For hundreds of years China’s imperial dynasties worked to isolate China from the rest of the world. The Chinese had a deep distrust of foreigners whom they viewed as barbarians. China had once been the world’s most advanced civilization but by the dawn of the 19th century it had fallen behind in the development of modern technologies and was set to be dominated by European countries. The fall of the Qing Dynasty in China developed as a result of the Opium Wars, internal strife, the self-strengthening movement and the Revolution of 1911.
The Qing dynasty ruled China from 1644 until 1911. It was founded by the Manchus, a non-Chinese people who had come from North China during the Jin dynasty. They began expanding their territories in the late 16th century and in 1644 founded the Qing dynasty, which brought peace and prosperity to the people of China. Successfully, they extended their borders into Mongolia, Tibet, and Uighur. During their reign, the population of China doubled. At its height, China’s rulers were hard working, talented, and committed to making the Kang dynasty a success (McKay 628). By the Nineteenth century, China’s world standing declined because of foreign intervention and it became the last imperial dynasty to rule China.
The Opium Wars of the nineteenth century were the first contributing factor of the fall of the Qing dynasty. The Opium Wars made the Chinese realize that they were no match for western aggression. They were not seeing much gain from trade with European countries, which made the Qing emperors only allow the Europeans to trade at the port of Guangzhou (Canton). When they started out, the balance of trade was in favor of China because of all the tea the British imported. In the 1820s the Britain found something the Chinese wanted above all else, called Opium. Opium was grown in British owned India, then illegally brought into China. Pretty soon the Chinese were addicted to Opium. The British started off selling 4500 chests a year. That went up to 10,000 in 1830. In 1838 it was 40,000, and it was a national crisis in China (McKay 795). The Chinese government realized they needed a solution to this huge problem and in 1839 they placed Lin Zexu in Guangzhou. He had a zero-tolerance policy towards opium, seizing the opium from the British. He wrote to Queen Victoria to appeal to the conscience of the British, “Suppose there were people from another country who carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly your honorable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused…Naturally you would not wish to give unto others what you yourself do not want” (Teng and Fairbank 24-27).
Lin pressured the Portuguese to rid the British from their Macao trading port, so the British settled in Hong Kong. Britain used this to their advantage, as well as their strength as a nation. They easily shut down Chinese ports and the Chinese were in a position where they had to negotiate with the British. They took more cities, which resulted in the Opium War. It was settled in 1842, and the treaty opened five ports to international trade, added a tariff on imported goods which was set at 5 percent, took the island of Hong Kong, and made China pay their war expenses (McKay 797). British subjects in China answered to Britain above all else. Britain was also the most favored nation through the treaty. The treaty wasn’t satisfactory to either the British nor the Chinese. China didn’t accept foreign diplomats in Beijing, their capital, and trade barely expanded. From 1856-1860 more Opium Wars between European countries and China were fought resulting in troops occupying Beijing and resulting in harsh treaties for the Chinese.
Economic and demographic problems led to rebellions within China’s borders. In 1850 China had 400 million people within its borders and it was the most populated country in the world. Because China suffered from overpopulation, farms and forests shrank, families could not afford more then one or two children (McKay 797). These difficulties caused rebellions within China. The Taiping Rebellion, which lasted from 1851-1864, caused 20 million deaths, which makes it one of the worst wars in history. It was initiated by Hong Xiuquan, a southern Chinese man who never made the civil service examinations due to not passing. He was a religious man who studied Christianity and came to believe that he was Jesus’s younger brother. His followers, which he had began to build up, denounced alcohol and opium. He declared himself “king of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace”. They moved north and established their capital at Nanjing. The Manchus had to raise armies on their own which revealed the Manchus were not as mighty as were two decades ago when they conquered China.
The self-strengthening movement which opposed the West, moved to make China stronger. After the civil unrest of the mid 1800s, reformers looked for ways to help China modernize. One of these was Feng Guifen (1809-1874), a teacher who wanted China to wake up from its complacency (De Bary). He asked the question, “Why are western nations small and yet strong?” (De Bary). Then he concludes that China had only one thing to learn from “barbarians” –build up weapons and the navy. He also thought that people should learn how to make instruments and weapons, “use the instruments of the barbarians, but not adopt the ways of the barbarians. We should use them so that we can repel them” (De Bary).
Other reformers felt that they should have a full-scale reform of the Chinese society. Wang Tao was a journalist that felt that the government structure of England “embodies the traditional ideals of our ancient Golden Age” (De Bary and Lufrano) and that China could govern itself like England. On the other hand, Zhang Zidong disagreed. He felt that the values and structures of the West would not work in China. He felt that the Chinese scholar officials were too obstinate and uneducated and understood nothing about the world (De Bary and Lufrano).
Eventually, China did try to catch up to the technologies of the era but managed to be shamed again by the end of the nineteenth century. The fact that Japan had modernized much faster posed a threat to China and Japanese efforts to make Korea separate from the influence of the Chinese led to a war with Japan called the Sino-Japanese War in which China was defeated (McKay 799). China gave Taiwan to Japan in the peace treaties and had to pay Japan’s war expenses. China was at a weak point and European powers saw a possible opportunity to colonize, much in the same way they had done with Africa, though this never ended up happening.
The desire for change still existed but attempts to reform the government eventually led to its overthrow and an end to the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of a Republican government. After the Sino-Japanese war the people of China wanted reform. A group of young reformers wanted China restructured. The establishment suppressed reform. But in 1900 a secret society dubbed by foreigners as “Boxers” blamed China’s problems on foreign presence. They laid siege on Beijing, which angered foreign nations like Japan, who sent troops in to lift the siege. China had to accept many penalties and caused the idea of incremental change to lose support from most people.
Sun Yatsen was a reformer who had been educated by Western schools, knew English and had studied Western political ideas and government. He organized overseas and raised money to fight and change China. By 1911, there was an uprising which led to the establishment of a republic. The last emperor, Pu Yi was only six years old and abdicated on February 12, 1912. The formal abdication decree read, “It is clear that the minds of the majority of the people are favorable to the establishment of a republican form of government” (MacNair 722). Sun’s new Nationalist Party won the elections in 1913 but China continued to be torn apart by civil wars, yet again weakening it internally and setting them up for an even bigger revolution in the 20th century.
The Opium Wars followed by internal crisis and the attempt by reformers to strengthen China’s infrastructure led to its eventual downfall in the revolution of 1911. Revolution did not bring peace and prosperity as the reformers had hoped, the fall of the Qing Dynasty led to a long period of chaos, social unrest, disillusionment and wars. But Sun Yatsen and his supporters had ended the rule of the barbarians and set China on the path to self-government and modernization.