Chapter 22 Shadow over the Pacific: East Asia under Challenge

The Decline of the Machus

 China had experienced a long period of peace and prosperity under the rule of two great
emperors, Kangxi (king-SHEE) and Qianlong (CHAN-loong).
 Forbidden City is in Beijing,
 The Qing Dynasty at the end of the eighteen century began to suffer from the familiar dynastic
ills of official corruption, peasant unrest, and incompetence at court.

Opium and Rebellion

 By 1800, Westerners had been in regular contact with China for almost three centuries.
 After Macartney’s failure in 1793, another mission led by Lord Amherst arrived in China in 1816.
 The British solution to the problem was opium. A product more addictive than tea, opium was
grown in northeastern India and then shipped to China in British ships.
 Opium had been grown in southwestern China for several hundred years but had been used
primarily for medicine purpose.
 The Qing became concerned and tried to negotiate. In 1839, Lin Zexu (1785-1850), a Chinese
official appointed by the court to curtail the opium trade, appealed to Queen Victoria.
 The Opium War (1839-1842), demonstration and superiority of British firepower and military
tactics.
 In the treaty of Nanjing in 1842, the Chinese agreed to open five coastal ports to British trade,
limit tariffs on imported goods, grant extraterritorial rights to British citizens in China, and pay a
substantial indemnity to cover the cost of the war.
 The taiping rebellion. Taiping Rebellion owed something to the Western incursion. The leader,
Hong Xiuquan, failed examination candidate, was a Christian convert who viewed himself as a
young brother of Jesus and hoped establish what he referred to as a “Heavenly Kingdom of
Supreme Peace” in China.
 More than 25 million people were killed, the vast majority of them are civilians.
 In 185, the British and the French launched a new series of attacks against China and seized
Beijing in 1860
 In the ensuing Treaty of Tianjin, the Qing agreed to humiliating new concessions; the
legalization of the opium trade, the opening of additional ports to foreign trade, and the cession
of peninsula of Kowloon (opposite the island of Hong Kong) to the British.
 Efforts at Reform. Self - strengthening, in which Western technology would adopted while
Confucian principles and institutions we're maintained intact. This policy, popularly known by
its slogan " East for Essence, West for Practical Use".
 The journalist Wang Tao ( 1828-1897) called on Chinese leaders to abandon their resistance to
reform.
 Zhang Zhidong, countered that " The doctrine of people's rights will bring us not a single benefit
but a hundred evils..
 Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909). A Chinese scholar who promoted modernization in China during
the last years of the Qing Dynasty. He asserted that the adoption of Western technology and
science would be sufficient to protect the country from collapse.
  Kang Youwei (185-1927). A progressive Confucian scholar who put forward a program to
remodel China after Japan. His proposals we're supported by Emperor Guangzhou but despised
by Empress Dowager Cixi, the emperor's aunt.
 Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). A concubine to an earlier emperor. After his death, she
became a dominant force at court and in 1878 placed her infant nephew, the future Emperor
Guangxu, on the throne.

OPENING THE DOOR.

In 1899 U. S Secretary of State John Hay presented the other imperialist power with a proposal to
ensure equal economic access to Chiba market for all States.

 Open Door Notes did have the practical effect of reducing the imperialist hysteria over access to
the China market.
 gentlemen's agreement ( it was not a treaty, merely a pious and nonbinding expression of
intent) this served to deflate fears in BBritsin,France, Germany, and Russia that other powers
would take advantage of China's weakness to dominate the China market.
 The boxers. We're members of secret society operation primarily in rural areas in Northern
China.
-the Boxers attacked foreign residents and besieged the foreign legation quarter in Beijing.
 The Rise of Sun Yat-sen.
 Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925). Born in a village South of Canton, Sun was educated in Hawaii and
returned to China to practice medicine.
 He unite a group which is so-called Revolutionary Alliance, or Tongmenghui. The new
organization's program was based on Sun's "three people people principles" Of nationalism
(meaning primarily the elimination of Manchu rule over China).
 The Revolution of 1911.
 The dynasty was now in a state of virtual collapse: the empress dowager had died in 1908, one
day after her nephew Guangxu; the throne was now occupied by China's "last emperor, " the
infant Puyi.
 Sun Yat-sen, serve as president of a new Chinese republic.

The Impact of Imperialis, caused serious distortions in the local economy that resulted in massive
changes in Chinese society during the twentieth century.

"The Russian Marxist Vladimir Lenin contended that Western imperialism actually hindered the process
of structural change.

Fellow Marxist in China Mao Zedong took up Lenin's charge and asserted that if the West had not
intervened China would have found its own road to capitalism and thence to socialism and
communism."

Daily Life in Qing China.