The Dragon

Sure, times have changed, most of the world isn’t try­ing to defeat com­mu­nism any­more, since it pretty much killed itself. Sure, China wasn’t tar­geted as the lat­est “Axis of Evil”. Sure, China hasn’t been accused of fos­ter­ing ter­ror­ist — so far — and no report has been made about imag­i­nary “weapons of mass destruc­tion” hid­den some­where between the Huanghe and the Changjiang.

But still, for most peo­ple China is this wild dragon, about to take on the world econ­omy, train­ing, copy­ing and pro­duc­ing night and day in the not so unre­al­is­tic hope to catch up with the rest of the world. China has got­ten big, as pre­dicted long time ago.

China has always fas­ci­nated the west­ern world. Trade routes under the Yuan, reli­gious influ­ence under the Ming with the Mis­sion­ar­ies, free trade and colo­nial impe­ri­al­ism under the Qing, the West­ern world has had a love-hate his­tory with the big dragon.

Despite the exis­tence of a few trade roads (the “silk road” among oth­ers), it’s only under the Yuan Dynasty (1279−1368) that com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the East and the West begun. The Mon­gol Empire was based on a huge net­work of roads. They allowed trav­els, freight traf­fic and cul­tural exchange. On the other side of the world, Mid­dle Age Europe was long­ing for trade and in search of a reli­gious ally : both Empire were bound to meet. Marco Polo, the famous Ital­ian mer­chant, spent over 15 years in China and even worked for the Emperor, Kubi­lai Khan. In the spirit of cru­sades and look­ing for an ally against the Islamic Empire, Euro­pean also tried to spread Catholi­cism. A few Fran­cis­can stayed in China and Mon­tecorvino is even pro­claimed arch­bishop in Bei­jing. But after his death in 1328, the Chris­t­ian influ­ence lessened.

Not much Occi­den­tal influ­ence was left in China after the fall of the Yuan Empire. Nonethe­less, mer­chants and mis­sion­ar­ies wrote about China and got the coun­try famous in the West­ern world.

It’s only under the Great Dis­cov­ery (15^th and 16^th cen­turies) that the West came into con­tact with China again. Europe was dri­ven by a good econ­omy, mis­sion­ary zeal, and many tech­ni­cal progress (com­pass, bet­ter ships…). One more time, it turned to China. In 1556, the Por­tuguese got Macao. But until the 19^th, trade with Asia was one-way since China wasn’t will­ing to imports goods from Europe.

At the same time started again the reli­gious mis­sion in China. Under the Yuan, the goal had been to find an ally in China, a coun­try which wel­come every kind of reli­gion. But under the Ming, Europe lived for reli­gious pros­e­lytism. Roman Catholi­cism had lost a lot to the Lutheran reform and a lot of mis­sion are founded to recruit new Chris­t­ian first in Europe, then through­out the world. China was then slugged, caught into a gov­ern­ment con­flict — a per­fect time to receive new influences.

Another step in the rela­tion­ship between China and Europe was the Jesuit mis­sion, embod­ied by Mat­teo Ricci, an Ital­ian Priest. Ricci brought a lot to China and ini­ti­ated a cul­ture dia­logue. He was mostly wel­comed and acknowl­edged, more for the new tech­niques he helped to develop than for its reli­gion. Ricci was also influ­enced by China and made a lot of accom­mo­da­tions to Chi­nese sen­si­bil­i­ties to con­vert locals. Even­tu­ally, the Pope pro­scribed against such method­olo­gies and con­tro­versy raged in Europe (the Chi­nese Rites Con­tro­versy). It could be described as the first clash between to cul­tures : was it bet­ter to con­vert a small num­ber of peo­ple to “true” Catholi­cism, or to con­vert a large num­ber and to adapt the reli­gion to ancient beliefs and to the coun­try ? How would “God” trans­late in Chi­nese ? Was the Mass to be given in Latin or in Chi­nese ? The Jesuit mis­sion even­tu­ally ended in 1773, but much hap­pened thanks to it. Both sides ben­e­fited the exchange :

• China ben­e­fited sci­en­tific advance­ment (Sum­mer Palace archi­tec­ture, astron­omy researches…)
• Europe was polit­i­cally inspired by China. Indeed, China is for Euro­pean the first exam­ple of a rich, pow­er­ful and advanced coun­try… with­out Catholi­cism. The Age of Enlightenment’s phi­los­o­phy was par­tially inspired by this exam­ple. Vauban also advise Louis XIV to have cen­sus report… as the Chi­nese have done, since the Han Dynasty !

But over the cen­tury, China’s diplo­matic sys­tem – and there wasn’t a sys­tem per se — hasn’t changed much. China was the “??”, rul­ing over Asia, cen­ter of its world. And since under the Ming a trib­ute sys­tem had been insti­tu­tion­al­ized, based on China’s supremacy – that was it for diplo­macy. No Min­istry was specif­i­cally man­dated to deal with for­eign­ers : border’s trade depended on the Min­istry of Bor­ders, mis­sion­ar­ies dealt with the Impe­r­ial House, traders dealt with the Rites Min­istry. And the West had a hard time to under­stand this frag­mented sys­tem. The Qing Dynasty did accept for­eign trade, but one more time, on a lim­ited mode. Traders, for instance, were con­signed in spe­cific har­bors, and all trade has to go thought Gong­hang, spe­cial­ized Chi­nese middlemen.

The Euro­pean Pow­ers started to dis­like this “close door pol­icy” and were grow­ing frus­trated. As early as 1729, Eng­land got into opium trade : imported from India, a British Colony, it was used to buy Chi­nese goods, then for­warded in Europe. Chi­nese opium con­sump­tion soon became a social issue, but the trade ben­e­fits Eng­land, which just had attempted to estab­lish, one more time, an embassy and got turned down. Eng­land even­tu­ally picked a casus belli and started the Opium Wars.

The Qing Dynasty, already in inter­nal tur­moil, couldn’t resist. The Nan­jing Treaty was signed on August 29^th, 1842 – the first of a long series of unequal treaties. Five har­bors (Guang­dong, Shang­hai, Amoy, Fuzhou and Ningbo) were opened to for­eign trades, the Cohong sys­tem was sup­pressed and Hong Kong was sim­ply taken over by Eng­land. The coun­tries which didn’t take part in the war all ask China for the same priv­i­lege : the most favored nation clause takes effect.

This short war sym­bol­ized the bru­tal inte­gra­tion of China in a new world order, invented and dom­i­nated by the USA.

In 1858, a sec­ond opium war weaken China and the declin­ing Qing Dynasty a bit more. Mean­while, the Manchu Empire was col­laps­ing under a politic, mil­i­tary and econ­omy (the “high level eco­nomic trap”) cri­sis. Insur­rec­tions, such as the Taip­ing Rebel­lion (and the Nian, the Hui, Yakub Beg revolts…) raged. In this con­text of con­tin­u­ous reces­sion, the for­eign­ers pow­ers entered China eas­ily and increased their priv­i­leges. All that was totally going against China’s tra­di­tional sys­tem and the coun­try was forced to enter the mod­ern era and to fol­low the move­ment of indus­trial nations. The con­tin­ual ref­er­ence to the Unequal Treaties marked Chi­nese his­tory: it is only by recov­er­ing Hong Kong that Deng Xiaop­ing will wash the honor of China.

In 1894, China fought against Japan in Korea and lost the war. In April 1895, the Shi­mono­seki Treaty was signed. China lost Dalian and Tai­wan to Japan, and Korea became inde­pen­dent. Ter­ri­to­r­ial impe­ri­al­ism accel­er­ate for­eign pen­e­tra­tion in China. The pow­ers obtained the con­struc­tion of rail­ways, zones of the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal influ­ences in their leased ter­ri­to­ries with lease (Ger­many with Qing­dao and Jiazhou, Rus­sia with Lüshun and Dalian, Guangzhou in France…). It is the break up of China.

China reacted strongly to this new inva­sion. More than ever, Chi­nese were aware that its sur­vival depends on changes. Econ­omy, lan­guage, edu­ca­tion all under­went reforms. The Qing Dynasty was even­tu­ally abol­ished, but the new Repub­lic didn’t bring much improve­ment and quickly turned into dic­ta­tor­ship, unable to get rid of the west­ern pow­ers’ grip on China.

Between 1910 and 1920, China under­went its biggest intel­lec­tual rev­o­lu­tion, car­ried out by the youth and the returned stu­dents from abroad.The evo­lu­tion of ideas was the answer of the intel­lec­tu­als to the fail­ure of the Repub­lic, which brought nei­ther peace nor order. The phe­nom­e­non reached its apogee in 1919. The causes of this trans­for­ma­tion are mul­ti­ple: dis­ap­pear­ance of the dynasty and the old class intel­lec­tu­als, demon­stra­tion against the Japan­ese impe­ri­al­ism, dis­ap­point­ment of the par­lia­men­tary democ­racy and dic­ta­tor­ship of Yuan Shikai… Chen Duxiu ini­ti­ated the move­ment, fol­lowed by Mao Zedong, Hu Shi and other intel­lec­tu­als. All polit­i­cal the­o­ries were stud­ied, from com­mu­nism to lib­er­al­ism. Intel­lec­tu­ally speak­ing, the May 4^th gen­er­a­tion is open-minded — it is acknowl­edged the Occi­dent val­ues were to be accepted in order to save China. This is social Dar­win­ism: the nations are in fight, only the strongest will sur­vive. This “strug­gle for life”, is here applied to inter­na­tional rela­tions. The peak of this move­ment is reach on May 4^th 1919, when thou­sand of Chi­nese demon­strate against WW2 set­tle­ment at the Ver­sailles Con­fer­ence. China had taken part in WW2 with the allies in hope of regain­ing con­trol over the ter­ri­to­ries stolen by Japan, in vain.

Soon after was cre­ated the first China Com­mu­nist Party. In July 1919, USSR gave up its con­ces­sion and gave them back to China (Kara­han Dec­la­ra­tion). At the same time, Mar­ing (a soviet) forced the birth of the first CCP and had it adopt the Kom­interm strat­egy. China views social­ism as a reject of Euro­pean val­ues. It also like Lenin’s the­ory, in which impe­ri­al­ism is regarded as the last stage of cap­i­tal­ism, where cap­i­tal­ist pow­ers are bound to kill each other. Marx­ism gave China a future : the world isn’t cen­tered on Europe anymore.

It’s only after Mao took power in 1949 after the civil war that China had its des­tiny in its own hands. How­ever, the inter­na­tional con­text wasn’t the best. The world was falling into the Cold War, and the con­tain­ment doc­trine became the rule. Around the young PRC, the sit­u­a­tion in edgy : Korea (fights between the North and the South), Malaysia, Indochina (Viet­minh guer­rilla against France), Tai­wan… To ensure its secu­rity, China had to find an ally : USSR. The treaties signed were more of a motus vivendi and the sym­bol of a com­mon oppo­si­tion against the USA and their allies than a real part­ner­ship. A lot divided both coun­tries, start­ing with ide­o­log­i­cal antag­o­nisms. The part­ner­ship didn’t last long : in 1956 started a long period of cri­sis between the two pow­ers, which only ended in 1979.

Mean­while, as the rela­tions wors­ened with USSR, China befriended Occi­dent, and as early as 1956 started polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal treaties. No major cri­sis hap­pened until 1979, as China was pretty much iso­lated from the world and work­ing for itself. In 1979, when Deng Xiaop­ing took power, he rede­fined the “Chi­nese mod­ern­iza­tion plan” : it is now time for inten­si­fied inter­na­tional relationship.

China didn’t cre­ate nor got into any major inter­na­tional cri­sis since the Tianan­men events in 1989. Rela­tion­ship with Japan and Tai­wan are occa­sion­ally bustling… But China has one major goal now : catch up with Occi­dent. And more…

But Occi­dent can’t stand to lose its edge, espe­cially to an under­dog. Europe was the cen­ter of the world for cen­turies. North Amer­ica is now set­ting the world to its image. What’s next ? World pow­ers are bound to change hands. It’s only nat­ural that west­ern soci­eties don’t want to lose their edge, but it’s also nec­es­sary to acknowl­edge our weak­nesses, and the fact that we are only advanced in the world we shaped.

China is tak­ing over the eco­nomic mar­ket, China is more and more advanced tech­no­log­i­cally speak­ing and the soci­ety is quickly adopt­ing new val­ues. One more time, China is enjoy­ing its power in Asia and bond­ing with the West. But instead of deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion, we are of bad faith. The only rea­son why China is doing so good now ? Because it exploits its work­ers and copies our prod­ucts, of course ! Because it bribes indus­tri­als and dis­re­gard our val­ues. Because it cheats, because… China had the guts to change, to adapt to a new world, to make a dozens rev­o­lu­tions and to cre­ate its own way.

We are stand­ing there.

We want to be kings of a king­dom we created.

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