All the signs associated by the ancient chroniclers with the fall of dynasties and the " withdrawal

of the Mandate"
(geming) now reappeared. As they had done two centuries earlier under the last Ming emperors, the mandarins became
corrupt, dikes and canals fell into disrepair, and public services declined.

The crisis of the Qing empire at the turn of the nineteenth century was, in William T Rowe’s classification, a perfect storm
of three simultaneous problems: the external shock of the expanding West, a secular crisis caused by an accumulation of
socioeconomic difficulties over the long term, and more acute political dysfunctions associated with the familiar pattern
of the dynastic cycle.

Secular Changes

The most basic cumulative change faced by the Qing in the nineteenth century was population growth. A conservative
estimate of China’s population in 1400 would be about 100 million persons. After the Qing consolidation of power around
1680 and the pax sinica that followed—combined with the dissemination of NewWorld crops, improved agricultural
technology, territorial expansion, and the reclamation of new farmland— the population tripled in the next two centuries
to 450 million.

Having more laborers allowed more intensive farming, expansion and maintenance of irrigation systems. By around the
turn of the nineteenth century, however, the cost-benefit ratio reversed and further growth of population relative to
agrarian land led to a reduction in the general standard of living.

For much of the preceding centuries, newly created jobs in commerce, artisanal manufacture, mining, and especially
transport had absorbed this surplus labor. But the early nineteenth century was a time of commercial contraction in
much of the empire. The British at Canton had been exporting large amounts of manufactured goods, especially cotton
cloth (nankeens), yet as the nineteenth century progressed, Rowe notes, even smaller quantities of these were available
for purchase and export—an indication that the industry had contracted. There were several reasons for this slowdown,
but one factor was the state’s increasingly outmoded industrial policies.

Because of prolonged peace, comfortable standards of living, and an expanding school system over the eighteenth
century, the number of literate—even classically educated— members of the population grew faster than the population
as a whole. The explicit goal of classical education was to produce a pool of talented officials for the state bureaucracy,
and at that it succeeded. Yet the expected reward for a life of diligent study—a well-paying post and the associated social
status—was severely constricted because of the Qing’s ideology of “benevolent [small] governance.”

In one spectacular though unrepresentative case, a disappointed examination candidate named Hong Xiuquan organized
the rebellion that became known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Lacking gainful employment, these talented young
men developed a flamboyant and provocative political style and a tendency to form factions outside normal bureaucratic
channels. Relentless criticism from these bitter and well-organized members of the literati helped provoke the Qing
government into the saber-rattling that led to the disastrous first Anglo-Chinese War.

Kaozheng

During the second half of the seventeenth century, scholars had been absorbed in searching out the reason for the
collapse of the Ming dynasty, and many of them found a satisfactory explanation in the extreme individualism and belief
in innate moral knowledge that had been so popular in the late Ming. Senior scholar-officials under the early Qing
emperors Shunzhi and Kangxi—as well as those emperors themselves—sought to counter what they considered
decadent Ming trends by reasserting the central values of Song-dynasty (960-1279) Confucianism.

Just as early Qing scholars in state positions had rejected elements of Ming thought and had found security in the earlier
texts and interpretations of the twelfth-century Song dynasty, so did later Qing thinkers reject those Song norms and
search for certainty elsewhere. This methodology, which they called kaozheng, has been usefully translated as "practicing
evidential research," because it involved the meticulous evaluation of data based on rigorous standards of precision.

As Jonathan D Spence notes, there were elements of Western scholarship brought by the seventeenth-century Jesuit
missionaries, especially in the realms of mathematics and computational astronomy, may have affected the kaozheng
scholars' research methodologies and given them confidence that there was a realm of "certainty" that lay above
individual philosophical schools.

The work of the kaozheng scholars also had major implications for eighteenth-century policy, since the scholars' "ant-like
accumulation of facts"—as one of them described his studies—brought insights into hydraulics, astronomy, cartography,
and ancient texts on government that enabled the scholars to evaluate Qing reality with a shrewder eye. Often the lines
between scholars and the commercial world blurred, since many merchants became patrons of kaozheng learning and
accumulated huge libraries that they put at the scholars' disposal.

Imperial inefficiency

To the long-term concerns of population pressure and underemployment were added specific and familiar problems
associated with dynastic decline— failures of imperial will and oversight, of bureaucratic morale and initiative, and of
corruption and maladministration.

It is possible as Spence states, that Qing reluctance to create new county governments in areas of new settlement or
dense population put impossible stresses on officials in the bureaucracy. Moreover, the intense pressure for jobs meant
that those who had finally obtained office sought a swift return for all their waiting and anxiety, pressing local peasants in
their jurisdictions for speedy tax payments and for supplementary charges. The White Lotus insurgents of the 1790s, for
instance, stated categorically that "the officials have forced the people to rebel.

The White Lotus rebellion was a multifaceted disaster from which the Qing never fully recovered. The sectarians
themselves were brought under control, but the sect was not expunged. And Rowe states tha the initial failure to contain
the rebellion was largely the result of corruption among Qing commanders, notably Heshen’s brother Helin.

There is no doubt that this pattern of corruption grew worse after 1775, when a young Manchu guards officer named
Heshen became entrenched as the elderly emperor's court favorite, although Heshen was not responsible for everything
that was going awry. Qianlong named Heshen a deputy lieutenant general of the Manchu plain blue banner, a minister of
the imperial household, vice-minister of revenue, and a grand councilor.

Through elaborate patronage networks whose protection was guaranteed by his personal hold over the emperor, Heshen
orchestrated systematic embezzlement at all levels of the Qing administration. But immediately upon Qianlong’s death in
1799 Jiaqing arrested Heshen and his immediate circle and ordered him to commit suicide.
As was customary upon assuming the throne, the new emperor threw open the “pathways of words” (yanlu) for a
controlled period to hear criticisms and suggestions on how his reign should proceed—specifically, in this case, how the
evils of the Heshen era might be corrected. Not unlike Mao Zedong during his “Hundred Flowers” moment of the mid-
1950s, Jiaqing heard more than he wanted or imagined—it quickly became clear that the entire bureaucracy had been
contaminated beyond repair by Heshen’s machinations. Whatever the real possibilities for total reform might have been,
Jiaqing’s timidity energized literati opposition in the capital.

Secret societies and Internal Rebellion

The secret societies, which in imperial China were the classic form of opposition to the established order, were extremely
active during this period. Basically they were organizations of political opposition to the Manchu dynasty. They swore
loyalty to the Chinese Ming dynasty dethroned in the seventeenth century, and their slogan was Fan Qing ju Ming
(Overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming). The White Lotus Society, for instance, organized a vast insurrection in Hubel,
Sichuan, and Shenxi on the northwestern frontier that lasted from 1796 to 1804. Several years later the same society
attempted a coup d' etat within the imperial palace itself. But as Jean Chesneaux states the secret societies were also the
germinal spirit behind peasant movements and the source of experienced cadres for peasant risings.

The secret societies developed as forces of opposition within the old regime and were bound to it by many social and
political links. Rich merchants and even rural gentry filled high positions in the societies, both in order to gain more
control of the popular movements in their areas and to share in the plunder. Rather than attempting to crush the
societies, the mandarins and their assistants tried to come to terms with the leaders, who for their part were willing to
negotiate.

Recurring agitation in the rural areas, leading to periodic peasant revolts, was probably the most important of the social
forces opposed to the imperial order. In addition, the ethnic and religious minorities of China (the Miao, the Yao, and the
Moslems in the Northwest and Southwest, for example) fiercely resented the mandarins' policy of assimilation and
repression.

Though all these forces of political, social, and intellectual opposition were only intermittently or marginally active, they
were extremely lively. They were also intrinsic to the Chinese old regime; in Chesneaux’s words they were built-in safety
valves rather than outside movements aimed at replacing the regime.

Economic Depression

By the 1820s, the empire’s monetary problems had reached a point of crisis. Supplies of metal for minting dwindled,
mostly because the Yunnan copper production was falling off and government control of mining was inadequate. These
difficulties combined with the government's poor management of financial services and of the mints, caused
deterioration in the quality of coins. Bad and false money was in wide circulation. The real exchange rate between the
tael and copper cash progressively reduced the value of coppers.

The maintenance of a completely artificial rate of exchange (1 for 1,000) worsened the crisis. Further complications were
introduced by the appearance of the Spanish silver dollar on the southeast coast in the eighteenth century.

This disruption of the currency system, according to Rowe, aggravated by hoarding on the part of investors, was one of
the major causes of the so-called “Daoguang-era depression.”
Close Door policy

The Qing state had no Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Relations with non-Chinese people were instead conducted by a variety
of bureaus and agencies that, as Jonathan D. Spence notes, in different ways, implied or stated the cultural inferiority and
geographical marginality of foreigners, while also defending the state against them.

As Chesneuax puts it, the closing of the country can also be traced to a feeling which was more deeply rooted—a
conviction that China had nothing to gain and much to lose by opening the door to Western traders and missionaries.

This body of Qing beliefs and practices was bound to clash with those of the Western powers, especially after the newly
expanding states of Britain, France, and Holland all began to develop major overseas empires. One can trace this process
of cultural opposition through the gradual emergence in China of a fourth type of "foreign management" structure,
commonly known as the "Canton System."

Since the middle of the eighteenth century trade relations had been organized according to the "Canton system," for
Canton was the only port open to Westerners. In that city a group of Chinese firms known as the Cohong (the Cantonese
form of gong hang, "officially authorized firms") had the monopoly on trade with the West.

In reality, "control," in the way that this word was used by the Chinese bureaucracy, is a more accurate term than "
closed door." Chesneaux likens this system with the one imposed in the Chinese Middle Ages, when the Arab merchants
in Canton had to live in a particular district of town and obey special regulations.

Chesneuax’s hypothesis is that the closed-door policy was the expression of a defensive reaction rather than a systematic
and xenophobic hostility toward everything foreign is confirmed by the fact that the policy did not apply to Russia. From
the seventeenth century on, relations between China and Russia were based on equal participation by each side.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the West began to penetrate the Chinese market in spite of the restrictions
imposed by the Canton system. British trade with the Qing grew rapidly, and while it probably never eclipsed China’s
participation in intra-Asian trade, it quickly became the key component of the empire’s commercial relations with the
West.

When the Napoleonic Wars were over, the dynamic expansion of the Western economies once again drove Western
traders abroad, especially in the direction of the Far East. But policies such as the British doctrine of " free trade" were
clearly incompatible with the Chinese conception of " controlling barbarians." In 1816 Britain made another attempt to
improve relations with China through the mission of Lord Amherst to Peking. He encountered the same quarrels over
ceremony (particularly regarding prostration—the koutou or " kowtow" before the emperor), and the same ultimate
refusal, that Lord Macartney had experienced in 1793. But the British founded Singapore in 1819, bringing their base for
trading and military activities in the Far East considerably nearer to the Chinese coast.

A triangular trade emerged, by which British merchants re-exported Chinese tea from London to Britain’s North American
colonies, along with British manufactures, and there obtained the American silver to exchange at Canton for tea.

Opium had been introduced into China by Arabs during the Tang dynasty, but Chinese did not traditionally cultivate or
consume it except for medicinal purposes. Opium’s use as a recreational drug caught on in the Qing empire in much the
same way that tea took hold in England. Over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the amount of opium
imported through Canton increased as much as tenfold. The British knew that the trade was reprehensible.

For its part, the Qing had prohibited the sale and use of opium as early as the Yongzheng reign, and this prohibition was
repeated throughout the early nineteenth century. The development of smuggling and the consumption of opium led to
a shortage of silver that had an erosive effect on the monetary system. The sale of Chinese goods to Westerners no
longer balanced Chinese purchases of opium.

Opium smuggling by the British and Americans, together with other activities of the foreign firms in Canton, created a
problem of authority that challenged the ability of the state to rule. Many Chinese mandarins and merchants were eager
to grow rich through trade with foreigners even if it meant defying imperial interdictions. The legal penalties in the edict
of 1800 for participating in the opium trade were enforced many times over against both traders and consumers but to
no effect.

Opium Wars

The Opium Wars, which occurred in 1839-1842 and 1856-1860, were fought primarily to determine the relations
between China and the West. Yet they not only profoundly changed the international circumstances of the Middle
Kingdom, but also transformed the conceptions held by the Chinese themselves about their place in the world. The new
demands on China made by the victorious West created internal problems that had far-reaching consequences,
particularly for the Chinese economy.

The pressure exerted by the British to open China, and the increase in opium smuggling between 1835 and 1838, raised
issues that the Chinese tried to approach in the traditional way. In accordance with Chinese political tradition, the
authorities opened a " debate" among local mandarins and senior officials of the central government on the political
problems raised by Canton, opium, and the outflow of silver.

Lin Ze-xu, a strict Confucian who had played an active part in thedebate, was sent to Canton as special commissioner to
see that the new rules (heavy punishments, including the death penalty, both for trading in and for consuming
opium.) were applied. In Canton Lin came into violent conflict with the British which resulted in the military expeditions
known as the first Opium War (1839-1842).

According to Chesneaux, from the Chinese point of view the crisis leading up to the Opium War was a question of
domestic policy, if not a simple police matter.

To replace Lin Peking appointed Qi-shan, a Manchu aristocrat related to the emperor. To a large extent, Chesneaux
states, the antagonism between the conciliatory party and the party opposed to compromise reflected the antagonism
between Manchu aristocrats and Chinese senior officials. The Manchu Qi-shan and his successor Qi-ying negotiated the
Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The new policy of conciliation was favored not only by the Man-chus, who were uncertain of
their political backing and unwilling to provoke a military reaction.

The Treaty of Nanking of 1842, the " supplementary treaty" between China and Great Britain in 1843, the treaty between
France and China signed at Huangpu (Whampoa) in 1844, and the treaty between China and the United States, also
signed in 1844, radically modified the West's conditions of access to China and the scope of Western activities there.
Some terms of the treaties concerned Britain only, in that country's capacity as a belligerent power.
Owing to the so-called most favored- nation clause, the various advantages obtained by each power accumulated and
formed the basis of the " unequal-treaties system" which gradually ' developed during the nineteenth and early
twentieth, centuries.

They could buy land and open schools—a privilege particularly advantageous to the missionaries, though they were not
specifically mentioned in the treaties. Finally, the warships of the foreign powers could anchor in the treaty ports, and
could enter any Chinese port " when the interests of trade demanded." China was therefore " open," that is, the treaties
obliged the Chinese government to allow foreign activities to develop in the five ports.

Between the two Opium Wars, however, trade did not expand as rapidly as the promoters of the open-door policy had
hoped. In Canton, which had been the traditional base for foreign activities in China since the eighteenth century,
Westerners were annoyed by the refusal of the authorities to grant them access to the walled city—the political and
commercial center of the town. A raid carried out by the British in 1847 ended in a Chinese promise to open the city in
1849.

The second Opium War began in the South with the bombarding of Canton and the burning of its British factories. The
war continued in the North from 1859 to 1860, when French and British troops attacked Peking with the aim of forcing
the emperor to ratify the treaty drawn up in 1858. The foreigners captured and looted the capital, including the famous
summer palace. (" Two bandits, France and England, entered a cathedral in Asia," as Victor Hugo described it.)

The treaties signed in Tientsin and Peking from 1858 to 1860 represented an even worse defeat for China than those of
1842 to 1844. Eleven more ports were opened, including Tientsin and Hankou. Western vessels were allowed access to
certain inland waterways, and Western missionaries and merchants were granted the right to travel about the country
and to buy land. The importing of opium was made legal.

One result of the Chinese defeats was that the conciliation party returned to power. The princes' return to the
conciliation policy was motivated above all by the desire to save the dynasty and the regime. But some people, among
them some senior Chinese officials, were already thinking about the possibility of getting Western help against the
Taiping and other popular rebellions, and in general about implementing a policy of carefully controlled modernization.