When Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) became the first Provisional President of China in December 1911, it marked a watershed moment in the history of Asia. After 257 years, the Qing Dynasty was nearing its end. By revisiting its history, it is possible to not only gain insight into the Chinese past but also to shed light on how and why elitist-run states fall..
The Rise and Early Trials of The Qing Dynasty
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Following in the footsteps of his father, who had expanded his influence from his power-base in modern northeastern China, Hong Taiji (1592-1643) waged a successful insurgency against the Ming Dynasty and died one year before the collapse of its 276-year reign. Before his death, Taiji had bequeathed a new name for his Jurchen people - the 'Manchu.' In 1644, the Manchu took power, and the Qing Dynasty was born.
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After slowly but surely consolidating their power over the next century and a half, the Qing faced their first significant domestic challenge in the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796. Similar to the Whiskey Rebellion in the United States (Pennsylvania) two years earlier, the cause of the Chinese uprising was also over taxes. Due to being subject to oppressive taxation by Manchu rulers in Beijing (the capital), near-indigent people living in mountainous areas joined together first in protest and subsequently in open revolt. Through military measures and strategic offers of amnesty to members of the rebellion, the Qing managed to divide, conquer and defeat the insurrection.
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In the early nineteenth century, several European nations were in the process of building global empires, and China was becoming an increasingly important trading partner for both Britain and France. A typical exchange involved Chinese silk, ceramics and tea for silver European currency. Approaching mid-century, however, London was becoming concerned with the amount of silver leaving the country in the form of hard coin - as silver was a key component of the British monetary system. To allow the treasury to retain its silver reserves, the British decided to pay for Chinese goods with a new form of money - opium. After a few years of permitting the new means of exchange, the Qing attempted to prohibit opium and the opium trade altogether in order to curb its ruinous effects on society in 1838. Almost immediately, Britain accused Beijing of reneging on trade agreements and declared war. When the First Opium War ended in 1842, the Qing Dynasty was essentially forced to surrender part of its sovereignty and allow the opium trade. Despite its defeat at the hands of the superior British navy, however, the Qing Dynasty managed to remain in power.
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Less than a decade later, the Qing entered the most traumatic era of its rule. In 1850, Hong Xiuquan, a 36-year old failed scholar and Christian convert, launched a rebellion composed of disaffected peoples in southeastern China. Under minority Manchu rule, the majority Han Chinese quickly flocked to Xiuquan (a Han). In only one year, Xiuquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus of Nazareth, controlled a significant portion of southern China and proclaimed his new political entity the 'Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.' From its capital of Nanjing, Taiping leaders waged total war against the Qing, and Beijing responded in kind. For six years, an all-out conflict raged. Each side sought to destroy opposing forces and lay waste to the resources needed to carry out the war (i.e. crops for foodstuffs).
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In 1856, the Qing was beset with yet another crisis - simultaneous to the Taiping Rebellion. On the pretext of a wrongful seizure of a British-registered vessel, London again declared war (The Second Opium War) on the Qing in order to gain unlimited trade access for its merchants. For four years, the Qing endured a series of British attacks before succumbing to an Anglo-French invasion in 1860. In their victory, the British and the French secured full rights for Christians, the legalization of opium and commercial hegemony. One more humiliation for the Manchu rulers ensued. Knowing the Qing were virtually powerless to resist, Russian diplomats forced Beijing into handing over northern Manchuria. Amazingly, neither the civil war nor foreign invasions were able to topple the Manchu rulers. In an unexpected turn of events, a woman, who had been a concubine at the imperial court, made a sudden and improbable rise to power.
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The Second Ascendancy of The Qing Dynasty, 1861-1894
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When Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) became co-regent upon the death of Xianfeng Emperor in 1861, the armies of the Qing had been soundly defeated by Britain and France, and Hong Xiuquan, the Taiping leader, still controlled the southeast. Shrewdly, Cixi reached out to the disaffected Han Chinese. By appointing them to meaningful positions in the military and in the bureaucracy, she eliminated one of the reasons for their disaffection (a lack of economic and social mobility) and thus gained additional allies to mount a final campaign in 1864 to crush the Taiping Rebellion. The Dowager, however, was a conservative at heart, and she continuously opposed attempts to modernize China for much of the remainder of her regency.
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In order to defend the country from potential future attacks by European imperial powers, several Beijing officials promoted a 'Self-Strengthening Movement' whereby China would modernize its military along Western lines. This effort during the 1860s, however, proved to be wholly insufficient. After Meiji Japan (1868-1912), which had embarked on an ambitious model of Western reform to obviate Western commercial and military hegemony, defeated China over control of the Korean Peninsula in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), another attempt at reform by progressive-thinking Chinese officials occurred in 1898. Due to strong conservative opposition (including Cixi), the agenda of the 'Hundred Days Reform' -as it came to be termed - went unrealized.
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The Decline and Fall of The Qing, 1895-1911
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At the turn of the century, European imperialism was at its zenith. Africa had been carved up by the European powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, London, Paris and Saint Petersburg had made inroads into the Middle East, and China remained powerless to European thrusts for influence over its people, territory and economy. After witnessing its homeland divided into 'spheres of influence,' a group of radicalized Chinese peasants, known as 'Boxers' (the Righteous Harmony Society), rose up in indignation and laid siege to Western emissaries in their diplomatic compounds over the summer of 1900. Day after day, people around the world awaited news on whether the trapped diplomats could survive being cut off from supplies and contact with the outside world. As Christians in China had been murdered by enraged peasants from time to time due to being culturally and economically threatened, a wholesale massacre was indeed possible. After nearly two months, the first multilateral military operation in history, consisting of eight nations - Japan, Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and the United States - marched a combined expeditionary force to Beijing and rescued the diplomats. While the Qing were required to pay an indemnity rather than surrender territory for its role and inability to control the Boxers (the Dowager had secretly encouraged their revolt), the Manchu dynasty, which had recently been defeated by Japan for the first time in their history, was clearly losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese people.
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During the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), a number of revolutionaries founded the Revive China Society in Honolulu, Hawaii (USA). Its leader, Sun Yat-sen, was a 28 year-old medical doctor with a mission to end Qing rule. Other reform and revolutionary-minded organizations also blossomed - putting pressure on Beijing to enact meaningful reform. One year after the Boxer Rebellion in 1901, the Empress Dowager announced a relatively comprehensive reform plan which included the abolition of the imperial exams (the ones Taiping rebel-leader Hong Xiuquan failed - as ninety-five percent of all imperial exam-takers failed) and the creation of a national education system. In sending students overseas to study and experience living in more democratic and prosperous nations, the Qing unwittingly contributed to its downfall. Returning Chinese students from Europe and elsewhere had become more conscious of Qing corruption and repression. As a result, a new generation of middle-class intellectuals, along with large segment of discontented peasants, banded together under Sun Yat-sen's three principles - 'Nationalism, Democracy and Social Welfare' - to battle Qing forces for control of the nation.
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When the people of Wuchang (Hubei Province) discovered Qing plans to take over privately-held railways from Chinese investors in order to repay foreign debts - debts owed largely to the very European countries that had exacted reparations from Beijing after the Boxer Rebellion ten years earlier, a revolt ensued on 10 October 1911 in which the Qing were denounced for betraying the nation. The Xinhai Revolution had begun. Of all places, Sun Yat-sen, who was on a campaign to raise money for his cause, heard of the rebellion in Denver, Colorado (USA) - and quickly returned to China. Four short months later, the Qing Dynasty fell, and the imperial era of Chinese history, which had run from the founding of the Qin Dynasty in 221BC, came to a close after more than 2,000 years.
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The Xinhai Revolution and The Twenty-First Century
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The Qing Dynasty proved to be remarkably tenacious. It managed to survive numerous foreign invasions and domestic insurrections. Yet, the timelessly wise statement "Character is destiny," which was uttered by Heraclitus (535-475BC) in the days of Ancient Greece, sums up the fate of the Qing. Due to its character as an elite ruling class bent on maintaining power through repression, violence and intimidation, the Qing Dynasty had sown the seeds of its own destruction long before 1911. Although years, decades - or in the case of the Qing - centuries may be needed to overthrow tyrannical governments, courageous people, who stand united in pursuit of human rights, democracy and economic security for themselves and for future generations, ultimately receive justice and achieve victory in the end.
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(Photo: The flag of the Wuchang Uprising - 1911).
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J Roquen