Economy of Qing Empire

British merchants were frustrated by Chinese trade laws and refused to cooperate with Chinese legal officials because of their routine use of torture. Upon his arrival in Canton in March, 1839, the Emperor's special emissary, Lin Ze-xu, took swift action against the foreign merchants and their Chinese accomplices, making some 1,600 arrests and confiscating 11,000 pounds of opium. Despite attempts by the British superintendent of trade, Charles Elliot, to negotiate a compromise, in June Lin ordered the seizure another 20,00 crates of opium from foreign-controlled factories, holding all foreign merchants under arrest until they surrendered nine million dollars worth of opium, which he then had burned publicly. Finally, he ordered the port of Canton closed to all foreign merchants. Elliot in turn ordered a blockade of the Pearl River. In an ensuing naval battle, described as a victory by Chinese propagandists, in November 1839 the Royal Navy sank a number of Chinese vessels near Guangzhou. By January 1841, the British had captured the Bogue forts at the Pearl's mouth and controlled the high ground above the port of Canton. Subsequently, British forces scored victories on land at Ningbo and Chinhai, crushing the ill-equipped and poorly trained imperial forces with ease. Viewed as too moderate back at home, in August 1841 Elliot was replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger to launch a major offensive against Ningbo and Tiajin. By the end of June British forces occupied Zhenjiang and controlled the vast rice-growing lands of southern China.

The key to British victory was Her Majesty's Navy, which used the broadside with equal effect against wooden-hulled vessels, fortifications are river mouths, and city walls. The steel-hulled Nemesis, a shallow-draft armed paddle-wheeler loaned to the campaign by the British East India Company, quickly controlled the river basins and the Pearl River between Hong Kong and Canton, regardless of winds or tides that limited the effectiveness of Chinese junks. On land, Chinese bows and primitive firelocks proved no match for British muskets and artillery. For leading the Royal Marines to victory General Anthony Blaxland Stransham was knighted by Queen Victoria. His forces utterly defeated on land and sea, Lin Ze-xu in September 1840 had been recalled to Peking in disgrace, and Qi-shan, a Manchu aristocrat related to the Emperor, installed in Lin's place to deal with the foreign devils whose decisive victories were undermining the authority of the Qing Dynasty, which gradually lost control of a population of 300 million.

The outbreak of fresh hostilities under such circumstances was almost inevitable because Chinese officials were extremely reluctant to enact the terms of the treaties of 1842-44. Since the French and Americans had extracted additional concessions since the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, including clauses about renegotiation after twelve years, Great Britain insisted upon exercising its "most-favoured nation status" in 1854. This time, the British demanded that China open all her ports to foreign trade, legalise the importation of opium from British possessions in India and Burma, exempt British goods from all import duties, and permit the establishment of a full embassy in Peking. For two years Qing court officials stalled, trying to buy time. However, events ran out of their control when on 8 October 1856 officials boarded the Chinese-registered but Hong Kong-based merchant vessel Arrow, which they suspected of involvement in both smuggling and piracy. The British trade officials naturally argued that as a foreign vessel the Arrow's activities did not fall under Chinese legal jurisdiction, and that therefore the sailors who had been arrested should be released under the extraterritoriality clause of the Treaty of Nanking.

Having dealt with the temporary distraction of the Sepoy Mutiny in India, in 1857 Great Britain dispatched forces to Canton in a coordinated operation with American warships. France, seething over the recent Chinese execution of a missionary, Father August Chapdelaine, joined Russia, the U. S. A., and Great Britain against China. However, a joint Anglo-French force, without other military assistance, under the command of Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, Lord Elgin, and Marshall Gros seized Canton late in 1857 after valiant but futile resistance by the city's citizens and Chinese soldiers. In May 1858, the Anglo-French naval taskforce captured the Taku forts near Tiensin (Tianjin), effectively ending hostilities. France, Russia, the United States, and Great Britain then forced China to agree to open eleven more major ports to Western trade under the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin (June 1858). When the Chinese once again proved slow to enact the terms of the treaty, Britain order Admiral Sir James Hope to shell the Chinese forts at the mouth of the Peiho River in 1859. The Chinese capitulated, permitting all foreigners with passports to travel freely in China, and granting Chinese who converted to Christianity full property rights.

Since Chinese officials once again refused to enact a treaty provision, namely the establishment of Western embassies in Peking, an Anglo-French force launched a fresh offensive from Hong Kong in 1860, ultimately destroying the Emperor Xianfeng's Summer Palace in Chengde, and the Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace in Peking amidst wide-spread looting by both troops and civilians.

Under the terms of the Convention of Peking, signed by Prince Gong, brother of the Emperor Xianfeng, on 18 October 1860, the ports of Hankou, Niuzhuang, Danshui, and Nanjing were opened to foreign vessels, as were the waters of the Yangtze, and foreign missionaries were free to proselytize. China had to pay further reparations, this time ten million taels, to each of France and Britain, and another two million taels to British merchants for destruction of property. Finally, China ceded the port of Kowloon to Great Britain, and agreed to permit the export of indentured Chinese labourers to the Americas. Arguably, without such a massive injection of cheap labour the transcontinental railways of the United States and Canada would not have been completed so quickly and economically. On the other hand, China's humiliation led directly to the fall of the Manchu Dynasty and the social upheavals that precipitated the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.

What had begun as a conflict of interests between English desire for profits from the trade in silk, porcelain, and tea and the Confucian ideal of self-sufficiency and exclusion of corrupting influences resulted in the partitioning of China by the Western powers (including the ceding of Hong Kong to Great Britain), humiliating defeats on land and sea by technologically and logistically superior Western forces, and the traditional values of an entire culture undermined by Christian missionaries and rampant trading in Turkish and Indian opium. No wonder the Boxer rebels' chief goal was to purify and reinvigorate their nation by the utter annihilation of all "foreign devils."

3. Qing Empire in the system of world trade

After 1683 the Qing rulers turned their attention to consolidating control over their frontiers. Taiwan became part of the empire, and military expeditions against perceived threats in north and west Asia created the largest empire China has ever known. From the late 17th to the early 18th century, Qing armies destroyed the Oirat empire based in Dzungaria and incorporated into the empire the region around the Koko Nor (Qinghai Hu, “Blue Lake”) in Central Asia. In order to check Mongol power, a Chinese garrison and a resident official were posted in Lhasa, the centre of the Dge-lugs-pa (Yellow Hat) sect of Buddhism that was influential among Mongols as well as Tibetans. By the mid-18th century the land on both sides of the Tien Shan range as far west as Lake Balkhash had been annexed and renamed Xinjiang (“New Dominion”). Military expansion was matched by the internal migration of Chinese settlers into parts of China that were dominated by aboriginal or non-Han ethnic groups.

The evacuation of the south and southeast coast during the 1660s spurred a westward migration of an ethnic minority, the Hakka, who moved from the hills of southwest Fujian, northern Guangdong, and southern Jiangxi. Although the Qing dynasty tried to forbid migration into its homeland, Manchuria, in the 18th and 19th centuries Chinese settlers flowed into the fertile Liao River basin. Government policies encouraged Han movement into the southwest during the early 18th century, while Chinese traders and assimilated Chinese Muslims moved into Xinjiang and the other newly acquired territories. This period was punctuated by ethnic conflict stimulated by the Han Chinese takeover of former aboriginal territories and by fighting between different groups of Han Chinese.

The development of the Qing military system can be divided into two broad periods separated by the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). The early Qing military was rooted in the Eight Banners first developed by Nurhachi as a way to organize Jurchen society beyond petty clan affiliations. There are eight banners in all, differentiated by colours. The banners in their order of precedence were as follows: yellow, bordered yellow (i.e. yellow banner with red border), white, red, bordered white, bordered red, blue, and bordered blue. The yellow, bordered yellow, and white banners were collectively known as the "Upper Three Banners" (Chinese: 上三旗; pinyin: shàng sān qí) and were under the direct command of the emperor. Only Manchus belonging to the Upper Three Banners, and selected Han Chinese who had passed the highest level of martial exams were qualified to serve as the emperor's personal bodyguards. The remaining Banners were known as "The Lower Five Banners" (Chinese: 下五旗; pinyin: xià wǔ qí) and were commanded by hereditary Manchu princes descended from Nurhachi's immediate family, known informally as the "Iron Cap Princes" (simplified Chinese: 铁帽子王; traditional Chinese: 鐵帽子王; pinyin: tiě màozǐ wáng). Together they formed the ruling council of the Manchu nation as well as high command of the army.

As Qing power expanded north of the Great Wall in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the Banner system was expanded by Nurhachi's son and successor Hong Taiji to include mirrored Mongol and Han Banners. After capturing Beijing in 1644 and as the Manchu rapidly gained control of large tracts of former Ming territory, the relatively small Banner armies were further augmented by the Green Standard Army, which eventually outnumbered Banner troops three to one. The Green Standard Army so-named after the colour of their battle standards was made up of those Ming troops who had surrendered to the Qing. They maintained their Ming era organization and were led by a mix of Banner and Green Standard officers. The Banners and Green Standard troops were standing armies, paid for by central government. In addition, regional governors from provincial down to village level maintained their own irregular local militias for police duties and disaster relief. These militias were usually granted small annual stipends from regional coffers for part-time service obligations. They received very limited military drills if at all and were not considered combat troops.

• Russian-Qing economic relation

The Qing was China's last centralized dynasty. During its almost three-hundred-year-long reign, it achieved regional supremacy before sliding into a decline that occurred contemporaneously with the West's rise to global pre-eminence. The expansion of the Western world inevitably led to the disintegration of China's centuries-old tribute system, and changes in the way the Qing government interacted with its foreign counterparts. The establishment of a foreign ministry in the 1860s and the assignment of the first permanent diplomatic envoys abroad in the 1870s signalled the Qing dynasty's gradual adoption of a Western, more modernistic, system of diplomacy. Researchers raise several explanations for China's diplomatic clashes with Western countries and the ultimate changes in its foreign policy behavior. They include the shift in the balance of power from East to West, fundamental changes in Qing ideals, sense of identity and preferences and the conflicting systems of these two, quite different civilizations. The focus of this essay is on material and ideational explanations. The material explanation maintains that Qing foreign policy behavior adjusted in order to maximize China's material interests in view of the shift in power dynamics between East and West. From the ideational standpoint, adjustments to Qing foreign policy behavior were the result of changes in the preferences, values and behavioral norms of China's rulers. The aim of this essay explores the basis of change in Qing dynasty foreign policy and determines whether its behavioral adjustments were as a result of ideational or material factors.

The concept of ‘ideas’ is not always clear in context of the argument that ideas propel changes in the behavior of nations. Certain scholars argue that ideas are akin to power and interests insofar as being important variables when explaining state behaviour. Robert H. Jackson, however, argues that the post-World War II decolonization movement cannot be explained in terms of power or interests; that ideas and norms constitute the leading explanation for this phenomenon. This explanation places ideas in direct opposition to interests and power. Although the definition of ideas often seems clear in context, using the term as an explanatory variable can sometimes lead to confusion and misunderstanding. Such misapprehensions are attributable to ideas and interests at times, and times not, coinciding. Ideas encompass desires and knowledge and constitute the actor's interests; they are its aspirations. Knowledge involves an actor's expectations but not its interests. As Alexander Wendt notes, ‘not all ideas are interests; in fact, most are not’. Interests form part of an actor's ideas (in view of ideas also being capable of constructing the actor's identity, thereby changing its preferences) but not their entirety. Arguing whether it is ideas or interests that produce an affect, therefore, is likely to generate conceptual confusion and divergent understandings. From an ideational standpoint, it is the material, rather than interests, that opposes ideas. An explanation that treats ideas and interests as different sources of behaviour is likely to conclude that ideational interests are in opposition to material interests. An explanation that views the concept of power and interests in opposition may be understood on the premise of the actor's preferences remaining constant. An ideational explanation, however, stems from a change in the actor's perceptions of its interests. In either case, employing “ideas” to explain behavioural changes necessitates identification of the changes in the actor's concept of its interests, that is, its sense of identity, value system and standards of behaviour.

Ideational and material interpretations of adjustments in Qing foreign policy necessitate distinguishing purely material, materially cognitive, and purely conceptual explanations.

Purely material interpretations of state behaviour are based on the objective distribution of tangible power. Aspirations, beliefs, and other ideas are not considered as relevant variables. This type of analysis is generally championed by Realist scholars. Perhaps, the most representative example is Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics. With Waltz's theoretical framework, state behavior is largely determined by the pressure generated by the international system, and therefore cannot be viewed as an expression of a nation's subjective desires. Waltz argues that the structure of the system works as a selecting function because structures select by rewarding some behaviors and punishing others, outcomes cannot be inferred from intentions and behavior. Insofar as selection rules, results can be predicted whether or not the actors’ intentions and whether or not they understand structural constraints are known. In other words, the actor may or may not be cognizant of structural restrictions on its behavior or, although aware of them, may not necessarily behave in the way most likely to be rewarded, or least likely to be punished; it is the structure that plays the main role as regards the effect of the actor's choice, structure being the deciding factor as to what kind of competitor is most likely to succeed. Within this theory the actor's ideas, therefore, are unimportant.

One variance in this body of logic maintains that material factors have a strong bearing on ideational elements. That is to say, in time actors’ ideas adapt to the material reality, the underlying logic being that erroneous cognition of the outside world could lead actors to suboptimal situations that ultimately cause them to adjust their behavior. As material factors provide impetus for such a process, it may be classed as a material explanation.

As regards the international system, cognitive material-based interpretations, in common with purely material explanations, proceed on the assumption that there has been no change in the actors’ preferences. Cognitive material explanations concern the behaviour of nations as it is affected by the actors’ level of cognition of the international environment, the power dynamics among states, and the capabilities of rivals. They account for the situation where, despite all material factors remaining constant, changes in an actor's cognition of the outside world result in behavioral adjustments.

Information is a body of accumulated, world-related data. A general understanding of it is manifest in an objective view of the world. Explaining the behavior of an enterprise from an economics standpoint requires much more information than the functions of cost and demand; other factors, such as the industry's history, also imbue a great deal of useful information relevant to understanding enterprise behavior. Similarly, in international relations, the information on which a country bases its view of the outside world is likely to be based predominantly on the balance of power, manifest in forms and modes of behavior. Variances in these two factors can lead to differences in state behavior. When inferring a country's behavior, an analysis at the unit level, necessitates a substantial fund of relevant knowledge, including expectations of behavior. An analysis based on preferences and desires, rather than knowledge of the outside world, cannot determine how an actor will behave because desires do not fully account for the conditions under which action occurs. An actor's knowledge and expectations do not feature in the content of many rational choice-based analyses because their hypothetical actors have complete knowledge.

Similarly, the knowledge that nations will always strive to enhance their security and economic interests is insufficient to predict how they will act. Other kinds of information, such as the state under observation's knowledge of the international system, of its own strength and the reliability of its partners, are relevant when predicting its behavior. Scholars have demonstrated beyond doubt the utility of additional information of this nature in understanding state behavior. Thomas Christensen and Jack Snyder, for example, have shown that it is policymakers’ perception of the offence–defense balance rather than the actual disparity between offensive and defensive capabilities that influences a nation's balancing behavior. The actor that attaches most importance to material factors necessarily acts on the basis of certain knowledge and information. That an individual strives to achieve an objective within a limited scope of choice is supported by rational choice theory. On this basis, the individual chooses the action it perceives as most helpful in achieving its objective, and it is rational behaviour that guides the way to the goal in question. Such an actor will always strive to achieve the optimum result. Yet, rational choices are all made under a set of constraints, cognition of which is an essential aspect of the decision making process within the rational choice model. Actors require certain knowledge and information in order to be able to evaluate the likely costs and benefits of their actions. For example, if Country A has 50 cannon, while its rival, Country B, has 100, Country A will be disinclined to instigate conflict. If, however, faulty information leads Country A mistakenly to believe that its rival has only ten cannon, Country A's ‘knowledge’ of its adversary's capabilities may have significant ramifications as regards changes in its behavior. Using similar reasoning, cognitive material explanations view the actual power discrepancy between China and the West as less important than the Qing government's perceptions of the balance of power when interpreting its foreign policy decisions.

Decision-making within cognitive material explanations is nonetheless based on consideration of material factors rather than ideational interests. In this view, the only variables that lead a nation to change its behavior are those of information and knowledge. In other words, varying evaluations of material factors on the part of a nation can lead to differences in its behavior.

Sometimes the distinction between material cognitive strength and material explanations becomes blurred. Material cognitive strength explanations adhere to the logic whereby it is a nation's consideration of its material interests that leads to perception of relevant material factors that acts as the catalyst for a change in national behavior. Within this type of analysis, material factors remain the fundamental cause of action. It could consequently be interpreted as a material explanation. Consider, for example, the following seemingly straightforward material explanation: ‘the thief came by so everyone ran away’. This explanation implies that ‘everyone’ recognizes the thief for what he is and is able to predict his behaviour. In other words, even though the background knowledge and common sense that allow ‘everyone’ to make inferences about the thief are not explicitly stated, knowledge clearly plays a role in the group's reasoning process. In international relations, coercive behaviour follows a similar logic. For instance, weak nations often yield to their stronger counterparts even when these dominant states do not resort to force. This situation is fundamentally different from one in which a weaker state is forced to bend to the will of its rival. In the former scenario, the weaker state still has the choice of whether or not to comply (even though the potential alternative is extremely undesirable). Coercive behaviour, therefore, is made possible by virtue of the weaker party's knowledge and expectations. As in the example of the thief, however, the role of knowledge and expectations is often overlooked. This is because the unequal strength of rivals plays such a decisive role in the latter example of coercive behaviour that the submissive behaviour of states under coercion is generally attributed to strictly material factors.

In cognitive material explanations, the actor's choice of mode of behaviour is rationally instrumental as regards the logic of expected consequences. The actors’ preferences being constant, the main issue is that of choice of mode, while it is variances in an actor's perceived knowledge of the outside world that influence its evaluation of the cost and benefits of different modes of behaviour.

This type of explanation is based on the following form of cognition: Not that an actor's interests are completely material, certain of them are built on ideas, which lead its behaviour and constitute an independent variable when explaining behaviour. This kind of explanation involves changes in the actor's preferences and sense of identity and values. A change in the actor's interests causes a corresponding change in its behaviour that cannot be explained by purely material factors. Ideas involve desires and knowledge; purely ideational explanations focus on the influence of a change in the actor's ‘desires’ (or aspirations) on state behaviour. Within such an explanation, it is the logic of appropriateness, and not rational logic that is inferred as instrumental in the effect. Academic use of conceptual explanations is illustrated in the following example. In his analysis of the post-World War II decolonization movement, Robert Jackson argues that the decolonization drive was a fundamentally normative struggle. Decolonization was neither the result of a shift in power dynamics nor of a change in fundamental imperialist economic interests; it was driven by a change in the common perception of legitimacy. Decolonization was more a revolution of ideas regarding international statecraft and whether or not it could be considered legitimate rather than of power. Jackson observes that proponents of decolonization were supported in their demands for independence by prevailing norms and ideals. Nationalists knew that within this atmosphere of democratization, their opponents would be hard put to refute their arguments. Although Jackson does not completely deny the role that power and interests played in decolonization, he nevertheless regards the evolution of ideals as the driving force behind the movement. Jackson's conceptual explanation of decolonization uses change in worldview as its independent variable. More specifically, he focuses on how an actor's values and sense of legitimacy are able to influence its behavior.

In a broad sense, the notion of ‘ideas’ encompasses preferences, desires, knowledge, and information. State behaviour being the product of conscious decision-making, all behavior may be said to have passed through the medium of ‘ideas’. Yet, if any explanation that touches upon ‘ideas’ is to be regarded as ideational, then virtually all explanations could be so categorized. Similarly, material explanations in which all relevant factors are viewed as material would also regard the human brain as material, thereby cancelling out any possible ideational explanation. Ideas constitute an extremely broad concept, and if no limitations are imposed on the scope of ideational explanations, they can be applied in almost every case, which reduces their significance. This is not to say that all explanations incorporating relevant ideational elements are ideational; or that all analyses that touch upon material elements are material. What relevant is the underlying mechanism of cause and effect that leads actors to make behavioural choices. A consideration that clearly distinguishes material interests, informational factors and a sense of values, therefore, is of benefit.