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China The Self-Strengthening Movement
The rude realities of the Opium War, the unequal treaties, and
the mid-century mass uprisings caused Qing courtiers and officials
to recognize the need to strengthen China. Chinese scholars and
officials had been examining and translating "Western learning"
since the 1840s. Under the direction of modern-thinking Han
officials, Western science and languages were studied, special
schools were opened in the larger cities, and arsenals, factories,
and shipyards were established according to Western models. Western
diplomatic practices were adopted by the Qing, and students were
sent abroad by the government and on individual or community
initiative in the hope that national regeneration could be achieved
through the application of Western practical methods.
Amid these activities came an attempt to arrest the dynastic
decline by restoring the traditional order. The effort was known as
the Tongzhi Restoration, named for the Tongzhi Emperor (1862-74),
and was engineered by the young emperor's mother, the Empress
Dowager Ci Xi (1835-1908). The restoration, however, which applied
"practical knowledge" while reaffirming the old mentality, was not
a genuine program of modernization.
The effort to graft Western technology onto Chinese
institutions became known as the Self-Strengthening Movement. The
movement was championed by scholar-generals like Li Hongzhang
(1823-1901) and Zuo Zongtang (1812-85), who had fought with the
government forces in the Taiping Rebellion. From 1861 to 1894,
leaders such as these, now turned scholar-administrators, were
responsible for establishing modern institutions, developing basic
industries, communications, and transportation, and modernizing the
military. But despite its leaders' accomplishments, the SelfStrengthening Movement did not recognize the significance of the
political institutions and social theories that had fostered
Western advances and innovations. This weakness led to the
movement's failure. Modernization during this period would have
been difficult under the best of circumstances. The bureaucracy was
still deeply influenced by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Chinese society
was still reeling from the ravages of the Taiping and other
rebellions, and foreign encroachments continued to threaten the
integrity of China.
The first step in the foreign powers' effort to carve up the
empire was taken by Russia, which had been expanding into Central
Asia. By the 1850s, tsarist troops also had invaded the Heilong
Jiang watershed of Manchuria, from which their countrymen had been
ejected under the Treaty of Nerchinsk. The Russians used the
superior knowledge of China they had acquired through their
century-long residence in Beijing to further their aggrandizement.
In 1860 Russian diplomats secured the secession of all of Manchuria
north of the Heilong Jiang and east of the Wusuli Jiang (Ussuri
River). Foreign encroachments increased after 1860 by means of a
series of treaties imposed on China on one pretext or another. The
foreign stranglehold on the vital sectors of the Chinese economy
was reinforced through a lengthening list of concessions. Foreign
settlements in the treaty ports became extraterritorial--sovereign
pockets of territories over which China had no jurisdiction. The
safety of these foreign settlements was ensured by the menacing
presence of warships and gunboats.
At this time the foreign powers also took over the peripheral
states that had acknowledged Chinese suzerainty and given tribute
to the emperor. France colonized Cochin China, as southern Vietnam
was then called, and by 1864 established a protectorate over
Cambodia. Following a victorious war against China in 1884-85,
France also took Annam. Britain gained control over Burma. Russia
penetrated into Chinese Turkestan (the modern-day Xinjiang-Uyghur
Autonomous Region). Japan, having emerged from its century-and-a-
half-long seclusion and having gone through its own modernization
movement, defeated China in the war of 1894-95. The Treaty of
Shimonoseki forced China to cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to
Japan, pay a huge indemnity, permit the establishment of Japanese
industries in four treaty ports, and recognize Japanese hegemony
over Korea. In 1898 the British acquired a ninety-nine-year lease
over the so-called New Territories of Kowloon (Jiulong in pinyin),
which increased the size of their Hong Kong colony. Britain, Japan,
Russia, Germany, France, and Belgium each gained spheres of
influence in China. The United States, which had not acquired any
territorial cessions, proposed in 1899 that there be an "open door"
policy in China, whereby all foreign countries would have equal
duties and privileges in all treaty ports within and outside the
various spheres of influence. All but Russia agreed to the United
States overture.
Data as of July 1987
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