The darkest period of Chinese history 1839-1949

Imagine being one of the most powerful countries in history. Imagine having a long, rich history of almost 5000 years. Imagine being one of history’s 4 biggest empires. Imagine, for thousands of years, having been the “almost” centre of the world. Wars were fought to get access to your trade. Empires expanded to reach you. European adventurers accidentally “discovered” a new continent to find you. Imagine being the birthplace of some of history’s most important inventions such as paper and gunpowder. Imagine all of that, then imagine that all being gone.

Now imagine your country in poverty. Imagine what was once the most powerful of empires, being raped and colonized by “barbarians” half a world away. Imagine losing a war to a country that was once your vassal. Imagine having your land taken after losing humiliating war after humiliating war.

Ladies, gentlemen, carrots, parrots, everyone and everything in-between, allow me to introduce you to the century of humiliation.

The century of humiliation (1839–1949) started when the Qing Dynasty (清朝) of China lost the first opium war to the British Empire in 1839. Before then, China had been feared and respected. European powers had been, literally, fighting to get to trade with China. But China was an isolationist country. European traders were only allowed to trade with China from a few ports in the south (Canton). Trade with China was also hard, China only accepted silver and this was draining the treasures of the British Empire. So the British tried to trade opium for tea and they tried to sell opium for silver which they could then use to buy tea.

Understandably, the Chinese were not happy about addictive and harmful drugs flooding into China. The Qing government tried to ban Opium, but it started to be smuggled in illegally through India. Eventually, the Chinese had enough and they destroyed a bunch of British Opium by dumping it into harbours.

The British retaliated, claiming that the Chinese destroyed their property and that the Chinese needed to pay compensation. Obviously, the Chinese didn’t. So long story short, the British and Chinese started fighting.

The Chinese had expected that the British wouldn’t really fight and that they would quickly sue for peace as there would be limited British Soldiers in Asia. But the British has soldiers in India and SE Asia, which were quickly mobilized. The Chinese had much less advanced weapons, fighting for a large part with swords and traditional weapons. The British had rifles and muskets. The Chinese had traditional ships called Junks and fireships, the British had steamships and cannons. The British made their way up the Chinese coast, and the Yangtze River, winning battle after battle. China quickly sued for peace and signed very unequal treaties. It had to pay reparations to Britain and it had to give land to Britain. This was in the form of Hong Kong.

Over the next few decades, other European powers and even the US got involved in China. China was split up and divided amongst the European powers. Japan too got involved.

Russia took Tuva, parts of Mongolia and a large portion of Manchuria.

The Germans took Qing Dao.

The British took Hong Kong.

And the French took some lands in the south which were added to the French Indo-China colony.

China was humiliated and even Japan, a long time vassal of China and a nation who the Chinese saw as lesser, took land from them. Japan took Taiwan, Sakhalin and Korea.

China was being colonized. And it was powerless to stop it.

Now let’s fast forward to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The Qing had fallen after a civil war and had been replaced by the Republic of China, led by the KMT. For a moment it looked like China was about to become a rich, prosperous and stable democracy. But…

The ROC was founded by Sun Yet Sen (Sun Zhong Shan), but Sun wouldn’t lead it for long. The leadership of the ROC was quickly handed to Yuan Shi Kai. Yuan became the president of China and quickly gathered power as a dictator. Then he declared himself to be the emperor of China. Then there was another civil war, this time the country fell under the control of warlord states. China was divided. Eventually the ROC “retook control” and “reunified” the country.

By this time ww1 had ended and the central powers had lost. Because of the league of nations, China couldn’t just annex its old lands that were controlled by Germany. China tried to appeal to the league of nations, but its lands such as Qingdao, were given to the Japanese. More humiliation. China saw that the world didn’t care about it.

Please keep in mind that by this point, China had been being screwed over for almost 80 years. China had been colonized and defeated. China had been robbed and raped and pillaged. Foreign powers had occupied and taken over Chinese land and what was once the 4th largest empire in history had lost thousands of kilometres of land and had become a 3rd world country. At this time, China was an impoverished and war-torn country and, oh boy, was it about to get worse.

Let’s skip a few unimportant people and start to talk about Chiang Kai Shek (Jiang Jie Shi). Chiang became the president of China in 1928. It didn’t take long before he established himself as a dictator, controlling the country through a military dictatorship. He was a generalissimo, but he didn’t ever really have control over the entire country. Tibet and Xinjiang, both important and large Chinese territories, started to act with almost total autonomy. Mongolia was basically a Russian puppet state and much of the country was lawless and uncontrolled, run by warlords. China was basically a divided nation. But still, Chiang ruled with an iron fist. He cracked down on workers’ rights protests and unionists, sometimes violently. The lands that he did control, he led poorly and cruelly. This led to the CCP and the communist revolution. Peasants were basically owned as slaves by landlords and warlords and still China was being screwed over by foreign powers. China had divided, for the first time in almost 700 years. China was, yet again, humiliated. China had gone from a respected empire to a half dead, rotting shell of a country, broken into bits and pieces.

So then there was a Chinese civil war, again. The Communist guerrillas vs the nationalist KMT. But this wasn’t just a civil war, it was also a war for China’s future. The Communists and the modern CCP, as much much nationalistic as they are communist. They fought, yes, to get power and yes, for workers’ and farmers’ rights, but also for the very heart and soul of China. They fought to save China from humiliation. The Communists fought as nationalists, looking to finally rebuild the country. The Chinese civil war was bloody, the nation falling further into poverty and war. More and more and more humiliation. Then ww2 happened and to the Chinese, it was the second Sino-Japanese war. The Japanese invaded China through Manchuria, taking it over and heading southward. Japan, an old vassal of China’s and a country whose culture was almost copy and pasted from China, was beating China bad. The civil war stopped, both sides worked together to fight the Japanese, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t take the Japanese long to invaded down to Nanjing, at that time the capital. During the annexation of Nanjing, the Japanese raped the city in one of the worst mass rapes in history. What happened there, and in the rest of China, is called, by some historians, a genocide. It almost rivals the Holocaust. I, obviously, won’t show images of the rape of Nanjing as it would be incredibly insensitive. It was a terrible mass rape where terrible atrocities were committed. Search it up if you are interested, but I won’t give details here as it may be inappropriate to some readers. Anyway, the rape of Nanjing was one of the final nails in the coffin for the collective dignity of the Chinese people. It was the ultimate humiliation for the Chinese people. It showed that China was too weak. China could be taken over by the Japanese. China had become a third world country and a husk of a nation. Chinese people were living as slaves as the most important parts of their country had been taken over.

Another humiliation came at the end of the war. China never got the chance to defeat Japan. America did it.

Then another humiliation, China didn’t get the Korean Peninsula back, instead it got split between the USSR and the USA.

Then another humiliation. The UN didn’t let it partition Japan, like the rest of the allies did with the rest of the Axis, instead it all went to the US.

Then China was plunged again into civil war.

This time, the KMT didn’t even really rebuild the country. The peasantry was still in poverty and many were slaves. So the Communists started to gain traction. The Communists got volunteers and got a massive peasant army.

After 4 years of fighting, it was over. The republic had fled, the country was reunified and it was finally over. On October 1st, 1949, Mao gave his famous speech at Tiananmen Square, announcing that the People’s republic of China had been founded.

That day, the century of humiliation officially ended. China had a government of their own. But China was still a rotten, skeleton of a country. In truth, the century of humiliation ended. The country was still divided, the country was still poor and the scars of the century of humiliation were still fresh. China had gotten out of the century of humiliation, but it was yet to recover.

China had gone from this:

(This isn’t a full map, at its height the Qing empire controlled Korea)

To this:

Britain still controlled Hong Kong, Portugal still controlled Macau, and the Nationalists still controlled Taiwan. In fact, the majority of the Chinese people were not represented in the UN. The UN still only recognized the KMT as the official government of China. “Red” China, was nothing in the world’s eyes.

Under the CCP, China eventually took back Xinjiang and Tibet and got back Macau and Hong Kong. China eventually got rid of the warlords and became united again. Then, in 1997, Hong Kong was given back to China. Then, the oldest, deepest and most noticeable wound from the century of humiliation finally healed. The century of humiliation had officially ended for China in the 40’s, but when Hong Kong was returned, China was reunified. The century of humiliation finally, truly ended.

The scars are still there today, even as China becomes a world power, the scars are still there. The Koreas are independent nations, Taiwan is still controlled by the ROC, Mongolia is a separate country and Hong Kong still has protests. But they are healed, and the Chinese people don’t really notice them.

To the Chinese people, China is returning to its old days. Personally, I think China can never have those old days back, the world has changed too much. But China has healed and China is moving into the new world, ready to try to put the past century behind it.