Foreigners Changing China 1850-1980 - Essay Example

CHINA The second Opium War in China, which occurred after 1850, marked a new development in imperialism in Asia, with England acting as the main aggressor and showing a tendency towards the imperialist point of view that dominated Victorian times: England used its military power to get treaties and trade spheres from China, as a result, at gunpoint. Although opium has had a long history in China, opium smoking became widely prevalent during the nineteenth century, and this caused a backlash against opium addiction that sought to end opium imports from the British and end opium’s dominance in society. “We have the physical and moral strength to do something about it,” a newspaper writer stated, “and we should do everything we possibly can to rid ourselves of it” (Ebrey, p. 345). Tensions over opium eventually resulted in the Opium Wars against the British. Registered addicts were licensed by the government to get decreasing amounts of the drug, and many users were punished and shops closed. By the time of the second Opium War, however, it became clear that the real text of the war was not opium smoking, but imperialism. Unfortunately, by the end of the second Opium War, China found itself defeated, forced into unfavorable trade policies, and still vulnerable as a population to opium addiction. The nature of imperialism is not balanced: the imperialist country is always the oppressor and the oppressed country is always the victim of the inherent shortcomings of the unbalanced system. The British were struggling to set up an imperialist structure in China by all means necessary during the 1800s. By the time of the “Arrow Incident” that started the second Opium War, the extension of the war was generally seen as an extension of British imperialism through Bowring in Hong Kong. “The British wanted the whole country opened up so that China could be incorporated into their "informal Empire," brought under indirect British rule like South America, rather than direct rule like India. The Chinese government was expected to govern the country in the interests of the British and their refusal to do this was bound to provoke renewed war” (China, 2010). In other words, China was punished with war for not accepting the unfair European imperialist system, until it relented and accepted treaty terms which were not favorable to its own interests. Some scholars argue the imperialism is a national construction in which politics do not generally emphasize a person’s color or nationality over their position in the economy, with which politics is primarily concerned, and it is clear to them that an imperialist political structure like the British one of the 1850s, with its aims focused exclusively on the capital to be extracted from China, is not as interested, and neither are insurgents who seek liberation from the oppressive imperial mechanism. This argument is compelling, but it should be firmly stated that it should not downplay race and eliminate it as a factor to be considered alongside British imperialism in Asia. To focus entirely on economics regarding the imperialist question would be paramount to focusing entirely on race. In thinking about imperialism in Asia, one cannot ignore the ideology of the imperialist oppressor, whose racist behavior was predicated by their belief in their own cultural superiority. To say that there was nothing racist about the Opium Wars is to deny the essentiality of reality. Some say that the second Opium War, which ultimately resulted in the defeat of the Chinese military by a much smaller foreign force, sowed the seeds of discord in China to the extent that imperialism became the main force. “The defeat of its military by a much smaller Western army showed the weakness of the Qing Dynasty and began a new age of imperialism in China. Domestically, this, coupled with the flight of the emperor and the burning of the Old Summer Palace, greatly damaged the Qings prestige leading many within China to begin questioning the governments effectiveness” (China, 2010). This shows continuing advocacy in the society in the present, and a supposed alignment on these issues between the state and society which are highlighted in Chinese propaganda to this day, which features themes of anti-imperialism and still rails against the evils of opium addiction. Politics are also impacted, as mentioned above, by imperialism in Chinese civil society. In this system, when the British colonialist power ostensibly leaves, often the very same rules are left behind to be picked up by newer nationalist movements in places like China, especially with the weakened Qing emperor. The arrested development of the sovereign Asian nation soon becomes replaced by an imperialist-placed society in which the European colonizer seeks to mirror its home institutions in the new land, ignoring those of the defeated nation. This is then replaced by the neo-imperialist nation which seeks again to mirror the European colonizer (in this case England) in terms of ostensibly self sufficient economic policy. “Europeans presented themselves to colonial peoples (as they did to their fellow citizens) as the bearers of science, rationality and progress, and the enemies of religion, superstition and backwardness. The image of imperialism as a progressive project was widely persuasive in its time, not only to the great majority of Europeans, but also to many subjects. We can take the metaphor of disenchantment further” (Ebrey, 359). Of course, Chinese civilization at this time was much more complex than many other societies, and actual imperialist expansion did not go very far inland into the interior of the country. After the “Arrow Incident,” it became clear who had the power in the Opium Wars, and it was the imperialist aggressor. The Chinese had simply captured a pirate ship, which was then claimed by Bowring to be from Hong Kong. The result was an uneven display of arms that undermined the Chinese empire. “The Chinese released the crew, but refused to apologize whereupon Bowring, in a find display of "gunboat diplomacy," ordered the navy to bombard Canton, one of the largest cities in the world. The fact that the Arrows Hong Kong registration had lapsed at the time of seizure was kept quiet” (Newsinger, 2000). Thousands of Chinese people died in the Second Opium War, due to imperialist aggression on the part of the British, and in a pattern that would continue into the future, the imperialist power used superior military technology to conduct trade policy. The second Opium War was not just a local scuffle between Bowring’s interests in Hong Kong and mainland China: it was fully supported by the British government and crown. Basically, the government wanted to keep the Chinese people addicted to opium and dependent. Even thought Palmerston knew that Bowring was doing many illegal acts, he still decided to put the full power of the English government behind him “They were defeated in the Commons on the issue (once again Gladstone spoke condemning the war) and Palmerston responded by calling a general election. He fought a fiercely jingoistic campaign that swept him triumphantly back to power with a majority” (China, 2010). The after-effects still are prevalent, as they are in any society which has only fairly recently become independent of an imperialist power structure on which it had previously been dependent. Imperialism can also be connected to ideas mentioned above concerning Orientalism. Orientalism, although it does involve a certain amount of fantasy on the part of the European, is not a harmless fantasy, but a chain of fantasies perpetuated as a rational field of knowledge. This is where the true danger of imperialism lies; in the fact that people are encouraged to take it seriously. In this way, British imperialism in China and elsewhere in Asia, is made to seem rational and intellectually valid to the general culture of the Asian, and often finds its most staunch proponents rising from the cultures that have been destroyed by imperialism and colonialism. “Like the colonial histories they replaced, nationalist histories were progressive narratives; their existence presupposes the sequence: pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial (and thus of the in-built obsolescence of the colonialist narrative). While they claimed to speak in the name of the people, in fact most nationalist histories of the period privileged urban elite perspectives” (Ebrey, 382). During the process of imperialism, ways of life were forever altered in ways that cannot be recovered. There is no redress. The ideas commonly shared in the present about developed and developing nations would cease to exist in the absence of these abovementioned processes, and arguably the world would be a totally different place in which to live. The Chinese were pressured into favorable trade agreements to the British after the Second Opium War, which caused imperialism to flourish. At the same time, the British imperialist power-structure imposed high taxes on non-European imports to China, which further entrenched their control of the Chinese port cities, which had not asked for any of this. The ex-sovereign Chinese city such as Canton in this situation is not capable of regaining its sovereignty, though, because it is held in check by a purposefully unbalanced economic system whose purpose is to keep China as a trade partner in a state of obeisance to the British imperialist power. This creates a vicious cycle that has repercussions even after the withdrawal of the presence of the imperialist power. The economic bonds formed by this structure of obeisance result in a situation in which the real or true economy of the Asian nation is not allowed to develop naturally and in a pattern of self sufficiency. In the cultural bondage mentioned above, the British imperialist society is the invader and controller of the space, over which it claims sovereignty through the mechanisms and prejudices of the industrial, imperialist mindset. This mindset takes its own cultural history as a given and hopes to foist it on the new surroundings seamlessly without having to recognize the culture over which it is trampling. The inevitable failure of this process brings the British imperialist invader to a sort of suspended, terrified disgust of the inhabitants, which leads the European traders, missionaries, operators of capital, and hence, Europeans at home, to view the new and unfamiliar customs of China, which were sovereign and functional before the imperialist takeover, as strange. “By the terms of the convention, the Chinese were forced to accept the validity of the Treaties of Tianjin, cede part of Kowloon to Britain, open Tianjin as a trade port, allow religious freedom, legalize the opium trade, and pay reparations to Britain and France” (China, 2010). In other words, the British got what they wanted, in terms of imperialism, from the process. REFERENCE Hsu (The Rise of Modern China) and Spence (The Search for Modern China. Newsinger, J (2000). Britains opium wars. Monthly Review Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook (1993) Patricia Buckley Ebrey, ed. New York: The Free Press. China in the second opium war (2010). http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/battleswars1800s/p/secondopiumwar.htm Read More