A question about the Qing Dynasty

I have read a lot about history in my lifetime as it is a lifelong interest for me. China is not my specialist field so there may be others on this forum who may know more than me on this subject and are welcome to correct any errors on my part. But I have read books about the subject before.

Yes the Han Chinese saw the Qing dynasty as one of foreign conquerors, the Manchus. For one thing, the former Chinese custom of braiding their hair in pigtails was mandated by their Manchu overlords. For this reason, when the Chinese revolted against their rulers, as they did in a massive way in the 19th century in the Taiping Rebellion, the rebels as an act of defiance abandoned the practice of tying their hair in pigtails. So it is a curious thing that a custom we in the west long associated with China, was seen by the Chinese themselves as a foreign imposition and another symbol of Manchu oppression.

Yet the Han Chinese's relationship to the Qing dynasty was a complex one. Because they also believed in a thousands of year old concept known as the Mandate of Heaven. That when a ruling dynasty loses this mandate, a series of disasters are inevitable leading eventually to the downfall of the dynasty and its replacement by a new one which in turn acquires the Mandate of Heaven. So even though the Qing were seen as foreign conquerors, the Han at the same time mostly accepted their right to rule on the basis of the Mandate of Heaven. But if they lost this mandate, disasters would follow, and eventually they would be overthrown as people and powerful groups concluded that they had lost the mandate of heaven. In practice what this meant to the Chinese was that the Qing regime was accepted as the legitimate regime by most because of its strength and absolute power. But if it lost this the Chinese were likely to turn against it.

All this historical psychological baggage tends to result in most Chinese accepting the right to rule of all-powerful leaders but are far more likely to be dissatisfied with weak ones whose right to rule they will consequently not accept.

Another historical fact of significance is that the Chinese saw their ruling dynasty as being supreme on earth, the centre of the world. They tended to assume automatically that outsiders were barbarians, and that any deputations from them were actually tribute missions. It almost never crossed their minds that outsiders might dare to see themselves as equal of the Chinese rulers, let alone superiors. But any military threat from an industrially and technologically expanding Europe did not manifest itself until the 19th century. And so Chinese military technology stagnated at a 17th or 18th century level whilst European military technology grew far more advanced. Until this power was used against them, the Chinese continued to assume that they themselves were the post powerful nation on earth, the pinnacle of civilisation. When the Europeans sent trade missions to China, the Chinese automatically assumed that these were tribute missions, come from afar to acknowledge the greatness of China. And the superior status of its rulers above all others. And then came the first eye opening clash, over Opium.

Because increasingly, British and other foreign merchants had been growing rich selling Opium to the Chinese people, and causing terrible drug dependency and addiction issues. Much like heroin in Europe and America today, the powers that be recognised opium addiction as a terrible and worsening blight on Chinese society. So the Chinese state chose to launch what we in the west today would call a war on drugs, and confiscate and destroy all the opium they could find. But this threatened to ruin many western, particularly British, businessmen who had invested heavily in the trade. And some of these had influential backing in parliament. The long and the short of it is that the British began the First Opium War with China to protect the interests of British merchants. China assumed that these foreign barbarians from an island far away in ships would be easily defeated by the mighty Chinese. But of course the opposite happened. Western military firepower was so superior that the Chinese were defeated with ease, with the British able to virtually dictate terms, which included the cession of the island of Hong Kong. That their own mighty emperors, the centre of the world, had been so easily defeated by a bunch of foreign barbarians would have been experienced as a profoundly shocking phenomenon to the Chinese, many of whom would have interpreted this as a massive sign that the Qing had lost the mandate of heaven. This in turn would have given many more of them the psychological and moral license to rebel. The Qing had lost the mandate of heaven, thereby making it a moral and political duty to overthrow it and replace it with something different in which the mandate of heaven could be re-invested.

The following decades reinforced this thinking with the massive Taiping Rebellion, and a second punitive war by foreigners led by the British again which this time marched to the capital and sacked the imperial palace itself. Very few Chinese could now believe that the Qing held the mandate of heaven still, and ever more of them were seeking something or someone to replace it with. Of course the depredations of powerful western nations continued, with many of them aping the British and taking control of treaty ports almost at will. The British themselves in 1898 gained many mainland areas opposite Hong Kong in a 99 year lease in an agreement which they virtually dictated to China. This, along with the island itself, was what the British finally gave back in 1997.

As the 19th century progressed, it became increasingly obvious to ever more Chinese that western technology, especially military technology, was actually far superior to their own. After millennia of automatic assumption of the absolute superiority of their own civilisation, this would have been a very psychologically traumatising realisation, which would have greatly acted to reinforce the belief that their own rulers had lost the mandate of heaven. It also encouraged growing numbers of Chinese to want to modernise China militarily, and to seek ideas from the technologically superior nations upon which to find a government with a new mandate of heaven. Western ideas of nationalism, democracy, socialism, Christianity, liberalism, etc began to be uttered amongst growing numbers of the educated minority. For good or ill, both the later Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung were intellectual products of this looking to the west, both adopting ideologies whose roots lay in western thinking or strands of it, rather than Chinese.

There also befell in China another revelatory disaster. Another Asian power which had openly and eagerly modernised along western lines defeated China with ease. in the Sinp-Japanese War of 1894-95, and wrenched Korea away from Chinese sway.

But having to give up notions of superiority in Chinese civilisation in any way was in spite of all this so profoundly shocking to many Chinese, that some could not accept it and instead formed a conservative reaction against any adoption of western ideas or technologies. Unfortunately for China, one of these latter was the Dowager Empress and de facto ruler herself.

So when reforms began to be initiated - the 100 Days - a reactionary coup brought it to a halt. The powers that be then encouraged a kind of reactionary anti-foreigner, in some ways proto-nationalist group, the Boxers - so called because their name translates as Society of Harmonious Fists - to rise up against foreigners, particularly Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts, and besieged the western legations in Beijing. There then followed a punitive military expedition by the western powers in which Japan also participated, which again humiliated the Chinese.

Not long after came the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, in which for the first time in many centuries, an Asian nation militarily defeated a European Great power using western military technology to do it. The lessons for China in this were obvious. If China wanted its great power back it would have to become technologically equal to the west, certainly militarily. It is a lesson still very much in the forefront of the Chinese leadership today. Incidentally the Russo-Japanese War was a wake up call to Europe too. It demonstrated that their military superiority was solely based upon technological superiority, and not any innate racial, intellectual, spiritual, or cultural superiority as tended to be taken for granted until then. It clearly showed that non-European peoples armed with the same technologies as us could be as readily formidable.

Anyway, there followed a time of intense chaos with the Qing overthrown by Chinese Nationalists but struggling to assert authority over warlords. It later sought the help of the Communists who had also arisen as a force to be reckoned with, but subsequently turned on them. There was then pretty much a de facto civil war in China with the Nationalists mostly on top at first. Then came Japanese aggression with their seizure of Manchuria and fighting in the Shanghai area, and in 1937 all out Japanese invasion. There then followed a three cornered war in which Chinese Communists, Chinese Nationalists, and the Japanese were all fighting each other. When Japan was defeated in WW2 in 1945, the Chinese Civil War became all out with the Communists driving the Nationalist off the mainland altogether in 1949.

Mao's regime of course brought its own instabilities and chaos, and was responsible for millions more deaths. Mao clung too rigidly to western ideas that were already proving less than totally successful in the USSR. But after his death, successive leaders abandoned such ideological assumptions and pursued whatever worked in improving the technological advancement and thus strength of China, including western style market reforms. But their power is based on absolute strength at home and limited toleration of dissent, with willingness to suppress revolt with maximum force if necessary. Shocking in western eyes, the Tiananmen Square massacre readily fits in with historical China.
Although many of them will not consciously put it in such terms anymore, the Chinese subconsciously see their current regime as enjoying the mandate of heaven once more after many decades of chaos. Which is why so many just accept it. And will probably continue to do so for as long as it is seen as almighty whilst making and keeping China a great power. It is likely to be the case that deep down many want to believe that China truly is the centre of the world again. We in the west need to understand this, because China's goal is likely to be nothing less than establishing itself once more as the pinnacle of civilisation, using technological superiority to achieve this. Western values of democracy, freedom and liberalism are unlikely to figure prominently in this conception, and will be applied only insofar as they assist rather than hinder pursuit of the ultimate goal. Because the Chinese psyche tends to believe that their natural place in the world is as civilisational top dog.

Well yes, like most societies China had a merchant class who would have seen European traders as an opportunity for themselves to make money also. This would have brought some of them into contact with westerners and western ideas, and it's impact was most readily seen at first in the influence of Christianity in the Taiping Rebellion. But it was a perverted and distorted form of Christianity no western church would have accepted as such. For one thing its leader propagated the idea that he was the brother of Jesus. Clearly the idea of Christianity had been taken on board but altered to suit the pretensions to power of the leader and those around him. 

It is however notable that the Taiping Revolt did not really get going in any kind of serious way until after the west had so easily defeated China in the 1839-42 Opium War. And I believe that this likely acted as a catalyst in persuading many of the Chinese that the Qing had lost the mandate of heaven, whilst also making them more open to the ideas of those who had defeated them, including Christianity which was being proselytised by westerners at every opportunity. A rebel leader who may possibly have been mentally unbalanced with a messianic view of himself, took advantage of this with a bastardised form of Christianity that placed himself alongside Jesus. That he was able to persuade so many rested in part on a greater willingness to embrace western ideas without fully understanding them, but probably also on such assets as charisma and oratorical skills on the part of the leader

It is a rewarding thing for someone with a historical interest such as myself who knows something of recent Chinese history to discuss it with someone such as yourself who probably knows more about the subject than I do. Thank you.

I take on board what you have said about the Chinese language, which I know little about. Perhaps the beliefs of the Taiping were themselves not fully understood by the west? And perhaps they are open to different interpretations even today? I have read only a handful of books about 19th century China in my lifetime so cannot claim to have an exhaustive knowledge of the subject sufficient enough to challenge what you might have to say about the Taiping. 

My knowledge is patchy, but I think we are piecing it together. I had a crack at learning the language. I think it was this point when I started to see how very different their understanding of the world is. I found the best way to pick these concepts up the easiest was to listen to some explanations from some Chinese language teachers. One thing is clear, and that is the mainstream media's interpretation of what the Chinese say is open to huge scope for misunderstanding. Something that directly translated to English sounds like some weird religious/philosophical thing when it is actually a common expression and is quite mundane. I suppose to give an example from our language, we would know quite clearly what SOS means, but literally it sounds very strange if you had not come across it before.

I am no expert on the Japanese language either but am a very learned student of World War 2 history and it is often said that Japan's response to the Potsdam Declaration calling for Japanese surrender was misunderstood in the west. Because the Japanese word used in response could be translated as "ignore" which is how it was interpreted. But it could also mean "not comment on for the moment." Clearly the west has similar difficulty understanding the interpretation of Japanese, as you clearly describe it doing with Chinese.