Smashing China to Pieces, the Background | Between 2 Wars | 1925 Part 1 of 2 - YouTube (1)

To understand what is going on in China in the 1920s and 30s we have to look at the beginning

of the end of the Chinese Empire. So, in this episode we will briefly leave our usual timeline

and go back to the 19th century and the slow, painful collapse of what has arguably been

the mightiest land in the world for two thousand years. In our next episode we will then get

back to the interwar years.

Welcome to Between-2-Wars a chronological summary of the interwar years, covering all

facets of life, the uncertainty, hedonism, and euphoria, and ultimately humanity's

descent into the darkness of the Second World War. I'm Indy Neidell.

In 1800 the Qing Dynasty rules over close to 300 million people - one-third of Earth's

population- in China, known as the Middle Kingdom, and China is by far the largest economy

in the world, but while many other parts of the world are undergoing a process of rapid

change, China has lost its technological and intellectual lead and is headed towards stagnation.

The underlying reasons are many and complex, but in a great oversimplification it can be

said that the Imperial system that has been set up to rule this huge land is too rigid,

hierarchical, and bureaucratic to allow for the rapid societal changes driving and driven

by the agrarian and industrial revolution in the West. As the western powers take aggressive

control of world trade, centuries old Asian economic trade systems come under increasing

threat.

Using a combination of diplomacy, finances, arms, and drugs, European powers, especially

Britain, start making inroads to gain control of China's valuable trade and resources.

Now, the Qing dynasty has consolidated the Empire and in many ways stabilized it, but

they have also inadvertently weakened it. To uphold peace, they have deliberately turned

away from militarism, largely banning armies from the interior, and focused their military

power on border protection. While previous dynasties had depended on the cooperation

of regional and tribal militia to defend and expand the Empire, the Qing - especially under

the Qianlong Emperor- restrict the ownership of modern firearms, effectively disarming

any non-Imperial forces. That weakness will soon prove fatal in an international conflict

brought about by the illicit drug trade.

In 1793, the Qianlong Emperor resists and blocks British efforts to open up trade inside

China beyond the free trade port in Canton. But the British traders have already found

a new way to make inroads: opium! By 1773 the British East India Company has literally

started pumping the drug from India into the country. They've not only established a

lucrative business, but also created an epidemic of addiction. When the British diplomatic

efforts to open China for trade fail, this becomes a deliberate method to weaken the

Qing. Other parties quickly get in on the business, even the otherwise staunchly anti-colonial

Americans, with- among others- the great grandfather of President Franklin D. Roosevelt making

a killing with drug smuggling to China. By 1833 the Brits alone are offloading 5.1 million

pounds of opium per year, creating as many as 12 million addicts, and severely damaging

the social and economic fabric of many Chinese cities.

Now, conflict over drug smuggling might sound like a secondary problem in the greater game

of international relations, but it isn't. The immediate and secondary effects are crippling

for China as a whole.

You see, it's like this; the massive amount of drugs flowing into the country is paid

for in silver and other currency. The smugglers are foreigners and take this money out of

the country. This creates a gigantic outflow of currency literally draining the Chinese

economy of its value. Compounded by the already stagnant economy, the rapid growth in other

parts of the world, and the effects of addiction on productivity, the drug trade will cut China's

share of the global economy in half from 1820 to the 1860s.

Already in the 1830s The Emperor vehemently protests to the British Crown, to no avail.

In 1839 he finally takes matter in own hands and enters the British enclave in Canton,

confiscating 20,283 chests of opium - more than half of British annual opium exports

to China at that point. Under pressure from the traders the UK strikes back with force

and the First Opium War begins. Using their naval might they come up with tactic that

will become known as gunboat diplomacy. Simply put they just sail heavily armed Royal Navy

vessels upriver to Chinese cities and shell them to smithereens one after another.

In 1842 the Chinese sue for peace. The Treaty of Nanking will be the final nail in the coffin

for China's role as the world's strongest economy or largest military power. The emperor

now has to open China for trade and besides Canton, four new treaty ports are opened under

British control; one of them is Shanghai. On top of the treaty ports, the Chinese are

forced to cede Hong Kong as a British colony, and must pay a fortune in reparations- including

the value of the drugs confiscated from the traders. This is the first of a series of

treaties forced by the West on China, Japan and Korea that will become known as “the

unequal treaties”.

These one-sided forced agreements will awaken a popular movement towards modernity that

will launch revolutions, topple the Empire, and shatter China into cycles of civil wars

and international conflicts, some that remain unresolved to this day in 2019.

Already in 1850 China falls apart for the first time. Hong Xiuquan, a converted Christian

millenarian raises an army under the banner of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and challenges

the Emperor for power. This is the beginning of the Taiping Rebellion that soon sees the

whole country descend into civil war. It will be one of the bloodiest conflicts, possibly

even the bloodiest, in human history, the exact number of dead is unclear, but it is

at least 20 million and could be as many as 100 million who are killed or die by the famine

and epidemics launched by the war during the 14 years of conflict. It fractures the country

and is a rebirth of the old system of private, local, regional, factional, and imperial armies.

France and the United Kingdom enter the conflict on the side of the Qing dynasty, and with

their support the Taiping are defeated in 1864, but pockets of civil war continue to

break out as Taiping rebels rise up locally as late as1895. One of the lasting effects

of the rebellion is the rise of the warlords with their own armies fighting for either

side or among themselves in parallel conflicts.

At the same time as the Taiping Rebellion, the second Opium War takes place, and with

this seemingly endless series of conflicts weakening the state, China soon becomes a

land open for foreign land grabbing, and political and financial domination.

The French take Indochina and continue making inroads in the south-west during the Sino

French War. Using Chinese violence against missionaries as a pretext, German colonial

enclaves are established by force. The Russian Empire promises help against the English and

French, but also takes large chunks of Northern China in exchange for their military support.

Soon China and Russia are at war for a time. All the while the United Kingdom continues

to force the expansion of their lease and free trade agreements, various European powers

and the US increase their military presence and trade positions bleeding the Chinese economy

drier and drier. As if that isn't enough, China's neighbor Japan also becomes a threat.

Now, by the end of the 19th century Japan has managed to defend itself against foreign

domination and wiggled out of the grip of the unequal treaties. With the Meiji Restoration

of 1868, the Japanese Emperor again takes control of the country and launches major

economic and social reform programs. He focuses Japan on an aggressive defense and expansion

policy, and sets the country on a path to join the industrial revolution. Like the other

expanding powers, Japan will look to for resources for growth by subjugation of other powers

and land grabbing, so now suddenly Japan is on the rise as a new colonial power. Meiji

sets his eyes on Korea, a tributary kingdom to the Qing Empire. In 1894 Japan invades

Korea and over a period of 6 months thoroughly defeat the Qing army in the First Sino Japanese

War.

The peace dictated in The Treaty of Shimonoseki in April 1895 forces the Qing Empire to recognize

the total independence of Korea, and cede Taiwan and the Penghu Islands to Japan "in

perpetuity". Additionally, the Qing Empire pays a total of 13,600 tons of silver to Japan

in war reparations and trophies, equivalent to about 510 million Japanese yen in 1895,

and in 2019 it would be worth more than 150 billion US dollars, six times the annual revenue

of Japan at the time. Last but not least China is opened to free trade for Japanese merchants,

Japan gains access to the treaty ports, and is allowed to open four additional Japanese

trade enclaves on mainland China.

So, now Japan joins the European colonial powers and the US in the great game of bleeding

China's public coffers by trading into and from the country without taxation. In China

this is not well received- who'da guessed?- and sets off a series of events that will

soon topple the Qing Dynasty.

Dissatisfied over the loss of territory, independence, and financial might, parts of the military

and the nascent warlords are about to rise up. At this point the Empire is ruled de-facto

by Empress Xiaoqinxian, the Empress Dowager Cixi. She had been the concubine of the Xianfeng

Emperor until his death in 1861, when her five-year-old son became Emperor and she assumed

regency. When that son died in 1875, she installed her nephew Zaitan as the Guangxu Emperor,

but in practice she is still in power. When he drives for wide-ranging reforms in response

to the dire situation of the land in the Hundred Days Reform movement of 1898, they fall out

over how to implement change, and she becomes convinced that he has tried to murder her.

She places him under virtual house arrest in the Forbidden City. Cixi continues to juggle

the complicated relations with the colonial powers on her land and is increasingly seen

as an agent of foreign interests. In 1899 parts of the military have started to come

together into a movement known in English as the Boxers. They demand an expulsion of

foreign powers and the reform of the Qing dynasty. Although Cixi initially opposes the

Boxers she halts the modernizing reforms under pressure fron them.

In early 1900 she changes her position and sides with them to the outrage of the foreign

powers. The Boxer Uprising begins and Chinese Christians, western missionaries, and foreigners

in general fall victims to violence and even massacres. Britain, France, Germany, Italy,

Austria-Hungary, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, Russia, and Japan now unite

to put down the rebellion. In the summer Cixi declares that she will expel the foreigners

and declares war on all of them. The Russians use this as a pretext to invade Manchuria.

The other seven powers move in with troops in the South and the Centre of the country.

The Rebellion is crushed, and the foreign powers now on Chinese soil start a series

of violent reprisals, plundering, raping, and murdering their way through the regions

that have supported the Boxers.

But this ALL has shown the foreigners that China is not going to be easy to subjugate

by force without destroying her valuable trade resources.

The Eight Nation Alliance offers Cixi a peace agreement that more or less sets the situation

back to how it was before the rebellion. In the hope of a return to normalcy Cixi accepts,

But normalcy is relative, as for many people of the empire- in the words of historian Pamela

Crossley- living conditions have now gone "from desperate poverty to true misery.”