Western Colonialism and Its Consequences for China

There are a lot of sources online already about western occupation of China. Even just Wikipedia has incredibly detailed and reasonably fair accounts of things. So I won’t bother going into the details of history here, when there are plenty of YouTube channels that talk about the Opium War, the first Sino-Japanese war, and so on and so forth. I’ll mainly focus on Chinese people’s attitude towards this period of history. I think that’s much more interesting to talk about.

First, how did people at the time feel? This is…really hard to research, because for the most part, there aren’t a lot of interviews with the average person in history. But looking at the manifestos of the various grassroots resistance movements, looking at the speeches that the Yihe Tuan gave, and combining that with what I know about Chinese culture, I can speculate a little. I can’t guarantee that this is totally accurate, it’s just my personal take. But you know, all of these essays are my personal take.

I think that to some extent, China and Britain are actually very similar countries, much more similar than China and America. China is a country with a very long history, and for almost all of that very long history, China has been the strongest power in the known world. It’s not just stronger than its neighbours, it’s leagues stronger than all of its neighbours put together. And the result of that is that, ever since the Song Dynasty, China’s had this pride and confidence in itself that no matter what happens, no matter what defeats China suffers and what territory China loses, it’s only temporary. So long as Chinese people are united and are actually putting in an effort, then China is guaranteed to be the top of the world.

It’s an attitude that’s honestly very similar to unreasonably loving parents, who believe with absolute unshakeable faith that no matter how many times their kid brings back failing exam scores, it’s only because he wasn’t trying. If he actually sat down and tried, he could win a Nobel Prize.

And they have been right for a thousand years.

Forget the average uneducated peasant at the time. Even Qing government officials have very little concept of just how rotten the Qing government had gotten, because the bureaucracy was expansive enough that nobody was really keeping track of how much money there was, how much money was being embezzled, and how much maintenance wasn’t being done. When you’re in charge of a department, you might know that your own department is entirely on fire, but you don’t really know about anybody else’s, because everyone is lying about what their numbers looks like anyways.

So it is really hard for me to describe how much of a horrifying shock it was when the first Opium War actually took place, and people actually saw how easy and effortless it was for the British to blow right through the Qing military, like they were made of paper. Nobody in China really considered Britain even a real country. Sure, they’ve got a lot of New World gold. But all they’re using it for is buying Chinese silk and porcelain and tea. How are they not like any other tiny tributary states that surround China, handing over all their money for Chinese products? Sure, that sneaky trick they pulled with opium was pretty nasty, but we’ve figured out what’s going on now. We’re going to ban opium. And it won’t be a problem anymore. And what are the British going to do? China still has the strongest and largest navy in the world. China’s still wealthy enough that just by dragging it out, we can bankrupt Britain on this war.

The sheer speed and ease with which the British won completely shattered that pride.

And it’s not just a matter of pride. So much of Chinese culture was based on that sense of superiority. The base tenets of Confucianism is all about how China has a duty to educate and civilise the barbarians. China had been believing in the Chinese Man’s Burden long before the White Man’s Burden was invented as a concept. All of China’s rituals and rites are based around the concept of China at the centre of the world, as the nation chosen by God, as a people blessed with so much wealth that it’s important we give generously to our neighbours.

The shock of it wouldn’t be any less than if Europe’s first attempt at establishing an African colony ended with the local natives effortlessly destroying the entirety of their army, and calmly revealing that they weren’t even engaging the European powers in full-scale war. That was just a punitive expedition.

And without that identity, and without that culture, China didn’t know what to hold onto.

The only thing people had left that they could still grasp onto as a Chinese identity, is the common enemy. Is their shared hatred of the European powers.

I think a very big part of why the CCP was able to gain the heart of the people and win against the Kuomintang is exactly because the Kuomintang was very much associated with being a government that was propped up by western powers, funded by western money. That fact, in and of itself, made a lot of people suspect that they never had the welfare of the Chinese people in mind, exactly like the late Qing government. That they’ll probably exploit the people to fund western interests, exactly like Empress Cixi did.

Was European colonialism of China really that bad?

I’m not entirely sure.

A report by Xia Yan is required reading in Chinese school, about the exploitation of enslaved workers by colonial powers. The articles covers how “slave bosses”, a local Chinese man, would trick young girls from rural villages to sign themselves up for peonage, where he would arrange a factory job for them, he would pay for all their daily needs, and pay their parents a sum every year as compensation, and what terrible conditions these young girls would be subject to. And don’t get me wrong, the entire thing is very hard to read. It goes into gruesome detail about the starvation, disease, beatings, and sexual abuse that they were often subject to. But a number jumped out at me. That a “slave boss” could make a very comfortable living by just owning 3-4 of these slaves.

However much he is putting the minimum necessary amount of money into keeping these girls alive, being able to get wealthy off of 3-4 people’s wages still means that these people weren’t paid that badly, right? These factory jobs paid 10-12 dollars a month. For contrast, primary school teachers in cities were paid 16-24 dollars a month, and primary school teachers in rural areas were paid 4-5 dollars a month.

The reason the Qing government abdicated and established the very initial form of the Republic of China government is because of pressure from western powers. One of the conditions that was repeatedly brought up in their treaties is that China has to move into a constitutional monarchy. That there needed to be democracy in China.

I have no idea what they have to gain from pushing this except that…they genuinely believed China would be better off being democratic? I’m not entirely sure, but I do certainly know that at that time, there was a lot of writing and speculation from western missionaries on why China is so fucked, and what could be done to help it. All sorts of theories were proposed, like that maybe China never discovered the scientific method. Or (more commonly) that Chinese people lacked religious faith. Or maybe that’s just the problem with absolute monarchy.

Even the wars that the British waged, there were plenty of internal documents indicating that they were doing their best to limit casualties and damage. The burning of Yuanming Yuan, and theft of Chinese historical artefacts, is something that Chinese people are furious about to this day. But at the time, there were plenty of internal memos indicating that the very reason the British burned down Yuanming Yuan is as a retaliatory strike against the Imperial family that wouldn’t affect the peasants, or so they thought. They’re destroying the Emperor’s personal property, as punishment for killing their diplomats. But they specifically went out of their way to not destroy any other part of Beijing, to not loot or pillage normal people, to not cause civilian casualties. They thought they were doing something that would only affect the Emperor.

I’m not sure they quite realised that significance that the Emperor’s personal treasures that they took involved many antiques from previous dynasties—statues from Tang, paintings from Song, bronze ornaments from Han, etc, etc. And even back in the day, the people of China saw those as a collective treasure that the Emperor merely has the responsibility of taking care of and maintaining. I think they were genuinely unaware that the average uneducated peasant would be insulted over this, and feel like it was his history that the British were robbing.

In Wikipedia’s account of modern Chinese history, they say that the CCP won the heart of the people by promising farmers that they would distribute land. But I don’t think that’s accurate. Mind you, I don’t really have proof, except for the impression I get talking to my grandma about what her mother thought of the CCP at the time. But China had just been through a devastating war with Japan. Tens of millions of people had died. The Chinese economy was practically non-existent. And then another couple of millions of people would die in the war with the Kuomintang.

At that point, no matter whose government was in charge, people would end up getting more land. There were simply not enough people left, and anyone who’d had any money had already fled China. Even if the Kuomintang had won, they would’ve distributed land too, because who else was going to farm it otherwise? That’s something that happens at the beginning of every Dynasty since the latter half of Han Dynasty. After a long period of chaos and population decrease, of course people get more land.

That wasn’t why people in my village, at least, liked the CCP.

It was because the Kuomintang was explicitly taking American funding. They were supported by Europe. And they were acting exactly like the late Qing government, like the people who had pushed China into this abyss to begin with. They refused to fight the Japanese until they literally had a gun put to their heads and were forced into it. And they did so extremely reluctantly, devoting most of their effort to fighting the communists. Just like Cixi, it seemed like they’d rather give China to their trustworthy Japanese allies than let the traitorous communists have it.

And I mean, granted, it’s not like the communists weren’t doing the same thing. But the communists knew how to lie. They went around claiming that in this battle, they killed 300 Japanese, and in that battle, they destroyed 20 tanks. And for your average rural peasant, you don’t really know otherwise, do you?

In the end, it wasn’t really either party who defeated the Japanese, but the Soviets. But that’s hardly a relief, because the Soviets were exactly as bad as the Japanese. They also looted and pillaged and killed and raped in Dongbei. And when that happened, the Kuomintang still couldn’t do anything about it. It was the CCP who negotiated with the Soviets and made them leave. It was the CCP who kept China intact and whole. It was the CCP who ended the war.

It was the CCP who won.

And they promised that they would keep China winning.

That’s how they won their support. On the promise that they can ensure that China was never bullied again, never taken advantage of again.

They promise to return that pride and confidence to the Chinese people. That this past 100 years would just be another hiccup in Chinese history, like the Wei-Jin era or the Yuan Dynasty. It would pass, and China would once again be at the top of the world.

And that was so much better than what the Kuomintang was offering—that they’d accept western aid and funding and let western-funded factories open up and make money, and in return change their policies however their western masters tell them to.

Because even in as desperate a situation as 1949, China still cared about its pride and its ego more than its mere survival. Perhaps, to Chinese people, to accept being just another second-world factory for the west is exactly the same as death. What would China be without its culture and its identity? How can China still claim to be China?

Most people didn’t actually have the education to precisely grasp the importance of that culture of superiority to the Chinese identity, but on some instinctive level, they understood it.

And to this day, this is the core base of the CCP’s support. This is why anyone is pro-CCP in China. When Mao proposed his Great Leap Forward, most rural peasants honestly, sincerely went along with it. They didn’t understand how this was going to help, but they know they’re uneducated. They know they don’t know anything. They just kind of blindly trusted that this was what China needed to get stronger.

I’ve talked before in my feminism essay, about China’s desperate, almost irrational need to get stronger, to get wealthier, to get more respected. Because for people in China, the Opium War never ended.

Part of this is CCP propaganda—like a commenter has said, any autocratic state needs to justify its power and control using common enemies. They need to focus people’s frustrations and suffering onto a villainous figure. And western countries has served this purpose for the CCP from the day it was established. Every single generation that is alive in China has been raised on a curriculum that emphasises the atrocities committed during colonial rule of China, of the atrocities that are continuing to be committed against China that is funded by the west.

It doesn’t help that there’s never been an apology from the west for what happened during colonial occupation of China. And I mean, partially, I get it. From their point of view, they probably didn’t really do anything wrong. They offered a fair enough wage for their workers. It was you Chinese who went around enslaving your own people. How is that Britain’s job to stop? Go tell the Qing police. Every military action they took against China has been because China took offensive, hostile actions first. They supplied opium, but it wasn’t like opium wasn’t available in London too. How is it their fault that live sucks so much in China that people had no relief except to turn to opium?

But nonetheless, the fact that these events are barely acknowledged by the international community, and there’s been no apology, and Britain still refuses to this day to give back China’s historical artefacts means that there’s no sense of closure for the Chinese people.

And the CCP can take advantage of that lack of closure to push their narrative that this could happen again. No, that this will happen again. The only reason the EU and America doesn’t colonialise China again is because the CCP is too strong for them to risk it. But they still want to, though. They’ve always wanted to.

Is the international community pushing for environmental protections? That’s just a western conspiracy to weaken Chinese manufacturing, so they can come in and colonialise us again. You can tell they don’t mean it, because they’re so much more wasteful with food and energy than the average Chinese person. Plus, it’s not like Britain didn’t pollute the shit out of the environment when they went into their industrial revolution. What right do they have to turn around and ban us from doing the same thing, unless their purpose is to keep China not industrialised? To keep China weak and vulnerable to their exploitation? That’s why you need to be happy and grateful to be living in your cancer villages. What companies are dumping into the Yangtze River isn’t industrial acid—it’s fuel for China to reach a better tomorrow!

Is the international community mad about our treatment of the Uyghurs? That’s just a western conspiracy to increase racial tensions in China, because they sure know how devastating racial conflicts are, right? They’ve had to deal with it themselves, what with those Black Lives Matter riots. They’re just weaponising it against China, so China can’t stay united. That way, they can come in and set China to bidding against ourselves, and get even cheaper manufacturing for themselves.

Are a lot of people becoming vegetarian or vegan? Lol, come on, you don’t believe anyone would sincerely actually give up meat, right? It’s just a western conspiracy to memetically invade China and convince Chinese people to eat less protein, so the Chinese will get increasingly weak and short and small, so they’ll face less resistance when they colonialise China!

This is all stuff that has come out of the CCTV’s mouth.

And this means that it doesn’t really matter what atrocities the CCP themselves commit, what evils they allow to continue existing. It doesn’t matter how bad the conditions in the sweatshops get, how many people are abducted every year, how much public funding is embezzled. Because all they have to compete against is the demonised version of western colonialists.

When I talk to people in China, I hear plenty of complaining about the government. They’re connected enough to the rest of the world though American TV and overseas bloggers that they know other people have it much better. But there’s very little willingness to actually protest en masse, because people that I’ve talked to feel very lost.

Do they really want the CCP gone? No, not really. What would they do without the CCP? If China goes into internal conflict, the western powers are absolutely going to take advantage of that opportunity and take over China. Best case scenario, we’re going to be America’s bitch, like Taiwan is. Worst case scenario, we’ll be like the African colonies back in the days, just a source of cheap slavery.

Nobody cares about Chinese people out there. That’s putting it lightly. Chinese people truly do believe that everyone hates Chinese people—for a reason. Anti-Chinese crimes and sentiments are amplified 100 times in their news cycles. It’s them and the CCP against the world. And every policy the CCP passes is justified with the necessity and the urgency of life and death. China is always the underdog, fighting for survival against an alliance of western powers. If we don’t abort our babies, if we don’t work in the sweatshops, if we don’t take on mountains of debt, we lose.

To be quite honest, I love China. Despite not having actually lived in China for most of my adult life, I still identify more strongly as Chinese than I do as American. In the genre of people who blog about China, I’m probably one of the most patriotic about China. I care about China and its future in a deep visceral way. When the Chinese economy falters, it keeps me up at night, in a way that America going into a recession never does, even though I literally live in America, and have lived in America for almost longer than I’ve lived in China.

But the primary reason I don’t live in China and I will never live in China is precisely because of that atmosphere, that mentality—like someone else has described it before, like a wounded beast, snarling and biting at anyone who comes near. That unescapable, ever-present, suffocating pressure to keep clawing and fighting and moving your way up, and not ever being able to see the good and kindness in people.

I could never live in a society where kids with leukemia who have fathers who are ready to go on donating bone marrow have to die without ever receiving the transplant, because they don’t have money, and literally nobody calls out for universal healthcare or even healthcare reform as a result. Where people believe that money needs to go towards some nebulous “making China stronger” purpose, instead of actually keeping its own citizens alive.

Alright, I know it’s not a very strong ending, but I’ve about wrapped up what I wanted to say. I’d like to clarify at the end that this isn’t a call to action, or anything. I’m not actually demanding an apology from Europe and America (though uh, returning our stuff would be nice). Though, admittedly, I am kind of curious what the British attitude about its colonialist actions really is? I’m only guessing that Britain feels entirely justified. Is it just long enough ago that people don’t really care anymore? Is it the sort of thing that gets dismissed because the government which did that doesn’t exist anymore, and now a completely new government is in power? Or is it ridiculous to want an apology to begin with, because it’s not like China didn’t do similar things in South-East Asia, what with funding Pol Pot’s regime?