Ten Lessons in Modern Chinese History

Yangwen Zheng

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780719097737
• eBook ISBN: 9781526126979
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

A timely and solid portrait of modern China

Lesson 1

The ‘Race for Oriental Opulence’¹

Thomas Short, MD, wrote of the medical value of tea in A Dissertation Upon Tea, published in the early eighteenth century:

Another Thing which mightily ingratiates the Use of the Liquor to Men of a sprightly Genius, who court the Continuance of their lively and distinct Idea, is, its remarkable Force against Drowsiness and Dul-ness, Damps, and Clouds on Brain and intellectual Faculties; for its keeping is too great; But to prevent frightful Dreams, ’tis best to take three or four dishes in the Afternoon, but not too strong, lest it cause Watch-ings, and to forbear a Flesh Supper after: the Same Time and Quantity is best to prevent Drowsiness.

The Muses Friend, Tea, does our Fancy aid,

Repress those Vapours which the Head invade,

And keep that Palace of the Soul serene

Fit on her Birth-day to salute a Queen.²

Dr Short elevated tea to the status of a panacea fit for a queen’s birthday. It would seem that the British people were in full agreement with Short. Scarcely known to the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, tea was becoming a popular commodity by the eighteenth century. Eminent historian Maxine Berg has argued that ‘by 1760 a breakfast of toast and rolls and tea was entrenched in middling circles’.³ This change in appetite was to have consequences beyond the breakfast table, as this commodity created a tie between Britain and the source of the drink – the Middle Kingdom. Lesson 1 tells the story of how Britain’s demand for tea led to two Anglo-Chinese conflicts in the name of opium. The Opium Wars heralded the beginning of a new era in Chinese history and since then they have never ceased to generate debate, historical as well as political. Lesson 1 also helps students to navigate the growing maze of scholarship and offers potential new lines of enquiry for what is an old topic. What insights can post-Mao hindsight offer us?

A Tale of Two Commodities

European fascination with Chinese goods, artefacts and decorative arts would lead to the development of Chinoiserie, which swept through western Europe from the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. This intensified in Britain as the Industrial Revolution produced middling classes eager to consume luxury goods, such as tea, a drink they had not been able to afford before. This fashion in and demand for tea was good news to the British East India Company (EIC), whose business in China had until then been unprofitable. The Europeans, and the British in particular, had bought much from China since the Age of Exploration; but the Chinese bought little in return. To make matters worse for European traders, China accepted only silver, or gold, as currency. To trade with China, Europeans had to carry shiploads of silver on their voyages. Eventually, foreign traders found it increasingly hard to find silver, while China became rich in the metal. This meant they were running not just a trade deficit but also a monetary deficit with China.

This twin deficit was only one of the problems European merchants encountered. Their trade was limited to a small area, the so-called Thirteen Factories, a row of houses outside the city of Guangzhou (Canton) facing the Pearl River estuary, and they could conduct their business only through a governmentlicensed monopoly called Gonghang (Cohang). This was an agency established for the exclusive purpose of dealing with foreign trade; it managed foreign tribute missions and procured for the Qing court. This meant foreign traders had no choice when it came to what kind of tea – or silk or porcelain for that matter – they could purchase; nor did they have any direct contact with merchants, let alone markets, in China. Not only that, they were forced to observe elaborate procedures and diplomatic etiquettes, which made them feel like representatives of vassal states. In addition, they were not allowed to bring families and could stay only in the designated area, and not venture out into the city of Guangzhou – hardly conditions they were used to in Europe and other parts of the world.

But tea had become more than just a simple commodity to Britain. Berg believes that tea was not a major raison d’être for EIC voyages until 1763, when the trade became profitable.⁴ A mere 20 years later its significance was shown by the Commutation Act of 1784, in which the government required the EIC to always maintain a year’s stock of tea.⁵ Tea had become important to national security; its rising popularity meant good business for the EIC and income for the British government. The EIC knew the importance of trade with China: it financed the first official embassy to the Qing court, in 1793, headed by Lord Macartney:

That the Chinese trade is the most important and the most advantageous of the Company’s extensive concerns is, I believe, universally admitted; and that it is worthy of high consideration in a national point of view requires but little proof. It employs direct from England 20,000 tons of shipping, and nearly three thousand seamen; it takes off our woollen manufactures and other products to a very considerable extent; and it brings into the Exchequer annual revenue of about three millions sterling. It is the grand prop of the East India Company’s credit, and the only branch of their trade from which perhaps they may strictly be said to derive real profit.⁶

What John Barrow referred to as the ‘grand prop’ was, in fact, tea; he was private secretary to Lord Macartney. The embassy went in the name of celebrating the birthday of the Qianlong Emperor (reigned 1735–1796) but it came with a series of propositions. These included having British representation in Beijing, free access to the interior and an island offshore on which they could do business without Chinese interference. The last demand would be granted 40 years later with the colony of Hong Kong but, for now, all were refused by Qianlong.⁷ Despite this diplomatic failure, trade with China increased, but so did the twin deficit. By the late eighteenth century, China was probably the richest country in the world as it had absorbed the global silver supply. This had made it increasingly difficult for all European traders, but in particular the British, as they went to China for more tea. They would need to find either more silver or something that the Chinese would buy with silver. The Chinese were buying some foreign goods with silver, mostly luxury items, such as European clocks and opium. Indeed, it seems the Chinese demand for opium was increasing by the early nineteenth century. This was a ray of hope for the British: they had finally found something they could sell to the Chinese.

Seeking a more satisfactory trade relationship, Britain sent another embassy, this time led by Lord Amherst, in 1816. But it turned into a disaster as Lord Amherst was not received by the Jiaqing Emperor (reigned 1796–1820) despite the fact that he was just outside the audience hall. As, initially, with Lord Macartney before him, Chinese officials had insisted that he perform the ritual of kowtow. He refused this request, knowing that his predecessor had not done so, as can be seen from the memoir of George Staunton, Macartney’s deputy:

The Ambassador, instructed by the president of the tribunal of rites, held the large and magnificent square box of gold, adorned with jewels, in which was enclosed his Majesty’s letter to the Emperor, between both hands lifted above his head; and in that manner, ascending the few step that led to the throne, and bending on one knee, presented the box, with a short address, to his Imperial Majesty; who graciously receiving it with his own hands, placed it by his side, and expressed ‘the satisfaction he felt at the testimony which his Britannic Majesty gave to him of his esteem and good will, in sending him an Embassy, with a letter and rare presents; that he, on his part, entertained sentiments of the same kind towards the Sovereign of Great Britain, and hoped that harmony should always be maintained among their respective subjects’.⁸

Despite being refused the audience, the Amherst embassy was not a failure because the information they gathered about China, from its growing opium consumption to its coastal geography and poor defence, would serve the British expedition during the First Opium War. Anglo-Chinese trade increased dramatically through the 1820s until 1834, when the British government, committed to free trade, revoked the EIC’s exclusive trading rights with China, originally granted by Elizabeth I in 1599. More and more private English merchants were now going to do business in China, breaking the equilibrium and causing more problems.

To better manage the situation, the British government appointed William John Napier as the first Chief Superintendent of Trade. Armed with instructions from Lord Palmerston, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Napier arrived in Macao in July 1834. He headed straight to Guangzhou without informing the Chinese authorities and without following established protocol. His no-nonsense style did not secure him a meeting with the Governor-General. Humiliated and frustrated, he resorted to attacking the city, which led to a stalemate. He retreated back to Macao, where he died in October; this was the so-called ‘Napier fizzle’. His short tenure and sudden death might explain why his successors, Sir John Francis Davis and later Sir George Best Robinson, maintained a more conciliatory stance towards China and were content with maintaining the status quo.

The quiescent policy allowed trade, which for the British mainly meant buying tea from and selling opium to China, to reach a level unseen before. We have briefly looked at the reason for the increasing British demand for tea. What about China’s demand for opium? Opium had been among the many items given as tribute from South and Southeast Asian countries to the Ming court since 1483, if not earlier. Just like tea, this royal luxury had begun to filter down the social ladder by the seventeenth century, thanks partly to the coastal Chinese who travelled to and from Southeast Asia. They smoked opium mixed with tobacco in places like Indonesia; they also brought the habit of smoking home. As the Qing dynasty entered its prime in the eighteenth century, China’s urban elite began to smoke and opium became a fashionable form of consumption, as it was imported, expensive and a status symbol.⁹ Soon, the middle classes joined in – an effort to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ – which explains why the demand for opium increased in the early nineteenth century. This more or less coincided with the rising popularity of tea in Britain. Was this simply coincidence, given that the popular consumption of these commodities developed separately in different cultural contexts? As the demand for opium grew inside China, foreign traders, the British in particular, met that demand with shipments from India and Turkey. Economic historian Michael Greenberg carefully studied the Jardine Matheson archive and provided key statistics from the eve of the first Anglo-Chinese conflict (Table 1.1).¹⁰

Table 1.1 Opium shipments to China, 1830–1839 (total numbers of chests)

Source: Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800–42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), appendix I. Bengal included Patna and Benares.

We can see that in less than a decade, China had more than doubled its intake of opium. This had two consequences: outflow of silver and an increase in opium addiction. This was most obvious in Guangzhou, the maritime city that was home to some of the earliest smokers: ‘The most addicted are found in Canton, today among the scholar-officials many indulge in such a Buddha. As to brothels and hostels, they are all equipped with it to allure clients.’¹¹ This was a situation repeated throughout the empire as time went on. Silver was used for large transactions such as those for foreign trade and paying taxes, whereas copper coins were used for small and daily transactions. The rapid withdrawal of silver led to a paralysis of the national finance and economy. Merchants and peasants had little to no silver to pay taxes and governments struggled to pay salaries. Scholarofficials were paid in silver; their indulgence both directly added to silver outflow and advertised the habit to other Chinese, as one of them in Zhejiang described:

My friend, Yao Chunpu, bragged to me about the marvels of opium. He said that it smelled fragrant and it tasted pure and sweet. When depression was drizzling and melancholy settled in, you lie down facing the partner on the low bed with a short lamp and take turns to inhale. At the beginning your spirit is refreshed, soon your head is cleared and eyes sharpened. Then your chest and diaphragm are suddenly opened and your mood is many times better. Before long your muscles are softened and your eyelids closed. At this point, you doze off on the pillow, detached from any thoughts as if you were in a dream world. Your spirit and soul are calmed. This really is a paradise. I smiled and said that ‘it looks like that but it’s not so’. Recently among the four classes of people, only peasants do not taste it; many officials indulge in it. As...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Map of China
• Introduction
• Lesson 1. The ‘Race for Oriental Opulence’
• Lesson 2. ‘Sinicizing Christianity’ and Its Consequences
• Lesson 3. The Long March to Modernity
• Lesson 4. ‘The Scramble for China’
• Lesson 5. ‘The Age of Revolution’
• Lesson 6. ‘Warring States’ of the Twentieth Century
• Lesson 7. ‘A Revolution Derailed’
• Lesson 8. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ … Finally!
• Lesson 9. ‘Three-Inch Golden Lotus’ to ‘Tiger Girls’
• Lesson 10. Confucius in Harmony with Modernity
• Conclusion
• Index