Editing New Imperialism (section)

===China===
{{Main|Century of humiliation}}
{{See also|Unequal treaty|Sick man of Asia|Foreign concessions in China|Scramble for China|List of Chinese treaty ports}}
[[File:China imperialism cartoon.jpg|upright|thumb|A shocked [[Mandarin (bureaucrat)|mandarin]] in official robes in the back, with [[Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria]] ([[British Empire|Britain]]),[[Wilhelm II, German Emperor|Wilhelm II]] ([[German Empire|Germany]]),  [[Nicholas II of Russia|Nicholas II]] ([[Russian Empire|Russia]]), [[Marianne]] ([[French colonial empire|France]]), and a [[samurai]] ([[Empire of Japan|Japan]]) discussing how to cut up  ''Chine'' ("[[Qing Empire|China]]" in French).]]

In 1839, China found itself fighting the [[First Opium War]] with Great Britain after the [[Governor-General (China)|governor-general]] of [[Hunan]] and [[Hubei]], [[Lin Zexu]], seized the illegally traded opium. China was defeated, and in 1842 agreed to the provisions of the [[Treaty of Nanking]]. [[Hong Kong Island]] was ceded to Britain, and [[treaty ports|certain ports]], including [[Shanghai]] and [[Guangzhou]], were opened to British trade and residence. In 1856, the [[Second Opium War]] broke out; the Chinese were again defeated and forced to the terms of the 1858 [[Treaty of Tientsin]] and the 1860 [[Convention of Peking]]. The treaty opened new ports to trade and allowed foreigners to travel in the interior. Missionaries gained the right to propagate Christianity, another means of Western penetration. The United States and Russia obtained the same prerogatives in separate [[unequal treaties|treaties]].

Towards the end of the 19th century, China appeared on the way to territorial dismemberment and economic vassalage, the fate of India's rulers that had played out much earlier. Several provisions of these treaties caused long-standing bitterness and humiliation among the Chinese: [[extraterritoriality]] (meaning that in a dispute with a Chinese person, a Westerner had the right to be tried in a court under the laws of his own country), customs regulation, and the right to station foreign warships in Chinese waters.

In 1904, the [[British expedition to Tibet|British invaded Tibet]], a pre-emptive strike against Russian intrigues and secret meetings between the [[13th Dalai Lama]]'s envoy and [[Tsar Nicholas II]]. The Dalai Lama fled into exile to China and Mongolia. The British were greatly concerned at the prospect of a Russian invasion of the Crown colony of India, though Russia – badly defeated by Japan in the [[Russo-Japanese war|Russo-Japanese War]] and weakened by [[1905 revolution|internal revolution]] – could not realistically afford a military conflict against Britain. China under the [[Qing dynasty]], however, was another matter.{{sfn|Tamm|2011|p=3}}

Natural disasters, famine and internal rebellions had enfeebled China in the late Qing. In the late 19th century, Japan and the Great Powers easily carved out trade and territorial concessions. These were humiliating submissions for the once-powerful China. Still, the central lesson of the [[Russo-Japanese War|war with Japan]] was not lost on the Russian General Staff: an Asian country using Western technology and industrial production methods could defeat a great European power.{{sfn|Tamm|2011|p=4}} Jane E. Elliott criticized the allegation that China refused to modernize or was unable to defeat Western armies as simplistic, noting that China embarked on a massive military modernization in the late 1800s after several defeats, buying weapons from Western countries and manufacturing their own at arsenals, such as the [[Hanyang Arsenal]] during the [[Boxer Rebellion]]. In addition, Elliott questioned the claim that Chinese society was traumatized by the Western victories, as many Chinese peasants (90% of the population at that time) living outside the concessions continued about their daily lives, uninterrupted and without any feeling of "humiliation".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wWvl9O4Gn1UC&q=defeat+peasants+not+humiliated+at+all|title=Some Did it for Civilisation, Some Did it for Their Country: A Revised View of the Boxer War|author=Jane E. Elliott|year=2002|publisher=Chinese University Press |page=143 |isbn=962-996-066-4 |access-date=2010-06-28}}</ref>

The British observer Demetrius Charles de Kavanagh Boulger suggested a British-Chinese alliance to check Russian expansion in Central Asia.

During the Ili crisis when Qing China threatened to go to war against Russia over the Russian occupation of Ili, the British officer [[Charles George Gordon]] was sent to China by Britain to advise China on military options against Russia should a potential war break out between China and Russia.<ref>{{cite book|author=John King Fairbank|title=The Cambridge History of China: Late Chʻing, 1800–1911, pt. 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pEfWaxPhdnIC&pg=PA94|year=1978|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-22029-3|page=94}}</ref>

The Russians observed the Chinese building up their arsenal of modern weapons during the Ili crisis, the Chinese bought thousands of rifles from Germany.<ref>{{cite book|author=Alex Marshall|title=The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860–1917|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDXfGErwPtsC&pg=PA78|date=22 November 2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-25379-1|page=78}}</ref> In 1880 massive amounts of military equipment and rifles were shipped via boats to China from Antwerp as China purchased torpedoes, artillery, and 260,260 modern rifles from Europe.<ref>{{cite book|author=Alex Marshall|title=The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860–1917|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDXfGErwPtsC&pg=PA79|date=22 November 2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-25379-1|page=79}}</ref>

The Russian military observer D. V. Putiatia visited China in 1888 and found that in Northeastern China (Manchuria) along the Chinese-Russian border, the Chinese soldiers were potentially able to become adept at "European tactics" under certain circumstances, and the Chinese soldiers were armed with modern weapons like Krupp artillery, Winchester carbines, and Mauser rifles.<ref>{{cite book|author=Alex Marshall|title=The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860–1917|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDXfGErwPtsC&pg=PA80|date=22 November 2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-25379-1|page=80}}</ref>

Compared to Russian controlled areas, more benefits were given to the Muslim Kirghiz on the Chinese controlled areas. Russian settlers fought against the Muslim nomadic Kirghiz, which led the Russians to believe that the Kirghiz would be a liability in any conflict against China. The Muslim Kirghiz were sure that in an upcoming war, that China would defeat Russia.<ref>{{cite book|author=Alex Marshall|title=The Russian General Staff and Asia, 1860–1917|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wDXfGErwPtsC&pg=PA85|date=22 November 2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-25379-1|pages=85–}}</ref>

The Qing dynasty forced Russia to hand over disputed territory in Ili in the [[Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881)]], in what was widely seen by the west as a diplomatic victory for the Qing.<ref>{{cite book|author=John King Fairbank|title=The Cambridge History of China: Late Chʻing, 1800–1911, pt. 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pEfWaxPhdnIC&pg=PA96|year=1978|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-22029-3|page=96}}</ref> Russia acknowledged that Qing China potentially posed a serious military threat.<ref name="Scott2008-104">{{cite book|author=David Scott|title=China and the International System, 1840–1949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6U_DPS4vfO0C&pg=PA104|date=7 November 2008|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=978-0-7914-7742-7|pages=104–105}}</ref> Mass media in the west during this era portrayed China as a rising military power due to its modernization programs and as major threat to the western world, invoking fears that China would successfully conquer western colonies like Australia.<ref name="Scott2008-111">{{cite book|author=David Scott|title=China and the International System, 1840–1949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6U_DPS4vfO0C&pg=PA111|date=7 November 2008|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=978-0-7914-7742-7|pages=111–112}}</ref>

Russian sinologists, the Russian media, threat of internal rebellion, the pariah status inflicted by the [[Congress of Berlin]], and the negative state of the Russian economy all led Russia to concede and negotiate with China in St Petersburg, and return most of Ili to China.<ref>{{cite book|author=John King Fairbank|title=The Cambridge History of China: Late Chʻing, 1800–1911, pt. 2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pEfWaxPhdnIC&pg=PA95|year=1978|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-22029-3|page=95}}</ref>

Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness while it achieved military success against westerners on land, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that "China’s nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the Opium War, China had no unified navy and no sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go. ... In the [[Arrow War]] (1856–60), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 from sailing into the [[Gulf of Zhili]] and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the [[Sino-French War]] (1884–1885). But the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms."<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Po |first=Chung-yam |date=28 June 2013 |publisher=Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg |title=Conceptualizing the Blue Frontier: The Great Qing and the Maritime World in the Long Eighteenth Century |page=11 |url=http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/18877/1/PhD_Dissertation_CyPO.pdf}}</ref>

The British and Russian consuls schemed and plotted against each other at Kashgar.<ref name="NightingaleSkrine2013">{{cite book|author1=Pamela Nightingale|author2=C. P. Skrine|title=Macartney at Kashgar: New Light on British, Chinese and Russian Activities in Sinkiang, 1890–1918|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lTn-AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA109|date=5 November 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-57609-6|page=109}}</ref>

In 1906, [[Tsar Nicholas II]] sent a secret agent to China to collect intelligence on the reform and modernization of the Qing dynasty. The task was given to [[Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim]], at the time a colonel in the Russian army, who travelled to China with French Sinologist [[Paul Pelliot]]. Mannerheim was disguised as an ethnographic collector, using a Finnish passport.{{sfn|Tamm|2011|p=4}} Finland was, at the time, a Grand Duchy. For two years, Mannerheim proceeded through [[Xinjiang]], [[Gansu]], [[Shaanxi]], [[Henan]], [[Shanxi]] and [[Inner Mongolia]] to [[Beijing]]. At the sacred Buddhist mountain of [[Wutai Shan]] he even met the 13th Dalai Lama.{{sfn|Tamm|2011|p=353}} However, while Mannerheim was in China in 1907, Russia and Britain brokered the [[Anglo-Russian Entente|Anglo-Russian Agreement]], ending the classical period of the Great Game.

The correspondent Douglas Story observed Chinese troops in 1907 and praised their abilities and military skill.<ref name="Story1907">{{cite book|author=Douglas Story|title=To-morrow in the East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tbRGAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA224|year=1907|publisher=Chapman & Hall, Limited|page=224}}</ref>

The rise of Japan as an imperial power after the [[Meiji Restoration]] led to further subjugation of China. In a dispute over regional suzerainty, [[Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895)|war broke out]] between China and Japan, resulting in another humiliating defeat for the Chinese. By the [[Treaty of Shimonoseki]] in 1895, China was forced to recognize [[Korea]]'s exit from the [[Imperial Chinese tributary system]], leading to the proclamation of the [[Korean Empire]], and the island of [[Taiwan under Japanese rule|Taiwan]] was ceded to Japan.

In 1897, taking advantage of the [[Juye Incident|murder of two missionaries]], Germany demanded and was given a set of [[Kiautschou Bay concession|mining and railroad rights]] around [[Jiaozhou Bay]] in [[Shandong]] province. In 1898, Russia obtained access to [[Dairen]] and [[Lüshunkou|Port Arthur]] and the right to build a railroad across [[Manchuria]], thereby achieving complete domination over a large portion of northeast China. The United Kingdom, France, and Japan also received a number of concessions later that year.

The erosion of Chinese sovereignty contributed to a spectacular anti-foreign outbreak in June 1900, when the "[[Fists of Righteous Harmony|Boxers]]" (properly the society of the "righteous and harmonious fists") attacked [[Beijing Legation Quarter|foreign legations]] in [[Beijing]]. This [[Boxer Rebellion]] provoked a rare display of unity among the colonial powers, who formed the [[Eight-Nation Alliance]]. Troops landed at [[Tianjin]] and marched on the capital, which they took on 14 August; the foreign soldiers then looted and occupied Beijing for several months. German forces were particularly severe in exacting revenge for the killing of [[Clemens von Ketteler|their ambassador]], while Russia tightened its hold on Manchuria in the northeast until its crushing defeat by Japan in the [[Russo-Japanese War]] of 1904–1905.

Extraterritorial jurisdiction was abandoned by the United Kingdom and the United States in 1943.

Mainland Chinese historians refer to this period as the [[century of humiliation]].