East Asia: Center of the World - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 290

A New Breed of Invaders

(1839-1842) culminated in the T Treaty of Nanking in
1842, whereby Britain acquired the island of Hong
Kong, a cash indemnity , and permission to trade at five
treaty ports: Canton, Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Fuchow),
Ningpo, and Shanghai. Shortly thereafter, Britain was
given “most favored nation” status, which meant that it
would enjoy the provisions of treaties signed with any
other nations. In 1844, the United States signed a trade
treaty . China' s long period of isolation was over.

THE CHINA TRADE
The Chinese intelligentsia did not regard trade as an hon-
orable or worthy profession. Nevertheless, thousands of
Chinese were involved in trade within and without China.
Portuguese, British, Dutch, Spaniards, and Danes were all
anxious to gain trading footholds on the mainland. By the
time the first American ship sailed into Canton in 1784,
the emperor had already decreed that all trade must be
channeled through Canton and that factors or traders
must confine themselves to factories (storehouses) leased
from local landlords. Foreigners were thus crowded into
small compounds the Chinese called hongs.
In 1793, a British trade delegation arrived at the
court of Ch'ien Lung. The emperor accepted the gifts of
clocks, guns, and telescopes but, in a letter to England' s
King George III, pointed out, “There is nothing we
lack. . . . We have never set much store on strange or ingen-
ious objects, nor do we need any more of your country' s
manufactures.” Ordinary Chinese saw things differently ,
and thousands went abroad to participate in the business of
trade. The favorite destination was the island of Luzon in
the Philippines, which became the first major center of
the China trade. Silks, tea, porcelain, and rhubarb were
exchanged for high-grade silver mined in Spanish America.
The emperor would not deign to have contact with
the “foreign devils.” Instead, civil servants carried on
negotiations and reported their activities via horse relay to
the Son of Heaven. Misleading reports and mixed interpre-
tations of information soon caused trouble between the
traders and port officials. The accidental deaths of three
Chinese led to the execution by strangulation of a British
and an American sailor according to Chinese law .
Meanwhile, the British discovered that the most lucra-
tive import of all was opium, which was grown in abun-
dance in Bengal (then under British rule) and could be sold
in China. When the emperor tried to stem its import be-
cause of rapidly increasing addiction among Chinese, de-
mand increased and the illegal trade boomed. Several
efforts were made to end this pernicious trade, but to no
avail. At one point, the British were forced to seek refuge on
their ships anchored in the Hong Kong harbor. There, they
used the ships as trading headquarters for opium. When
Chinese junks tried to intercept the British transport ships,
British gunboats fired upon the junks, sinking four.
Britain responded to China' s obstruction of the
opium trade by attacking the Chinese coast and threat-
ening Nanjing (Nanking). This first Opium War

The Doctrine of
Extraterritoriality

Extraterritoriality refers to consular jurisdiction.
This means that a foreigner is subject to the laws of
his own country . For example, a British sailor who
committed a crime in China would be punished un-
der British law . This practice was introduced to
China by the Russians in the T Treaty of Nerchinsk in
1689. Under the terms of that treaty the privilege
was mutual. Extraterritoriality was one of the provi-
sions of the T Treaty of Nanking of 1842. In that case,
however, it was not a reciprocal arrangement. Euro-
peans were subject to European laws and so were
the Chinese in their own country . This was one rea-
son why trade treaties with the West were called the
Unequal T Treaties.
The Nationalist Chinese began to negotiate the
removal of extraterritoriality in 1928. Unsuccessful,
they abolished it by decree in 1932. New treaties,
minus the Doctrine of Extraterritoriality , were
signed with Britain and the United States in 1943.

THE MISSIONARIES
Another intrusion involved Christian missionaries. By
the end of the eighteenth century , the Jesuits had
amassed around 300,000 converts among the peasantry .
Although they failed to impress scholars steeped in Con-
fucianism, they did introduce the Chinese to new ways of
looking at the world. Initially , British and American mis-
sionaries built their missions, schools, and hospitals
within the confines of the treaty ports. They and other
missionary groups later spread to many regions such as
Sichuan and Manchuria. In Sichuan, those who accepted
food from the missionaries were called “rice Christians.”