A History of China (66 page)

The Qing court now confronted Russia. Building on its success in defeating Ya’qub Beg, it requested that the Russians withdraw from Ili and turn it back to Qing jurisdiction. Russian diplomats in Beijing demurred and sought to secure significant economic concessions in return. After considerable negotiations and misunderstandings, the two parties arrived at an impasse. Zuo, supported by belligerent officials at court, proposed a war to oust Russia from Ili. Less bellicose officials prevailed and succeeded in appointing Zeng Guofan’s son Zeng Jize (1839–1890) to negotiate with the tsarist court. The Russians, for their part, were in a difficult position. They had devoted considerable resources to a victorious war with Turkey in 1877–1878, but British pressure had prevented them from gaining the warm-water port that they had sought on the Black Sea. Aside from their parlous financial condition, they faced domestic disturbances and challenges to autocracy and economic inequality, which led to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Naturally, Britain did not want Russia to annex Ili. Under such pressures, Russian diplomats met with Zeng Jize, a sophisticated diplomat who had represented China in France, Britain, and Russia and knew English, and accepted a compromise in the Treaty of St. Petersburg in 1881. They agreed to withdraw from nearly all of Ili and from passes that threatened towns in southern Xinjiang in return for the establishment of consulates in Turfan (in Xinjiang) and other locations and for permission for Russian merchants to trade, without the imposition of taxes, permanently in Mongolia and for a limited time in Xinjiang. A disastrous war had been averted, but Qing China faced additional pressures on its borderlands.

The breakdown of the Chinese world order, as exemplified by the tribute system of foreign relations and Chinese assertions of cultural superiority, and the ravages of the internal rebellions against the Qing court provoked a crisis. Foreigners, whom the traditional dynasties had considered to be “barbaric,” had defeated China and appeared to be trampling upon the heritage of Chinese civilization, one of the longest-lived and most glorious of the world’s cultures. Simultaneously, both Chinese and non-Chinese ethnic groups had challenged the Qing and sought to topple it. In some cases, a decade or more elapsed before the dynasty crushed rebel groups. The foreign wars and the internal convulsions shattered Chinese cultural assumptions and undermined the Qing’s invincibility. Past dynasties had proclaimed that the Chinese civilization would last for ten thousand years. The heavy blows the Qing suffered in the mid nineteenth century seemed likely to contradict that confident prediction.

Making matters worse were the challenges to the Qing in its own homeland of Manchuria. At the outset of the dynasty, Manchu officials had planned to use Manchuria as an escape valve should they be forced to retreat from China. Therefore, they had forbidden Chinese immigration into the region in order to keep Manchuria untainted by Chinese civilization. This ban was relatively well enforced for the first half of the dynasty, but by the early nineteenth century Chinese merchants were evading the regulations, traveling to Manchuria, and trading silk, cotton, and grain for furs, ginseng, soybeans, and leather. At the same time, Chinese peasants, suffering from excessive taxation and natural disasters in the north, were crossing into Manchuria and buying land from the Banner forces.

The Russians quickly capitalized on the disruptions in the Qing system in Manchuria. Nikolai Muraviev, appointed governor-general of eastern Siberia after the Opium Wars, initiated an aggressive policy to take advantage of the Qing’s weakened position in Manchuria. In 1854 and 1855, he deliberately transgressed upon the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which had delineated the boundary between Russia and China, by sailing down the Amur River and bringing settlers with him to set up colonies along its banks. The Qing authorities had no choice but to capitulate and sign the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, which turned over 158,000 square miles to Russia. Two years later, the Qing agreed to a Sino–Russian Treaty that added 100,000 square miles to the area granted to the Russians in the earlier treaty. In addition, Russia received trade concessions in Manchuria.

The tsarist court also challenged Qing domination of Mongolia. By the early nineteenth century, the Qing policy of preventing Chinese merchant trading companies from setting up permanent presences in Mongolia had failed. Chinese merchants readily crossed into Mongolia, took advantage of credulous herders and offered them loans at usurious rates of interest, and generally pauperized the country. Even the Mongolian elites fell into debt in order to buy Chinese luxury goods. Stiff taxes imposed upon herders by the Qing court and their own nobility added to the misery of many Mongolians. A few moved into towns but had limited economic opportunities, forcing many men into servile positions and some women into prostitution and concubinage. Buddhist monasteries, which the Qing supported because they preached nonviolence, were powerful and controlled much of the area’s wealth. Although the monasteries helped to preserve Mongolia’s art and literature and offered the most important formal educational structure and the only medical system, the elite monks dominated ordinary lamas and exploited workers and servants assigned to them by Qing officials. With the notable exception of Zanabazar (1635–1723), the first Bogdo Gegen (leader of the Buddhist establishment), most of the monks were oppressive and obscurantist. Zanabazar was an excellent sculptor and painter and a learned Buddhist scholar. Most of the remaining seven who held the title “Bogdo Gegen” through 1924 were undistinguished and not necessarily pious.

Noticing the instability in Mongolia and recognizing the possibilities for gaining a foothold in this vast neighboring domain, the nineteenth-century ­tsarist court encouraged Russian merchants to compete with Chinese merchants and set about to discover more about the country. Russian geographers, explorers, naturalists, and ordinary travelers began to arrive in Mongolia to map the country, to identify its flora and fauna, and to study its pastoral nomadic society. Nikolai Przhewalski (1839–1888) was perhaps the most renowned of these explorers, partly because he discovered one of the few remaining species of wild horses, which was then named after him. Other Russians wrote about the Buddhist monasteries, and still others offered vivid descriptions of countryside life. Russian merchants were not as successful as their scientist, traveler, and explorer compatriots. They were at a decided disadvantage. Fewer than three thousand of them ventured into Mongolia, while twenty thousand Chinese either lived or traveled through the country. The Russians settled in the capital whereas the Chinese merchants were willing to head to the steppe lands and the countryside, where they could obtain goods much more cheaply. Finally, Russian merchants came on their own and thus had less capital and fewer products than the Chinese, who often represented large firms or banks. Nonetheless, the Russian presence reflected a challenge to Qing domination of Mongolia.

Naturally, the court, officialdom, and civilian and military leaders reacted to these reversals at the hands of foreigners, as well as to the domestic insurgencies. Their responses differed considerably, and their prescriptions for changes or lack thereof would compete for the rest of the dynasty. The remaining decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, until the Qing’s collapse in 1911, witnessed one faction after another trying to dominate policy. This inconsistency weakened the court and simultaneously frustrated Westerners.

One faction at court favored the adoption of Western technology in order to preserve Chinese culture. However, before China could do this, it needed to devise a suitable means of dealing with foreigners. China had never established a foreign office to deal exclusively with foreign states, kingdoms, or khanates. The Ministries of Rites and War and the Lifanyuan, which had been established in the Qing to deal with Mongolia and Russia, had been the principal agencies responsible for foreign relations, but they had other tasks that the court often perceived as more significant. In 1861, about two decades after the first Opium War and a year after the second, the Qing, under pressure from the Franco–British force that had occupied Beijing and had burned down the Summer Palace, was forced to sign the Convention of Peking. Prince Gong (1833–1898), the emperor’s uncle, was compelled to stipulate the founding of a new foreign office known as the Zongli Yamen, which would eventually have access to ­international law in the form of the American W. A. P. Martin’s translation of Henry Wheaton’s
Elements of International Law
. The Qing did not necessarily abide by the book’s precepts, but officials became aware of the Western system of international relations and recognized that they might ultimately have to subscribe to Western-style ways, which emphasized diplomatic parity. Foreigners also promoted the establishment of the Tongwenguan, a school for interpreters in Beijing. Students initially studied foreign languages, but by the late 1860s, under the leadership of W. A. P. Martin (1827–1916), who served as the school’s president from 1869 to 1895, students were also studying science, “Western learning,” and international law. Within a short time, such schools were also founded, with the acquiescence of Prince Gong and the court, in Shanghai, Fuzhou, and Guangzhou.

At the same time, the court sent young men abroad to study Western ­science and culture. Yung Wing (1828–1912), who received a BA from Yale and was the first Chinese to receive a degree from a foreign university, served as a model for the dispatch of students to Yale and other universities. In 1863, Zeng Guofan sent him to the USA to buy equipment for an arsenal. This shipyard, which became known as the Jiangnan Arsenal, built the first modern Chinese steamship in 1868 and also served as a center – led by an American named John Fryer (1839–1928), who eventually became a professor of Chinese at the University of California – for the translation of Western books on science. After considerable lobbying by Yung, in 1872 the government sent 120 students as part of the so-called Chinese Education Mission to study engineering and ­science in institutions in New England. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, most students who studied abroad were going to Japan because of its geographic propinquity and more familiar written language.

The dispatch of ambassadors to and from China as well as the creation of a Maritime Custom Service facilitated China’s adoption of Western technology and ways. Foreign ambassadors streamed into China right after the second Opium War, and the Qing court sent an envoy to found its first embassy in Britain. At the same time, the Maritime Custom Service developed and ­collected fixed and regular tariffs, in part to pay the indemnities they owed after the wars with foreigners. Robert Hart (1835–1911), born in Northern Ireland and one of the early directors of the Service, proved to be exceptionally able and was sympathetic to China. He ensured that Chinese officials played a vital role in administration of the Service and did not relegate them to the position of clerks. To his credit, he placed the monies secured from the Service at the disposal of the Qing government to pay its debts to foreigners.

During the reign of Emperor Tongzi (r. 1862–1874), the first steps toward change took place. The leaders of military modernization set up arsenals and shipyards, mostly along the east coast. Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tianjin were among the sites selected for these new construction projects, which would bolster the country’s defense capabilities. The schools linked to these arsenals and shipyards would train a few of the prominent figures of the late nineteenth century. Li Hongzhang, one of the leaders in suppressing the mid-century rebellions, founded a military arsenal at Tianjin to foster a so-called Self-Strengthening Movement, a term coined by Feng Guifen (1809–1874), a Chinese scholar-official. At the same time, Zuo Zongtang, another of the military leaders, established the Fuzhou dockyards to modernize the navy. Yan Fu (1854–1921), who eventually studied in Britain, translated English works on political thought, and became president of Beijing University, was, in part, educated in the Fuzhou school. It should be noted that he eventually joined the conservatives and supported a royalist government; many other reformers did not.

By the early 1870s, Li Hongzhang and other reformers recognized that military modernization was insufficient for the reforms required in China. The Self-Strengthening Movement, which originally focused on military modernization and the construction of shipyards and arsenals, spread almost inexorably into a drive for greater industrial development. Li himself began to recognize that guns, cannons, and ships were insufficient for China’s defense. Beyond weapons, military uniforms were another necessity. An industrial infrastructure was also needed to ensure China’s security. Trains, telegraphs, and merchant ships were essential in modern warfare.

Although the reformers understood the necessity of development, they formulated a hypothesis known as
tiyong
to justify their efforts. They identified
yong
, translated as “practical use,” with the economic and military changes they sponsored and
ti
, translated as “essence,” with the enduring Chinese culture. They sought to legitimize
yong
by emphasizing and actually stating that their ultimate goal was to preserve
ti
. They tried to assure the Chinese that the economic development they fostered would not undermine the fundamental nature of Chinese civilization. Yet they apparently did not realize that industrialization would result in social changes. More people would move into and live in cities; there they would work in factories or workshops, where lateness on an assembly line could not be tolerated; they would need to become literate to read instructions about equipment and myriad other responsibilities in their new workplaces; and they would require the development of new attitudes and values to cope with alienation from their native lands and families. At the very least, their perceptions of Chinese culture and civilization would be somewhat transformed.