Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (5 page)

Virtually throwing out Lord Macartney, Emperor Qianlong wrote aggressively to King George III, threatening to use force to repel British cargo ships, should they come to his coast, ending his letter with: ‘Don’t blame me for not serving you proper warnings!’ He was behaving like an animal raising its hackles at the smell of danger. Emperor Qianlong’s closed-door policy was born of alarm and calculation, not ignorant conceit, as is so often claimed.

His successors, his son and grandson, stuck to this closed-door policy, as the empire grew increasingly weak. Then, half a century after Lord Macartney’s failed mission, the closed door was pushed ajar by Britain through the Opium War (1839–42), China’s first military clash with the West.

The opium was produced in British India and was smuggled into China by (mainly) British merchants. Beijing had prohibited the import, cultivation and smoking of opium since 1800, as it was well aware that the drug was doing tremendous damage to its economy as well as to the population. A contemporary description of addicts painted a vivid picture: ‘Their shoulders hunched, eyes watering, nose running, and breath short, they look more dead than alive.’ There was great fear that if this went on, the country would run out of fit soldiers and labourers, not to mention silver, its currency. In March 1839, Emperor Daoguang, Cixi’s future father-in-law, sent a crusading drug fighter, Lin Zexu, as the Imperial Commissioner to Canton, along whose shore foreign ships anchored. Commissioner Lin ordered the merchants to hand over all the opium in their possession and, when his order was resisted, he had the foreign community cordoned off and declared that it would only be released when all the opium in Chinese waters was surrendered. In the end, 20,183 chests of opium, containing more than one million kilos, were delivered to Commissioner Lin, who then lifted the cordon. He had the opium destroyed outside Canton, first melting it and then pouring it into the sea. Before releasing the drug, the Commissioner performed a sacrificial ritual to the God of the Sea, begging him to ‘
tell the fishes to swim away for the time being to avoid the poison’.

Commissioner Lin knew that ‘the head of England is a woman, and quite young, but all orders come from her’. He penned a letter to Queen Victoria, who had been on the throne since 1837, asking her for cooperation. ‘I hear that opium-smoking is strictly banned in England,’ Lin wrote. ‘And so England knows the harm the drug does. If it does not allow it to poison its own people, it should not allow it to poison the people of other countries.’
Emperor Daoguang approved the letter. It is unclear to whom the Commissioner entrusted it, but there is no record of Queen Victoria receiving it.
^fn2

Major trading companies and Chambers of Commerce from London to Glasgow were up in arms. Lin’s action was said to be ‘injurious’ to British property, and there were calls for going to war to seek ‘satisfaction and reparation’. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, an exponent of ‘gunboat diplomacy’, was in favour of war. When the matter was debated in Parliament on 8 April 1840, the then-young Tory MP and future Prime Minister, William
Gladstone, spoke passionately against it:

. . . a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of. The right hon. Gentleman opposite spoke last night in eloquent terms of the British flag waving in glory at Canton . . . but now, under the auspices of the noble Lord, that flag is hoisted to protect an infamous contraband traffic . . . No, I am sure that Her Majesty’s Government will never upon this motion persuade the House to abet this unjust and iniquitous war.

But a vote of censure moved by the Opposition – the Tories – was defeated by 271 to 262, a majority of nine. During the next two years, scores of British warships and 20,000 men (including 7,000 Indian troops) attacked the Chinese coast in the south and east, occupying Canton and, briefly, Shanghai. Without gunboats and with a poorly equipped army, China was defeated and was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, and to pay an indemnity of US $21 million.
^fn3

Thus encouraged, opium-smuggling flourished. Shipments of the drug from Calcutta and Bombay nearly doubled straight away, and more than tripled before the next decade ended – from 15,619 chests in 1840 to 29,631 in 1841, and to 47,681 in 1860. Bowing to the reality that its battle against the drug was futile, China made the opium trade legal in October 1860. At the time called ‘the foreign drug’ (
yang-yao
), it was inextricably associated with the West. The American missionary physician Mrs Headland recalled: ‘When calling at the Chinese homes, I have frequently been offered the opium-pipe, and when I refused it the ladies expressed surprise, saying that they were under the impression that all foreigners used it.’

The Treaty of Nanjing compelled China to open four more ports for trade, in addition to Canton. These ports, known as Treaty Ports, were Western settlements and were subject to Western, rather than Chinese, laws. One of them was Shanghai. A separate item in the Treaty ‘gave’ the island of Hong Kong to Britain for its ships and cargo. Sun-scorched and barren, with a few trees tucked amid rugged hills, Hong Kong at the time contained only a scattering of fishermen’s huts, while the foreign settlement in Shanghai was little more than a stretch of marshland next to some fields. Two spectacular international metropolises were to rise out of these inconspicuous soils, with Chinese hard work and foreign, mainly British, investment and governance. Later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a leading diplomat under Cixi,
Wu Tingfang, wrote of Hong Kong:

the British Government spent large sums of money year after year for its improvement and development, and through the wise administration of the local Government every facility was afforded for free trade. It is now a prosperous British colony . . . the prosperity of that colony depends upon the Chinese who, it is needless to say, are in possession of all the privileges that are enjoyed by the British residents . . . I must admit that a great deal of good has been done by the British Government in Hongkong. It has provided the Chinese with an actual working model of a Western system of government which . . . has succeeded in transforming a barren island into a prosperous town . . . The impartial administration of law and the humane treatment of criminals cannot but excite admiration and gain the confidence of the natives.

The Opium War forced China to accept Western missionaries. By then, they had been banned for more than 100 years. After the war, the French, who had little trade with China and were only interested in propagating Catholicism, rode on a European victory and lobbied hard for the lifting of the ban. Emperor
Daoguang resisted the demand. But then, already bewildered, and as a character prone to dithering, he gave in under the relentless pressure of the French, conveyed by his Commissioner in charge of dealing with Westerners, Qiying, who advised acceptance. A historic edict on 20 February 1846 lifted the ban on Christian missions, although this only applied to the Treaty Ports; the ban remained in force for the rest of China.

But missionaries could not be contained. With footholds thus secured, they at once began to penetrate the vast interior, defying the prohibition. Unlike the early Jesuits, who had been individual court employees and had never sought to disobey the emperor, missionaries were now bold and defiant, backed as they were by gunboats. Throwing themselves into this ancient land with zeal, they spread Western ideas and practice and helped modernise China, bringing down the Qing dynasty along the way, whether or not this was their intention. Their role in the transformation of China was vital, even though they won relatively few converts.

Emperor Daoguang may not have foreseen the future, but he certainly realised that he had unleashed a monumental and ominous force – and this unsettled and weighed on him. His unsuccessful dealings with the British had already caused him intense regret and despair. ‘Hounded by such unspeakable bullying, so much anger and hate bottle up inside me,’ he had written. Now he felt: ‘I can only blame myself and feel utterly ashamed of myself’ and ‘I just want to strike and strike my chest with clenched fists.’ Months after the fateful edict, alarms were raised in the provinces about the arrival of missionaries and the problems this was causing. The emperor’s agony intensified, and it was now that he
wrote his will and designated his successor. It was imperative to leave the empire in the hands of a son who would be more determined and more able to resist the West. He chose his fourth son, the later Emperor Xianfeng, Cixi’s husband. This son had grown up fervently loathing Westerners.

The Qing dynasty did not practise the system of the eldest son automatically inheriting the throne, but rather left the reigning emperor to make a will in secret appointing his successor. Emperor Daoguang made his in a private and yet solemn manner. He wrote it in both Chinese and Manchu, as an official document of such magnitude required. Then he folded it, enfolded it within two layers of the royal yellow paper, and signed and dated the envelope. This he put inside a cardboard folder, which had a white lining and yellow cover. With another piece of yellow paper he wrapped up the cardboard folder, and on top he signed again and wrote in the Manchu language the words ‘Ten Thousand Years’, to signal the finality of the will. He then placed the will inside a box made of the most precious wood,
nan-mu
, with a yellow silk lining and a yellow wool cover. This box had been used by the previous emperors to contain their succession wills. The lock and key of the box were carved in the auspicious pattern of bats flying amidst clouds. (Bats enjoy the same pronunciation as the word for ‘good fortune’.) Emperor Daoguang did not seal the box immediately: he waited for a day, to allow second thoughts, and to be quite sure of his decision. Then, still with his own hands, he locked the box and sealed it with paper strips, signing each of them and adding the date on the front. This box was then carefully placed behind the giant plaque that hung over the entrance to a major hall in the Forbidden City. On the plaque were inscribed four enormous characters –
zheng-da-guang-ming
– ‘upright, magnanimous, honourable and wise’, an imperial motto.

Emperor Daoguang had nine sons from different consorts, but only the fourth and the sixth were of the right age and were qualified to be candidates.
^fn4
The sixth son was emphatically ruled out by the emperor, who exceptionally conferred on him the title
qin-wang
, the highest of all princes. Charming and popular in the court, the sixth son was not viscerally anti-foreign like his half-brother, the designated heir. Their father was worried that he could be pliable in the face of foreign demands and would allow the door of China to be pushed open still wider.
^fn5
The father knew his sons well. In the future, they behaved exactly as he had anticipated.

The emperor-to-be, Cixi’s future husband, was eight when the Opium War broke out and he saw in the ensuing years how it had broken his father, leaving him tormented. When he succeeded to the throne in 1850, one of his first acts was to write a long edict condemning Qiying, the conciliatory Imperial Commissioner who had signed the Treaty of Nanjing and had persuaded his father to lift the ban on Christian missions. In the edict, Emperor Xianfeng denounced Qiying for ‘always caving in to foreigners at the cost of the country’, ‘extreme incompetence’ and ‘having not a shred of conscience’.
Qiying was demoted, and was later ordered to commit suicide.

Once, the emperor was told that the roof of a church in Shanghai had collapsed in a thunderstorm, and the big wooden cross bearing the figure of Christ had been destroyed. He saw this as Heaven doing the job that he ought to be doing, and wrote on the report: ‘
I am so awed and moved, and feel all the more ashamed.’ His loathing of Christianity and Westerners was made yet more intense by the fact that the Taiping rebels who were rocking his throne claimed to believe in Christianity, and their leader, Hong Xiuquan, declared that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Emperor Xianfeng would fight tooth and nail, every inch of the way, to keep Westerners out of China.

Meanwhile, the British wanted even more ports to be opened for trade and their representatives to be stationed in Beijing. The man Emperor Xianfeng designated to deal with them, Viceroy Ye Mingchen of Canton, was a kindred spirit of the emperor and turned a deaf ear to all their requests. In the end, the British decided that
‘ships of war are absolutely necessary’. An incident involving a boat called
Arrow
triggered what is often called ‘the Second Opium War’ in 1856 – the year Cixi’s son was born. Next year Lord Elgin (son of the 7th Earl, of Elgin Marbles repute) was dispatched to China with a fleet of warships. The French went along as an ally, wanting to gain unlimited access to the interior for their missionaries. The allies occupied Canton and carted Viceroy Ye off to Calcutta, where he soon died. The Europeans sailed north. In May 1858 they seized the Dagu Forts, which lay some 150 kilometres southeast of Beijing, and entered the nearby city of Tianjin. With enemy troops on his doorstep, Emperor Xianfeng still categorically rejected their requests. Eventually, as Lord Elgin threatened to march on Beijing, he was forced to send in negotiators, who accepted all the demands: envoys to station in Beijing, more ports to open for trade and missionaries to be admitted to the interior. After a few agonising days, Emperor Xianfeng succumbed to what the French envoy Baron Gros called a
‘pistol at the throat’ and gave his endorsement. The allies were satisfied and left the Dagu Forts in their gunboats.

Emperor Xianfeng hated the new deal that had been forced on him. Racking his brain to find a way out, he even proposed that Britain and France be exempt from all import duties, if they would agree to its annulment. But the two countries said that while they would be glad to be exempt from import duties, they wanted to stick to the agreements. The emperor kept berating his representatives who were in Shanghai talking to the Europeans – but to no avail.