3 - The foreign presence in China

Summary

The foreign establishment in early republican China had many facets: territory, people, rights established by treaty or unilaterally asserted, armed force, diplomacy, religion, commerce, journalism, freebooting adventure, racial attitudes. The pages that follow describe briefly the dimensions of each of the principal guises in which the foreigner impinged upon the polity, economy, society and mind of China. The physiological, intellectual and spiritual results of the foreign presence are still beyond our capacity to summarize.

THE FOREIGN NETWORK

Unlike India, South-East Asia (except Thailand) and most of Africa, China was not partitioned and ruled by the alien powers which imposed themselves upon the weakened Ch'ing empire in the last half of the nineteenth century. China was too big for any one power to swallow, and seemed too dazzling a prize for a satisfactory division of shares to be worked out. Consequently China's sovereignty was impaired, but it never came near to being vanquished. The foreigner had always to acknowledge that there was a Chinese authority, central or local, with which he had to contend. In some parts of China's territory, however, that authority was formally reduced, even ceded, in the interests of foreign claimants and as a consequence of demands to which China acceded only because she was too weak to refuse. These were variously treaty ports, concessions, leaseholds and spheres of influence.

Treaty ports

‘Treaty port’ is a protean term. The precise limits of the chiang-k'ou, literally ‘harbours’ or ‘anchorages’, were matters of dispute because the English text of the Treaty of Nanking (1842) granting foreigners the rights of residence and trade read, more broadly, ‘cities and towns’.