The 19th century 'unequal treaties' and their social and economic consequences on China keep bubbling up in collective memories
My note on China and the West points to the Western embarassment and hesitancy, borderline paranoia, at any reminder of what was....and of what could have been
And this may be true even of Russia, one of the worst abusers of Chinese weakness ....and 'unequal treaties' were setting a high bar...
Dark memories cannot be so easily passed over, even during the most choreographed 'friendly' encounters, of which there have been many
And profiteering remains hard to acknowledge by any of the Western powers, even by the most blatantly and recent offender, Japan
If history holds a lesson, admission of responsibility in past tragedies should be addressed to the Chinese people itself, not to any government in particular
The voice of the people
The people of China has to find its voice
The West has for decades countered that such voices are stiffled by the Communist regime's authoritarian bend
Asserted with confidence, supported by multiple incidents of stronghanded interference, the claim is not necessarily as watertight as critics of the Chinese governance suggest
More precisely, there is an argument to be made in recognizing the infinite variety of opinions tearing through the Chinese population, hard to curb, impossible to silence entirely
Public dialogue may remain difficult because officials on all sides love to let memories rest in dark corners, to be ressuscitated on occasion for convenient narratives
Private persons know none of these constraints, and the opportunity of lively debate remains within reach
Misunderstandings and preconceptions start filling the widening gap only when friendly interactions fall silent
Rebellions - Taiping and Boxers
Since the 1850's, raucous protest by the people of China has united millions in rebellions offering nothing but violence to manifest economic distress, ethnic tensions and revolt against foreign depredations
The Taiping Rebellion lasted 14 years, from 1850 to 1864, ravaged 17 provinces in South China, took an estimated 20 million lives and the Qing dynasty would never recover its authority
The Taiping credo of property shared in common, and their propaganda against Qing dynasty as foreign Manchu rulers, attracted many famine-stricken peasants, workers, and miners - and would inspire the Chinese communists and the Nationalist Party in the XXth century
In the following decades, the faltering grip of the Qing's on power ignited still more revolts
With immense loss of human life, the Dynasty would stumble on, with disastrous floods of the Yang Tse (1851 and again in 1855), a separatist Muslim Hui movement in western Yunnan, sectarian violence again involving the Muslim Hui (in the 1860's and 1890's) and mounting protests against foreign profiteering
At the turn of the century, by 1900, the Boxer Rebellion, a group combining traditional Chinese folk culture and violent action, coincided with the arrival of a Belgian Catholic missionnary, Vincent Lebbe, steadfast in the promise of a dialogue between equals, between East and West, and looking out from inside China
Forces larger than life were preparing to break civilizations in the slip stream of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, two World Wars and murderous campaigns ravaging China
Voices of reason ?
The Boxers would earn fame as the voice of violence running wild, echoing through the XXth century
The voice of Vincent Lebbe, a voice of reason, bringing a message of faith in action, would be forgotten by history
The voices coming out of China still need to be heard
The frustration of the Boxers was a protest of all the common people forever silenced, boiling over
By word and in action, Lebbe meant to unite, reaching out to the all Chinese willing to open a dialogue
1900 - Gathering storm
Seizure of territory trampled Chinese governance at every sign of weakness in the 1800's, after the two Opium Wars and after the defeat to Japan
Since the cession of Hong Kong to the British in 1842, the Qing Dynasty would be forced to surrender territory and sovereignty as a result of war threats
Russia exerted pressure in Manchuria and Central Asia; France took control of Indochina in the second half of the nineteenth century; Japan, fresh from the Meiji Restoration went to war over influence in Korea in 1894-1895; and the British were everywhere...
In the wake of the Japanese victory, the Western treaty powers redoubled their strategic (in the case of Russia) and commercial interests, and new players, especially Germany, entered the race for Chinese concessions
Diplomatic activism of the Westen Powers had by the late 1890's turned Chinese sovereignty into a charade
Extraterritoriality imposed by Western powers established a system of foreign enclaves in dozens of Chinese cities
In these 'Treaty Ports', foreign diplomats, not Chinese officials, controlled trade, administration, the collection of customs revenues, and the dispensing of justice
This practice of extraterritoriality had been progressively extended to cover all foreigners
Even Chinese subjects who had converted to Christianity could be exempted from the power of Chinese courts and supported by missionaries, turning a blind eye in case of misdeeds
Antiforeign sentiment was bound to grow strongly across Chinese society, from the Court officials to the common people
Unthinking abuse of power by domineering consuls, self-confident Christian missionaries and eager traders was feeding a heartfelt desire for revenge
Taken all together, China was a tinderbox
The Boxer Rebellion tipped the scale
The origin of the Boxers movement is obscure, harking back to previous rebellions from around 1800
What makes this nativist and fundamentalist movement stand out in recent history are Confucian ethics and politics, and a strong anti-foreign bent
These sentiments resonated with large swaths of the Chinese population as expression of popular resentment, targeting all things 'foreign', modernity in every form and the Christian Church in its overweening confidence
Roaming freely through China, sanctioned by the treaties and protected by the flag, missionaries were - in the most positive view - just naive and - more realistically - domineering and abusive
Unmindful of Mateo Ricci, the 16th century jesuit's efforts to make Christianity a precious addition to Chinese society, missionaries were seen as socially disruptive and disrepectful to Confucianism
Modernity unleashed customs regulations (favoring Western imports) and north-south transportation by railway (destroying the livelihoods along the Grand Canal and land routes)
Handicraftmen (such as weavers), small textile manufacturers unable to compete with industrial imports, carters, bargemen and innkeepers along the traditional communication system...they all descended into abject povery and famine
The economics of 1900 China were uniformly disastrous and the budgetary deficit forced tax increases on a bankrupt country
Natural disasters, the fllooding of the Yellow River in 1898 affecting more than a million people, followed by draughts in northern China in 1900, were seen as further proof of malicious foreign influence, offending the spirits...
Spreading like wildfire across Northern China in the early months of 1900, the Boxers, supported by the most reactionary anti-foreign elements at the Court, multiplied provocations, killing missionaries, burning churches and foreign legations and destroying railways
The Empress Dowager Cixi hesitated and finally threw the weight of the Court behind the Boxers, sensing a popular surge...
"...can we not rely on the hearts of the people ? China has been extremely weak; the only thing we can rely upon is the hearts of the people. If we lose them, how can we maintain our country?"
Reaching a high point in June 1900, the Peking Foreign Legations were attacked by tens of thousands of Boxers, with bounties set by way of encouragement on the heads of every man, woman or child
The reservations of the Guangxu Emperor, nephew to the Dowager and under her influence, were overruled and, with ebb and flow, assaults on the Peking Legations were resisted by a modest 450 guards, 475 civilians and 2300 Chinese Christians
Success in withstanding the onslaught at the Legations until arrival of Western military reinforcements of 18 000 men by August was due in no small part to the reluctance of the top general for Northern China, commander of the modernized Peiyang forces, to commit to more than half-hearted attacks
Hollowing the hearts of the people
During the Boxer Rebellion, an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 Boxers spread out across China's North East and around 100,000 Imperial Chinese troops were engaged on the side of the Boxers, after the imperial court declared war on the foreign powers
The South East, ignoring the orders issued by the Court, never fell under Boxer disturbance
The Boxer Rebellion was a tragedy
The Boxers were charging with swords and lances, in certainty that supernatural powers would protect them from the bullets...
The Empress Dowager ultimately fled Peking, compelling the Guangxu Emperor to accompany her (after she murdered his favorite consort)
The most influential reactionary advisors to the Empress committed suicide
The Dowager managed to attribute the disaster to the more liberal advisors at the Court for suggesting negotiations in respect of international law ... and for "building subversive thought"
With two other high officials to the Court, Yuan Chang and Xu Yongyi, ambassador Shu King-Shen, liberal-minded influential diplomat at the Qing Court, mentor to Lu Zhengxiang who held him in the highest esteem, was beheaded on July 28, 1900
Times of extreme weakness....
Geopolitical consequences of the uprising would rumble on for almost three years with Russia's occupation of Manchuria with 200 000 men , with the undisguised intention to take and to hold the province
The Western powers and Japan were vehemently opposed to this 'coup' and the Chinese Court caught in the crossfire chose to let the matter drag on...
Finally, Russia's promised evacuation in three stages from April 1902, at 6 months intervals, fell short in phase two (April 1903) when the Russian soldiers stayed on with new uniforms as 'railway guards' ...
The stage was set for Russia's war with Japan ...no later than 1904
Lu Zhengxiang tells of his frustration with the Manchu regime in his Memoirs – Souvenirs et Pensées (1947)
Counseled by Shu King-Shen, the ambassador under whom he served in Saint Petersburg, Lu learned to have patience and to be prepared
The words of Shu, pronounced at times of great distress (1894), would resonate
"The strength of Europe is not in her armaments or in her science; it is in her religion... Look at the Christian religion… when you have taken up its heart and its strength, carry them and give them to China"
The words of the Empress Dowager, who ordered and attended the execution of Shu, are just as potent
"...can we not rely on the hearts of the people ? China has been extremely weak; the only thing we can rely upon is the hearts of the people. If we lose them, how can we maintain our country"
Grasping at straws - Losing the hearts of the people...
Losing the last figment of credibility, the Imperial Court was duty-bound to accept the 'Boxer Protocol' dictated by the Western powers
Infringing dramatically on its sovereignty, the Protocol compromised China's haphazard ambitions at institutional reform
The well-travelled students of Western institutions and capitalistic economies had laid out the tenets of China's modernization for decades
Its blue print would have been the "1898 Hundred Days’ Reform", a short-lived political, cultural, and educational movement edicted by the Guangxu Emperor, following defeat in the war with Japan (1895)
With the traditional elites and the conservative Manchu officials under threat, the Empress Dowager staged a coup, placing the Emperor under house arrest
The Reform recovered some life and purpose by 1900 with the Imperial Court's show of transformative zeal
Nothing much emerged besides the abolition of civil service examinations, the establishment of modern schools and scholarships for Chinese students abroad
Constitutional changes would have to wait for another day and not for long
By 1905, a dramatic event was going shake up the political divides between the liberals and the conservatives, between the Manchu titleholders and Chinese intellectuals, between the moderate'institutionalists' and the radicals
The undisputed victory of small, emerging Asian country, Japan, over a dominant Western power, Russia, upended China's worldly views
Unable to accept what was known to be indispensable, the Qing Court's days had indeed 'lost the hearts of the people'
The days of the Court were numbered
It would be up to Father Vincent Lebbe (1877–1940), a Lazarist Belgian priest who arrived in China in 1901, to show the complementarity between Empress Cixi's urgency to "rely on the hearts of the people" and Ambassador Shu's thoughtful admonition to "look at the Christian religion… carry its heart and its strength, and give them to China"
And Lebbe would not be alone in "China Dialogues - Strolling through the XXth Century"