing to expand its naval projection-capabilities in the area, the prospect of increased hostility is very real. Indeed, China’s increased tendency to flex its muscles in this area over the last few years has undone much of the good work it had done in promoting a positive image of itself in the Southeast Asian countries. This schizophrenic policy toward the region may do further harm in the long run as smaller countries seek the protection of a larger and more predictable ally in the form of the United States, a result that would be counter to all of China’s perceived interests. This risk of hostility will continue to cast a shadow over relations between China and the Southeast Asian region.
Sino-Indian Relations: Realists and Rivals
/in Politics /by ChinaFolioIntroduction
The two most populous nations in the world, China and India share a disputed border, are both on the rise economically and politically, and both possess fearsome nuclear arsenals. Their rapidly changing economic and diplomatic positions have put not only their relationships in the wider world in flux, but they have also created a shifting engagement with each other. While China and India’s ever-closer economic ties have created a degree of optimism that their developing relationship will be harmonious and productive, territorial disputes, competition for spheres of influence within South Asia, and increasing friction over water rights will continue to significantly challenge their relationship.
Historical Ties
Throughout ancient times, the link between India and China has been limited; theHimalaya formed a formidable natural barrier between the two civilizations. The most significant Indian contribution to Chinese culture was the transmission of Buddhism into China during China’s Age of Division 220-618 CE. Although the exact time and manner of Buddhism’s spread to China is still debated, it is likely that it made its way to China over the Silk Road, following merchants engaging in trade between the empires. Chinese scholars and monks also travelled to India to study Buddhism and to translate its scriptures. The most famous of these monks was Xuanzang, whose travels to and seventeen year stay in India were fictionally immortalized in the Chinese story, “Journey to the West”, considered one of the four great classics of Chinese literature.
In the modern era, with India colonized by the British, exports of opium to the Chinese mainland eventually led to the two Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 between Britain and the Qing Dynasty of the time, though the involvement of what we now think of as India was incredibly limited, as it was a colony of Britain at the time. The post-Second World War period was a time of dramatic change for both countries. India was granted its independence from Britain in August 1947. The process of India’s independence was complicated by its separation from Pakistan which the British enacted immediately before granting independence to both nations as separate entities. Violence followed between the two new countries. Indeed, more than six decades after their separation, India and Pakistan remain at odds on many issues. Similarly, in China, violence ensued until the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949 as Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, and Mao Zedong’s Communists fought for control of the country. This meant that two giant new nations, both with extensive territories and massive populations, both recovering from differing forms of colonialism and struggling to find their place in the new world order, were created within a very short space of time. Despite their very long histories as civilizations, China and India are thus relatively new nation states. Their early dealings with each other have reflected their struggles to adjust to their relatively new country status and their efforts to find their place in the post WWII international order.
One early contribution that the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship made to wider international relations was the 1954 agreement in which was stated the “five principles of peaceful coexistence”. These principles were agreed as part of a treaty relating to Indian trade with Tibet, over which China had regained suzerainty. The five principles became both the founding principles of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – a grouping of countries that sought to distance themselves from the Cold War by refusing to align with either superpower – and the cornerstone of China’s foreign policy, at least rhetorically. The five principles were: mutual respect for territorial integrity and national sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in the other’s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. At the heart of these principles is the agreement not to infringe the sovereignty of another country. Yet, despite their mutual commitment to these principles, within just a few years China and India were at war with each other.
The 1962 Border War
Following the 1959 Tibetan uprising – which was repressed by the Chinese military and resulted in the Dalai Lama’s fleeing into exile in India – there were several skirmishes between Chinese and Indian troops along the border. The border had never been successfully demarcated between the nations of China and India. An agreement reached in 1913 over the border between British India and Tibet – at the time conducting affairs as a pseudo-independent nation following the breakup of the Qing Dynasty – has been consistently rejected by the PRC, despite the apparent presence of Chinese representatives at the negotiations. China refuses to acknowledge any agreement made with the Tibetan authorities as it declines to recognize that Tibet had any level of suzerainty in this period of history. Interestingly, China’s refusal to recognize this agreement has some validity as it was, in fact, in breach of the Anglo-Russian Entente. Signed in 1907, but annulled in 1922, it stated that all dealings with Tibet must be conducted through the Chinese authorities in Beijing.
In October 1962 China invaded Aksai Chin and Arunchal Pradesh, the two largest portions of disputed territory over which it claimed sovereignty, but which were occupied by the Indians at the time. The simultaneous invasions were over a thousand of miles apart. The war lasted precisely one month, with the Chinese winning a military victory and successfully occupying much of the disputed areas. However, once military superiority had been established, a ceasefire was called and the Chinese unilaterally withdrew from all the territory they had gained in the offensive. While China’s real reasons for unilaterally withdrawing and ending hostilities are still debated, it is likely that a key reason for their retreat was the prospect of US involvement in the conflict, which raised concerns in China of an unwanted and unnecessary war with the superpower. Premier Zhou Enlai insisted that the withdrawal was a signal of good faith and that China had always wished to resolve the dispute peacefully.
The casualties in the war were relatively small, with an estimated 2000 Indians and more than 700 Chinese troops thought to have been killed. However, the consequences for the relationship and the region as a whole were extensive. While the Chinese succeeded in demonstrating their military superiority over their Indian rivals, the invasion harmed their international image and fed the belief in the West that China was a belligerent power intent on using aggressive means to expand its territory and influence. The lesson learned by India was that its military was woefully underprepared and wholly inadequate for purposes of self-defense. It therefore set about wholesale modernization of its military capabilities.
Territorial Issues
Territorial disputes are probably the greatest issue of difficulty between China and India.
The disputes involve ten separate portions of territory, though several of these are tiny. There are two particularly significant areas: the more than 60,000 square km – around three quarters – of what India, and most other countries in the world, consider to be the state of Arunachal Pradesh; and the 37,000 square km Chinese-administered Aksai Chin, to the west of Nepal. It was these two areas over which the 1962 war was fought. At the time the Arunachal Pradesh was sparsely populated, but is now home to around one million Indian citizens. Since the 1962 war there have been many skirmishes along the disputed area, most notably in 1967 and 1987.
Given the size of the larger territories under dispute, it is politically difficult for either country to concede the territory to the other. This is especially true in the case of Arunachal Pradesh, which would be tantamount to the the Indian government effectively giving away the majority of an established Indian state. The other major disputed area, Aksai Chin, is considered by India to be a part of Kashmir and therefore complicates the matter further, given that India is already contesting Kashmir with Pakistan. Certainly, no solution to the current impasse appears imminent and the failure of the two great powers to resolve this remains a constant thorn in the side of diplomatic relations of the two. With that noted there has been some limited success in reaching agreement over the Indian state of Sikkim; initially claimed by both India and China but effectively operating as an independent state, Sikkim voted to join the Indian Federation in 1975. China originally refused to recognize this and continued to display Sikkim as a separate state on maps produced in the PRC. In 2004, it finally accepted it as an Indian state, although it did so with little fanfare.
As with most territorial disputes around the world the problem is exacerbated by nationalists on either side, who are prone to react to even the slightest provocation. Though nationalist responses in China are not as prominent as those that are directed against Japan or the US from time to time, India has emerged as a target for outpourings of nationalist sentiment, particularly over the issue of the disputed territory. Simon Shen, an academic who specializes in Chinese online nationalism, has identified that China’s online nationalists have turned their attention to India in recent years and use the government’s reaction to any perceived provocation as something of a litmus test. India also has its share of hotheaded protesters who make themselves heard whenever China acts in ways considered to infringe on India’s sovereignty over these areas.
Tibet
For historical, religious, cultural and geographical reasons, India continues to play a role in the Tibet issue. Homeland to the Tibetan people, and located on the high plateau of the north-eastern Himalaya, Tibet was unified in the 7th century, but then fractured into various territories which have since been controlled at various times by Tibetans, the
Mongols and the Chinese. Tibet has been part of the People’s Republic of China since 1951, though full control by Beijing was only established following a military advance into the region in 1959. While China’s sovereignty over Tibet is accepted by the international community, its continued rule there remains controversial with the Dalai Lama continuing to campaign internationally for the Tibetan people to be allowed greater autonomy. Though China insists that the Tibet issue is a purely domestic matter in which no other country must interfere, India is inescapably intertwined in the problem. This is, primarily due to the fact that when the PLA rolled into Tibet in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India where he was given asylum, and allowed to establish the Tibetan “government in exile” – in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala. There have certainly been times since 1959 when the Indian government has wished it could bring an end to its own involvement in order to ease its strained relationship with China over this issue, but the Dalai Lama’s successful international promotion of the Tibetan cause has made this an impossibility, at least while he remains alive. For its part, China continues to raise this matter with Indian leaders, particularly whenever Tibetan refugees flee across the border to seek asylum there.
Competition for Water Resources
Tibet is also relevant to Sino-Indian relations as it is the source of the Brahmaputra River which provides significant water and power resources for Bangladesh and India. To take advantage of Tibet’s vast hydro power, China is planning a series of dams on the various transnational rivers that originate there. One of its proposed mega-dam projects is on the Brahmaputra, where it does a big U-turn in the world’s deepest canyon before entering India, close to one of the borders disputed by the two countries. This bend on the Brahmaputra is considered to be one of the world’s largest concentrations of river energy on earth. This mega-dam at the Brahmaputra is just one of what is estimated to be as many 28 dams on the Brahmaputra that are either planned, completed or under discussion by China. While China denies it, some Indian scientists also fear that China might also be planning to divert 200 billion cubic meters of water a year from the Brahmaputra to the Yellow River and other Chinese rivers.
China’s damming of the Brahmaputra puts control of a key source of Indian water into Chinese hands. More than 185 million people in north-eastern India and Bangladesh depend on the Brahmaputra. In the Indian state of Assam, 80 per cent agriculture relies on water from the river. Damming also affects a river’s ecosystem, altering silt and nutrient flows that risk impacting India’s downstream fertility and fisheries. Additionally, India derives significant power from its own hydroelectric projects on the river and its tributaries. The efficacy of these dams could be affected if China significantly alters the river’s flow volumes
Competition for Influence
As large and now rising nations, China and India have competed for and will continue to compete for influence in Asia and abroad. One keen area of competition is in Nepal and Myanmar. There is a difference in motive for the two of these countries. Nepal is considered to be a buffer state between the two powers, so that influence and access within Nepal is a strategic priority for both China and India. In any potential conflict between the two countries, Nepal would have clear tactical importance. Myanmar, on the other hand, is important to both countries as a source of natural resources, particularly natural gas. To seek influence in Nepal and Myanmar, China and India provide both countries with badly needed infrastructural investment; both Nepal and Myanmar have some of the worst infrastructure in the world. China in particular has been focused on building crucial road links throughout Nepal and into China, boosting trade and enhancing ties between the two countries.
While Nepal and Myanmar are important considerations, the relationship with Pakistan is potentially explosive. China has been Pakistan’s long term ally, while Pakistan remains India’s greatest foe, a consequence of the fact that most Indians opposed Pakistan’s separation from India before independence. During the Sino-Indian 1962 border war, Pakistan saw an opportunity to develop a strategic relationship with a large neighbor that would help to balance against what it perceived as the threat of Indian invasion. For its part, China sees its relationship with Pakistan as a way to offset what it believes to be a US strategy to contain China, which the US employs by forming strategic partnerships with significant powers surrounding China, revolving around the axis of Japan, Australia and India. There is unquestionably some truth in this analysis of US intentions, and India’s position within this alliance system is very important. The continuance of friendly relations with Pakistan is one way China works to counter this US strategy, though this has been complicated over recent years by the US-Pakistan alliance that formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. China’s engagement with Pakistan involves it in India’s most prickly international issue, Kashmir, which in turn causes further friction with India at both the government and the societal levels.
China and India are also now beginning to come into direct competition for influence and access to resources in Africa. China’s engagement with Africa has increased significantly in the last two decades as it looks to Africa both as a source of raw materials and as a market for its goods. India’s foray into Africa is still in its early stages, but it is already clear that both countries are pursuing differing strategies within the region. India’s investment strategy has been led by the private sector, where China’s incursion into Africa has been led by large SOEs and government ODA seeking access to Africa’s raw materials such as its oil and timber. Indian multinational companies are seeking to penetrate African markets by exploiting the comparative advantage of a significant Indian diaspora on the continent, as well as the ability of its nationals to speak English. That said, as competition for the continent increases, India’s government seems increasingly willing to engage to secure its competitive position. In 2011 for instance, Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, announced a three year aid package to Africa worth $5 billion. While significant, it is still dwarfed by Chinese aid that currently tops $20 billion per annum. As the China and India continue their rapid development, this competition for access to Africa’s resources and markets is likely to increase in the future though, for now at least, China appears better placed to take advantage.
Bilateral Trade
Though bilateral trade is not as large as one might expect given the sizes of the two nations, it offers one of the best chances to promote a cooperative coexistence between the two Asian giants. China is already India’s largest trading partner and in 2011 bilateral trade topped $74 billion, though this fell back slightly in 2012 to $66 billion. The 2012 reduction in trade was driven almost entirely by a 20% drop in Indian exports to China, with the trade deficit now $29 billion. Total bilateral trade is projected to reach $100 billion by 2015 with potential for even faster growth after that.
China does not offer India economic complementarity in the way that it does to some of
its richer neighbors to the east, such as Japan and South Korea. India, whose population is expected to surpass China’s within two decades, also competes to be a hub for low-cost manufacture out-sourcing. However, India provides China with raw materials; ore and slag, for instance, account for more than a quarter of all Indian exports to China. India also exports $1.5 billion dollars of cotton to China annually, providing a crucial source of supply to China’s critical textile industry, which is the world’s largest and responsible for a quarter of all Chinese exports. In contrast, Chinese exports to India are predominantly in manufactured goods, in particular electrical machinery which represents around a third of total Chinese exports to India. The fact that India exports raw materials to China and China returns finished goods reflects a slightly imbalanced relationship; indeed, India ran a trade deficit of around $20 billion with China in 2010. Nevertheless, deeper economic ties with China remain in India’s long term interests. Overall, India is developing its own economy in different ways to China. Specifically, India has focused on information technology and services. China’s rapidly growing IT market, which already boasts the greatest number of internet users in the world, offers opportunity for India’s leading IT firms. For instance, Infosys Technologies, an Indian IT firm, set up a Chinese subsidiary as far back as 2004. While its Chinese subsidiary still derives the majority of its income from outside of China, the Chinese domestic market now accounts for one third of its profits; this is projected to grow in the coming years. By 2014, Infosys predicts its Chinese subsidiary will employ 10,000 people, triple what it does today. The Tata Group, through Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has also established a significant presence in China. It exports IT services to the Chinese banking sector, with Bank of China among its most notable clients. Its workforce in China is expected to quadruple over the next three years, taking the total number of its employees to over 5000. Following in TCS’ wake is India’s Wipro Technologies which has plans to center its Asian operations in China’s western city of Chengdu, in order to focus on growing its Asian market, and to diversify away from the US and Europe. India’s other great success story in China has been Mahindra & Mahindra, a manufacturer of tractors. Mahindra & Mahindra has established two joint venture tractor manufacturing companies in China which, combined, account for more than 30,000 employees and produce more than 30,000 tractors each year, many of which are exported to Europe or India. Indian IT firms are also seeking Chinese investment. By June 2009, the total Chinese investment in IT in India reached almost $30 billion. Much of this came from the Chinese giant Huawei.
Like many foreign companies working in China, Indian firms have also complained of barriers to their entering and expanding within the Chinese market. These barriers are increasingly being raised at the highest political levels. Complaints from the Indian side are met with calls from China for a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Although India has been reluctant to agree to this until its trade deficit with China has been tackled, such an agreement, if signed, would represent the largest free trade area in the world measured in size of populace.
The BRICS Nations
Another area of promising cooperation between China and India is their involvement with the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The name originally came from an economist working for Goldman Sachs, who coined the term ‘BRIC’ in 2001 (South Africa was not included in either the original thesis or the initial gatherings of the countries) when writing about the shift in global power balances from the large developed western countries to the large developing ones. Initially not a formal structure, the four BRIC countries sought to capitalize on the success of the term by launching annual summits in 2009, where the countries meet to discuss their positions in the global order and to call for greater equity within it. South Africa was invited to join at the end of 2010 and attended its first summit in 2011. Both Brazil and India seek to exploit the status of the alliance in order to promote their aspirations for permanent membership of the UNSC, though declarations from the BRICS summits do not go as far as to directly call for this. Questions have been raised about the continued relevance of the grouping with varying degrees of economic growth; in 2012, only India and China surpassed GDP growth of 5% with South Africa as low as 2.8%.
Future Trends
Of the potentially disruptive issues that remain in the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship, the territorial dispute is probably the thorniest. There is seemingly some room for maneuver on China’s part in the disagreement over Arunachal Pradesh; certainly it seems impossible that the Chinese would try to make good their claims on an area that is widely recognized internationally as Indian territory and which is populated by more than one million Indian citizens. However, other disputes seem more intractable, particularly where Kashmir comes into the equation. Acts of insensitivity on either side are likely to continue to provoke minor spats, but the prospect of armed conflict between the two is highly remote. Indeed, informal talks on this very issue were held in Beijing in December 2012, though without any significant movement. The last formal negotiation on the matter took place in January of the same year.
The Tibet issue seems likely to continue to be an irritant as long as the Dalai Lama
survives. It is probably China’s own calculation on this issue as a whole, not just with India, that the Dalai Lama’s death will help to remove Tibet from the intense international focus that it has been under for the last few decades. From India’s perspective, the trouble the Dalai Lama has caused has likely overwhelmed any soft power that it may have accrued as a result of it providing the Tibetan leader with asylum. There is probably understanding at the highest political level in the bilateral relationship that there is little that can be done in the short term over this issue.
China’s water disputes with its neighbors will likely be a growing problem, particularly given the unprecedented level of its dam building. Tension over water rights with India will be no exception. What is unclear is what its downstream neighbors can do about China’s hydro ambitions. It will likely be an increasing source of acrimony between China and India, especially as India plays catch-up to China’s water projects. India might voice these concerns more vocally on the world stage. It might also gain influence and leverage with other countries that are similarly vulnerable to China’s hydro ambitions to place economic and other pressures against the country.
It is in the economic ties that the greatest reasons for optimism lie. The different directions that the two economies have taken in their development mean that the potential for bilateral growth is significant. For both countries economic development is key and will continue to be so. They share much in common in terms of the continued need to raise large sections of their population out of poverty, a problem that is particularly pronounced in India. The incentive to stay focused on trade rather than to get tied down by territorial disputes or regional competition should remain at the forefront of the minds of policymakers on both sides of the Himalaya.
The election of Narendra Modi as India’s new prime minister in 2014 brought some new-found optimism given his pragmatic approach to international relations and prioritisation of economic cooperation. Modi was already popular in elite circles in China thanks to his careful diplomacy when serving as a regional leader in Gujurat, during which time he made numerous trips to Beijing. Nevertheless, the many thorny issues in the relationship cannot simply be washed away and the presence of Tibet’s prime minister-in-exile at Modi’s swearing in ceremony indicated that he would not simply roll over and acquiesce to all of Beijing’s demands.