How a 19th Century Mandarin Envisioned China’s Strategic Options and Challenges
While delving into the depths of contemporary Chinese nationalism and political ideology, I stumbled upon this remarkable essay. The temporal ambiguity of its content is striking — one could easily be convinced of its creation in either 1987 or as recently as 2017.
What stands out most prominently is the essay’s rhetoric and its focus on (1) the establishment of a formidable navy, (2) the controlling of vassal states, namely Korea, Tibet, and “Chinese Turkestan” and (3) the elimination of the treaties with global powers.
This reading invites contemplation on the nature of political change in China, or rather, the apparent lack thereof, especially China’s geopolitical outlook.
It also poses a poignant question: has China ever really progressed, or are we just hearing the echoes of the past resounding in the present?
It is noteworthy that this essay was published during the formation of the Beiyang Fleet (北洋艦隊), a time before China’s navy suffered its humbling defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895.
Volume III, Asiatic Quarterly Review, January to April 1887
China: The Sleep and The Awakening by Marquis Tseng (曾紀澤）
There are times in the life of nations when they would appear to have exhausted their forces by the magnitude of the efforts they had made to maintain their position in the endless struggle for existence; and, from this, some have endeavoured to deduce the law that nations, like men, have each of them its infancy, its manhood, decline, and death. Melancholy and discouraging would be this doctrine could it be shown to be founded on any natural or inevitable law. Fortunately, however, there is no reason to believe it is. Nations have fallen from their high estate, some of them to disappear suddenly and altogether from the list of political entities, others to vanish after a more or less prolonged existence of impaired and ever-lessening vitality. Among the latter, until lately, it has been customary with Europeans to include China. Pointing to her magnificent system of canals silted up, the splendid fragments of now forgotten arts, the disparity between her seeming weakness and the record of her ancient greatness, they thought that, having become effete, the nineteenth-century air would prove too much for her aged lungs. Here is the opinion of a distinguished diplomatic agent writing on China in 1849: “With a fair seeming of immunity from invasion, sedition, or revolt, leave is taken to regard this vast empire as surely, though it may be slowly, decaying.”
This was the opinion of a writer whose knowledge of China and its literature is perhaps unequalled, and certainly not surpassed; nor was he alone in entertaining such an opinion at the date on which he wrote, for by many it was then considered that the death of Tao Kuang would severely try, if not shake the foundations of the empire. But, as events have shown, they who reasoned thus were mistaken. China was asleep, but she was not about to die. Perhaps she had mistaken her way, or, what is just the same, had failed to see that the old, familiar paths which many centuries had made dear to her did not conduct to the goal to which the world was marching.
Perhaps she thought she had done enough, sat down, and fallen asleep in that contemplation which, if not always fatal, is at least always dangerous — the contemplation of her own greatness. What wonder if she had done so? Everything predisposed to such an attitude of mind. The fumes of the incense brought by many embassies from far-off lands, the inferiority of the subject races that looked up to her, the perfect freedom from the outer din ensured to her by the remoteness of her ample bournes — all predisposed her to repose and neglect to take note of what was passing in the outer world. Towards the end of the reign of Tao Kuang, however, the sleeper became aware that her situation scarcely justified the sense of security in which she had been reposing. Influences were at work, and forces were sweeping along the coast very different from those to which China had been accustomed. Pirates and visitations of Japanese freebooters had occasionally disturbed the tranquillity of certain places on the seaboard; but the men who now began to alarm the authorities were soon found to be much more redoubtable than these. Wherever they came they wished to stay.
Submissive at first, they engaged in trade with our people and tempted them with strange merchandise. It was not long before troubles arose which showed that the white trader could fight as well as buy and sell. The Treaty of Nanking, in 1842, which was the result of these troubles, opened four more doors in the wall of exclusiveness with which China had surrounded herself. Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai were added to Canton, thus making five points of touch between China and the West. This did something to rouse China from the Saturnian dreams in which she had been so long indulging; but more was wanting to make her wide awake. It required the fire of the Summer Palace to singe her eyebrows, the advance of the Russian in Kuldja and the Frenchman in Tonquin, to enable her to realize the situation in which she was being placed by the ever-contracting circle that was being drawn around her by the European. By the light of the burning palace which had been the pride and the delight of her Emperors, she commenced to see that she had been asleep whilst all the world was up and doing; that she had been sleeping in the vacuous vortex of the storm of forces wildly whirling around her. In such a moment China might have been excused had she done something desperate, for there is apt to be a good deal of beating about and wild floundering on such a sudden awakening; but there was none in the case of China. A wise and prudent prince counselled China to pay the price of her mistakes, whilst the great Chinese statesman who is now in power, and who, since 1860, has rendered such incalculable services to his country, began that series of preparations which would now make it difficult to repeat the history of that, for China, eventful year. It is not a moribund nation that can so quietly accept its reverses, and, gathering courage from them, set about throwing overboard the wreckage and make a fair wind of the retiring cyclone. The Summer Palace, with all its wealth of art, was a high price to pay for the lesson we there received, but not too high if it has taught us how to repair and triple fortify our battered armour; and it has done this. China is no longer what she was even five years ago; each encounter, and especially the last, has, in teaching China her weakness, also discovered to her her strength.
We have seen the sleep; we come now to the awakening. What will be the result of it? Will not the awakening of 300 million to a consciousness of their strength be dangerous to the continuance of friendly relations with the West? Will not the remembrance of their defeats and the consciousness of their newfound power make them aggressive? No; the Chinese have never been an aggressive race. History shows them to have always been a peaceful people, and there is no reason why they should be otherwise in the future. China has none of that land-hungering so characteristic of some other nations — hungering for land they do not and cannot make use of — and, contrary to what is generally believed in Europe, she is under no necessity of finding in other lands an outlet for a surplus population. Considerable numbers of Chinese have at different times been forced to leave their homes and push their fortunes in Cuba, Peru, the United States, and the British Colonies; but this must be imputed rather to the poverty and ruin in which they were involved by the great Taiping and Mohammedan rebellions than to the difficulty of finding the means of subsistence under ordinary conditions. In her wide domains, there is room and to spare for all her teeming population. What China wants is not emigration, but a proper organization for the equitable distribution of the population. In China proper, particularly in those places which were the seats of the Taiping rebellion, much land has gone out of cultivation, whilst in Manchuria, Mongolia, and Chinese Turkestan, there are immense tracts of country which have never felt the touch of the husbandman.
Not only for economical, but for military reasons, the colonization of these immense outlying territories has become indispensable. And recognizing this, the Imperial Government have of late been encouraging a centrifugal movement of the population in certain thickly inhabited portions of the empire. But the occupation of waste lands is not the only agency to absorb any overflow of population which may exist in certain provinces. Another and a more permanent one will consist in the demand which will soon be afforded by the establishment of manufactures, the opening of mines, and the introduction of railways. The number of hands which these industries will employ can only be conceived when we remember that hitherto they have contributed nothing to the support of the country, and that were they developed to only a tithe of the extent to which they exist in Belgium and England, amongst a population of 300 million, the number of mouths they would feed would be enormous. These considerations will explain the indifference with which the Chinese Government have received the advances which at different times and by various Powers have been made to induce China to take an active part in promoting emigration and engagements for the supply of labour. But, even had these reasons not existed, the outrageous treatment which Chinese subjects have received, and in some countries continue to receive, would have made the Imperial Government chary of encouraging their people to resort to lands where legislation seems only to be made a scourge for their especial benefit, and where justice and international comity exist for everybody, bond and free, except the men of Han. Were it not for the one-sided manner in which, in some of these countries, the law is administered, one might think, from their benevolent dispensation with the lex talionis, that the millennium was at hand there. There is no question of an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth, excepting when the unfortunate offender belongs to the nation of the almond eye.
If anyone should consider this language is too strong, he must be strangely ignorant of the outrages committed on Chinese, and of the exceptional enactments directed against them, to which the Press and the Statute Book have so often borne testimony within the last three or four years. But, to render justice where justice is due, a disposition has of late been manifested by foreign governments to give Chinese adequate protection against the rowdy elements of their population, and to recognize the right of Chinese subjects to the same immunities as those which by the law of nations are accorded to the subjects of other Powers. The United States Government on a recent occasion energetically suppressed a hostile movement directed against Chinese, and awarded to them compensation for the losses to which they had been subjected. But if neither a spirit of aggression, springing from and nurtured by the consciousness of returning strength, nor the necessity of an outlet for a surplus population, is likely to endanger the good relations which now exist between China and the Treaty Powers, is it equally certain that a desire on the part of China to wipe out her defeats is not to be dreaded? Such was not the opinion of many who watched the course of events during the Franco-Chinese struggle for the possession of Tonquin. On every side we used then to hear it said, even in circles which took the Chinese side, that it would be disastrous to foreign relations should France not emerge from it completely triumphant. Success, it was maintained, would intoxicate the Chinese, make them overbearing and impossible to deal with. But has this been the case?
China laughed to scorn the demands of France for an indemnity, exacted the restoration of her invaded territory, and made peace in the hour of victory. Did this make China proud? Yes, proud with a just pride. Did it change her bearing, or make her less conciliating in her intercourse with the foreign Powers? No. At no time since her intercourse with the West commenced have her relations with the Treaty Powers, and more particularly with England, been so sincerely friendly. At no time have their just demands been received with such consideration, and examined with such an honest desire to find in them grounds for an arrangement. China will continue the policy of moderation and conciliation which has led to this happy result. No memory of her reverses will lead her to depart from it, for she is not one of those Powers which cannot bear their misfortunes without sulking. What nation has not had its Cannae? Answer: Sadowa, Lissa, and Sedan. China has had hers, but she is not of the opinion that it is only with blood that the stain of blood can be wiped out. The stain of defeat lies in the weakness and mistakes which led to it. These recovered from and corrected, and its invulnerability recognized, a nation has already reburnished and restored the gilding of its scutcheon.
Though China may not yet have attained a position of perfect security, she is rapidly approaching it. Great efforts are being made to fortify her coast and create a strong and really efficient navy. To China, a powerful navy is indispensable. In 1860, she first became aware of this and set about founding one. The assistance of England was invoked, and the nucleus of a fleet was obtained, which, under the direction of Admiral Sir Sherrard Osborn, one of the most distinguished officers of the Royal Navy, would long ere now have placed China beyond anything save a serious attack by a first-class naval Power, had it not been for the jealousies and intrigues which caused it to be disbanded as soon as formed. Twice since 1860, China has had to lament this as a national misfortune, for twice since then she has had to submit to occupations of her territory which the development of that fleet would have rendered difficult, if not impossible.
China will steadily proceed with her coast defenses and the organization and development of her army and navy, without, for the present, directing her attention either to the introduction of railways or to any of the other subjects of internal economy which, under the altered circumstances of the times, may be necessary, and which she feels to be necessary; for, unlike Turkey, she will not fall into the mistake of thinking that when she has got a few ships and a few soldiers licked into form, she has done all that is required to maintain her position in the race of nations. The strength of a nation is not in the number of soldiers it can arm and send forth to battle, but in the toiling millions that stay at home to prepare and provide the sinews of war. The soldiers are but the outer crust, the mailed armor of a nation, while the people are the living heart that animates and upholds it. Turkey did not see this, though it did not escape the keener vision of that Indian Prince who, when looking down on the little British force opposed to him, exclaimed, “It is not the soldiers before me whom I fear, but the people behind them — the myriads who toil and spin on the other side of the Black Water.”
It is not the object of this paper to indicate or shadow forth the reforms which it may be advisable to make in the internal administration of China. The changes which may have to be made when China comes to set her house in order can only profitably be discussed when she feels she has thoroughly overhauled, and can rely on, the bolts and bars she is now applying to her doors. It is otherwise with her foreign policy. Of the storms which ever and again trouble the political world, no nation is more master than it is of those which, from time to time, sweep over its physical horizon. Events must be encountered as they arise, and fortunate is the nation that is always prepared for them, and always ready to “take occasion by the hand.” The general line of China’s foreign policy is, for the immediate future, clearly traced out. It will be directed to extending and improving her relations with the Treaty Powers, to the amelioration of the condition of her subjects residing in foreign parts, to the placing on a less equivocal footing the position of her feudatories as regards the Suzerain power, to the revision of the treaties in a sense more in accordance with the place which China holds as a great Asiatic Power. The outrageous treatment to which Chinese subjects residing in some foreign countries have been subjected has been as disgraceful to the Governments in whose jurisdiction it was perpetrated as to the Government whose indifference to the sufferings of its subjects residing abroad invited it. A Commission has recently been appointed to visit and report on the condition of Chinese subjects in foreign countries, and it is hoped that this proof of the interest which the Imperial Government has commenced to take in the welfare of its foreign-going subjects will suffice to ensure their receiving in the future the treatment which by the law of nations and the dictates of humanity is due from civilized nations to the stranger living within their gates.
The arrangements for the government of her vassal States, which, until the steamer and the telegraph brought the east and the west so near, had been found sufficient, having on different occasions of late led to misunderstandings between China and Foreign Powers, and to the loss of some of the most important of her possessions, China, to save the rest, has decided on exercising a more effective supervision on the acts of her vassal Princes, and of accepting a larger responsibility for them than heretofore. The Warden of the Marches is now abroad, looking to the security of China’s outlying provinces — of Korea, Tibet, and Chinese Turkestan. Henceforth, any hostile movements against these countries, or any interference with their affairs, will be viewed at Peking as a declaration, on the part of the Power committing it, of a desire to discontinue its friendly relations with the Chinese Government.
It is easier to forget a defeat than the condition of things resulting from it — the blow than the constant falling of the fists. Any soreness which China may have experienced on account of events in 1860 has been healed over and forgotten long ago, but it is otherwise with the treaties which were then imposed on her. She had then to agree to conditions and give up vestiges of sovereignty which no independent nation can continue to agree to and live out of, without an attempt to change the one and recover the other. The humiliating conditions imposed on Russia with regard to the Black Sea in 1856 had to be cancelled by the Treaty of London in 1871.
In the alienation of sovereign dominion over that part of her territory comprised in the Foreign settlements at the Treaty Ports, as well as in some other respects, China feels that the treaties impose on her a condition of things which, in order to avoid the evils they have led to in other countries, will oblige her to denounce these treaties on the expiry of the present decennial period. China is not ignorant of the difficulties in which this action may involve her, but she is resolved to face them, rather than incur the certainty of some day having to encounter greater ones; evils similar to those which have led to the Land of the Fellah concerning nobody so little as the Khedive.
It behooves China, and all the Asiatic countries in the same position, to sink the petty jealousies which divide the East from the East, by even more than the East is separated from the West, and combine in an attempt to have their foreign relations based on treaties rather than on capitulations.
In her efforts to eliminate from the treaties such Articles as impede her development, and wound her just susceptibilities, without conferring on the other contracting parties any real advantages, China will surely and leisurely proceed to diplomatic action. The world is not so near its end that she need hurry, nor the circles of the sun so nearly done that she will not have time to play the role assigned her in the work of nations.
China: The Sleep and Awakening — by Simon Lee | 利世民 (substack.com)
