 Good evening. I would like to welcome you again to tonight's fourth educational webinar sponsored by the Coalition Peace Initiative and co-sponsored by 11 other organizations which are shown on the screen while you are waiting for the webinar to begin. My name is Don Tao and I serve as your host and also the moderator for tonight's program. Tonight's program is modern Chinese history, 19th century. As we discussed in our first three webinars, the most important question facing the world today is whether the world is moving toward peace or moving toward war. And the key to answering that question depends on the relationship between the US and China. To understand current US-China relationship, we need to understand the historical relationship between US and China. And therefore we need to understand modern Chinese history, especially in the 19th century and the 20th century, how China was treated by the United States. Furthermore, how China was treated by the United States is very much related to how Chinese Americans are treated in the United States. And therefore we need to discuss the experience of Chinese Americans in the United States. That's why this series of webinars revolve around the three topics, Chinese American experience in the United States, modern Chinese history, and US-China relationship. We are organizing a series of nine educational webinars to help the people understand that the United States current policy of demonization of China must not be left unchallenged, otherwise we will never achieve our objective of moving toward peace. We hope that these educational webinars will help people understand the current US policy, United States policy of demonizing China is not based on facts, but on fabrications. And there's such fabricated demonization of China is not good not only for Chinese Americans, but also not good for Americans in general, and not good for the citizens of the world. Because you'll move the world toward war instead of peace. The consequence would be the critical funding will be allocated to the military and for wars. Instead of using those valuable resources to improve our economy, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure to work on global problems like climate change, pandemic, terrorism, poverty, illiteracy, discrimination, and promote peace. We hope that you join these peace promoting organizations like our co-sponsors to help move the world toward peace. Thank you. That's my source summary of the background of this webinar series. Now we will start tonight's program on the topic of modern Chinese history, 19th century. We are very glad to have our speaker, who's Professor Ken Hammon from New Mexico State University. Professor Hammon has been a student of Chinese history for more than 50 years. He lived and worked in Beijing from 1982 to 1987, handling arrangements for educational delegations from the United States to meet with their counterparts in China. He received a master degree in East Asian regional studies in 1989, and his PhD in history and East Asian languages in 1994. Both from Harvard University. He has taught in New Mexico State University since 1994, and is now Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University. He has written and edited five books on Chinese history, as well as more than 2000 articles, and the 36 lecture series from Yao to Mao, 5000 years of Chinese history for the great causes series. He is also an associate editor, a journal of Chinese history, proposed by Cambridge University Press, and he leads a research team on Chinese local gazetteers at the Max Plan Institute for the history of science in Berlin. He's an activist and pivot to peace, working to promote better relations between the United States and China. He came for peace and to oppose war between our countries. As you can see, Professor Hammon has long history of studies and research in Chinese history. So we are very happy and glad that he can be here today and share his knowledge with us. Professor Hammon, the floor is yours. So if you want to share the screen. Thank you, Don. It's delightful to be here. I'm very pleased to be part of this webinar series. And I think that it's, it's very important for us all to try to understand, not just the complexities of the present moment, but how we have arrived at the, at the situation in which we find ourselves today. So I'm going to go ahead and bring up some slides that I've prepared to go along with my presentation tonight if I can, if I can do that, let's see. There we go. There we are. Okay. I think that it's, it's good for us to, to start thinking about modern Chinese history by taking a kind of kind of large overview of what has been a couple of centuries of development. A way in which we can see what's happening today as the, not the culmination but the latest phase of a long, long process. I put up this, this little chart here, this graph here, which is all about the proportion of global economic activity being produced in different parts of the world. And you can see here in the United States, Western Europe, China, India, the Middle East. If we look back, we can see that as late as the early 19th century. China was responsible for somewhere around 30%, sometimes even more than that of global economic activity. In other words, all the wealth, all the value being produced in the world, a third of it almost was being produced in China. But as you can see from the early 19th century, there's a dramatic decline. There's a long, long drop in that proportion until by the middle of the 20th century. China's share in global economic activity had dropped to perhaps 5%. In more recent times, this particular graph only comes up to 2003, but if we project these lines of development, we can see that China is now in the early 21st century, returning to a position perhaps not quite as preeminent as what it had occupied at the early 19th century. So somewhere around right now around 20%, maybe a little over 20% of global economic productivity is coming out of China. So this is the cycle. This is the historical trajectory that I want to try to begin to unpack a little bit tonight. So in the 18th century, the 1700s, the world was already a very complexly interconnected network of trading relations. And within that network, China played a really central pivotal role because manufactured goods, whether it was ceramics or silks, cotton textiles, tea, other kinds of metal or wooden products, all kinds of goods in demand were being produced in China. The Western countries, Europe, the Western Hemisphere, had a great desire for these products, for these goods. A lot of global trade was a network of relationships which culminated in China. China was the great source of a lot of the highest value goods that were in demand around the world. We can see on this map, if we look at the sort of left edge of the map, we can see a big red arrow heading west across the Pacific. On the other side of the map, we can see that arrow coming into the area around the Philippines. This was a trade link between the Spanish Empire in the New World, and the Philippines and beyond that China, that shipped silver from the New World over to Manila, where Chinese merchants exchange that silver for Chinese products, and then made their way back to Mexico. Some stayed there, some went on to Europe beyond that. We can also see trade routes coming around Africa into the Indian Ocean. Much of that trade made its way up to China as well. China was the source of great wealth. China was the source of products that were in demand in Europe, in the New World, in other parts of Eurasia and Africa as well. So, at the end of the 18th century, as it had been for many centuries before that, for perhaps a thousand years before that. China was the great economic powerhouse of global trade. The goods that were produced in China were in great demand, were traded out. There was a dynamic economy within China itself, but it was also linked into these larger global trading networks. In 1793, Great Britain sent a diplomatic trade mission to China. At a point in time in the 18th century, China had a highly developed system for international trade, what's often called the Canton system. Canton being the western name for the city of Guangzhou in southern China, which was the interface between China's economy and the global economy. Western merchants who wished to trade with China could come to Guangzhou and engage in economic exchanges. They could buy, they could sell. This was the great market, the great intersection between these two sectors of the global economy. The British, who were the leading western economic power at that time, didn't really have a lot of goods that they could sell to China. So instead, what they had to do was bring silver to China. China was happy to trade with foreigners, but they needed something that they could exchange for Chinese goods. They didn't really want the heavy woolen textiles that were produced in Britain or other kinds of foreign goods. What they wanted was cash, what they wanted was silver. Can I just interrupt for a second? Part of the audience said, can you expand your slides a little bit larger so they can see it better? Can you do that? I already expanded on mine, but I don't know if I'm affecting other peoples. I'm not sure how that would be done. Actually, for those people who are problem, you can actually expand it on my screen. I can expand it by just moving my cursor to the edge of the slide and just move it to the right so I make it bigger. So you want to try that for the people who are asking that question. There are two parallel lines on the right edge of the PowerPoint. You move that to the right as Paul Ston said. Okay, so sorry for the interruption, can't continue. No problem, no problem. I want people to be able to see these as clearly as possible. The last mission that is sent by King George III of England was intended to try to get China to open up to a more flexible trading system to open more ports to allow British merchants to trade directly with Chinese merchants rather than through government intermediaries to create a diplomatic representation for Britain in China, in the Chinese capital at Beijing. But the Chen Long Emperor who we see pictured in this drawing from the time, declined the British initiatives. And he wrote this in a letter to King George III was that China basically had everything it needed China produced all the goods that that the Chinese people required, and the foreigners didn't really have anything that the Chinese wanted or needed. So, thank you very much for your interest, but basically we're going to maintain the existing relationship. And that was a relationship in which foreign merchants could come to China acquire Chinese goods, take them home and sell them and make a profit. But they had to do so within the established order that that the Qing dynasty in China had created and was maintained. Now the British were very frustrated with this. And what they were looking for was a way to have something they could sell to China that would generate money for them, which they could then use to buy Chinese goods to sell and make a profit on elsewhere. They didn't want to have to be bringing silver to China, all the time. As it happened, the British who had recently been taking over parts of India came up with a solution to this problem that led into a whole new era of the relationship between the West and China. And that was opium. Opium was grown in India. British in India, we're trying to undermine the Indian cotton textile industry so that Britain could become more competitive in its textile productions. They drove a lot of farmers out of raising cotton and into raising opium. And they took that opium, and they traded it to China, where it was illegal. So it was a smuggling trade of bringing opium into China in order to sell it and make enough money to then buy Chinese goods, which they could take back to the West and make a profit on there. Well, there was a time in the early 19th century, when the opium trade was developing with China was also the period was also the moment when the industrial revolution was radically transforming the British economy. Suddenly, the British were able to produce low cost products in huge volumes. Okay, especially things like let's say cotton textiles. So now, they were on the one hand, undermining the Indian cotton textile industry and promoting building up their own industrial textile industry. But at the same time, they were developing the opium production in India. So they started selling more and more opium in China. And as I say it was illegal in China, it was it was a banned product. So they had to smuggle it in, but there was sufficient demand growing demand in China for this. And it became a serious, a serious friction between the British and the Chinese, the British demanded payment for opium in silver. Silver starts to come out of China. For centuries it had been flowing into China. Now it starts to come out of China. This creates serious economic problems for the Chinese economy for the Chinese government. So they try to gain control over that situation they want to try to stop the illegal opium trade that the British are bringing to China. And it should be noted that it's not just the British the British were the biggest players in this, but the Americans the French also took part in the opium trade as well a lot of American, especially New England trading families made a lot of money from the opium trade but the British were far and away the biggest players in this. The industrial revolution though changes the equation in two ways. One is that it gives the British the capacity to produce goods at much lower costs much lower unit costs. The second is that it gives the British new industrial military capabilities, more powerful weapons, steamships, the ability to project power in unprecedented ways. And all that happens in tandem with the rise of the ideology of free trade. What happens then is a great collision between the Chinese, the ancient Chinese imperial system, and the, the modernized industrial revolutionary system of trade and military power coming out of Britain. The British now interpret China's resistance to the opium trade as their challenge to the principles of free trade. And the British Parliament debates this, and they decide in 1838 that China must be opened up to free trade. They don't say we're going to go to war to defend British drug dealers. They don't make it a matter of the principle of free trade. So, the opium war. Sometimes we have to say the first opium war because there's another one we'll talk about in a little bit. The opium war of 1839 to 42 sees the Royal Navy, the British name, go to China, sale up and down the Chinese coast, bombarding Chinese port cities killing many, many people destroying property, all in the name of opening up China to free trade, which really means at this point to the opium trade to the trade of drug dealers in the in the English East India Company, shipping goods from India to China. The British defeat China in the opium war. And in 1842, China is forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which opens up a number of ports, places like Ningbo and and Trenjo, but most particularly Shanghai to British trade. And it, it starts a process it starts a system of what come to be called the unequal treaties, because these are not treaties that are entered into by equal parties, who can just reach an agreement about things. These are treaties that are imposed on China by the industrial power of British militarism, ramped up by modern weapons modern warships by the ability of China to militarily humiliate. I'm sorry, the ability of England to militarily humiliate China in in this first opium war. These equal treaties open up a whole series of ports along the China coast, and that sets in process. The, the undermining of China's domestic economy suddenly cheap industrial goods produced in the factories in England and and later in other European countries, start to flood into China. This was a significant demand for locally produced goods, which admittedly were of somewhat higher cost, because they were produced in pre industrial ways. They were perfectly good products, perfectly well established production systems in China, but now these cheap industrial goods from Europe are undermining their market, undermining their competitiveness. There are devastating effects on the domestic economy in China. As a result of that, there is there's a lot of hardship there's a lot of suffering on the part of many Chinese people. And that leads to, among other effects to the outbreak of a great rebellion, a huge rebellion against the existing order in China, what we call the typing heavenly kingdom, the typing 10 wall. And this is a movement of poor people it starts in southern China, who have been displaced many of them have lost their jobs lost their livelihood. This is one of the, the new unequal treaty system the opening of ports the influx of British and other European manufactured goods. This starts out first in the countryside as as kind of a rural commune movement, but because of difficulties that arise with with the imperial authorities. In the 1850s, the typing movement becomes a military uprising or rebellion against the Qing dynasty against the the weakness of China against the intrusions of Western imperialism. The typing rebels march to the north. You can see on the map here they carve out a significant space in the very heart of China. They establish a rebellious capital at Nanjing one of the old imperial centers of China, and for over 10 years. They tried to create an alternative order. They were strongly influenced by Christian ideas they sort of wanted to, to create a kind of primitive Communalism to share wealth to share property. The typing rebellion was put down by the Qing dynasty with a little bit of assistance from the foreigners but largely by the actions of of domestic officials domestic military forces. The typing rebellion is repressed, but at great cost. Some 20 million Chinese lose their lives in the course of this rebellion, and it's repression it's a huge disruption a huge challenge to the stability, and the viability of the Qing dynasty. Okay. While this is going on while the Qing dynasty is fighting for its life. The foreigners the Western imperialist powers are continuing to press their demands to try to increase their advantages the concessions that they can ring out of the Chinese, the Chinese government. And that finds a particular expression right in the middle of the typing rebellion. In what we think of as the second opium. In 1856, there's, there's an incident on the Yangtze River, where a ship called the arrow, a ship with a British registry, but which was entirely operated by the Chinese vessel Chinese trading vessel was stopped and inspected by Qing government forces. This was seen as an affront to the power of the foreign imperialists, and it leads to a big diplomatic controversy. Followed by a new treaty yet another unequal treaty the Treaty of Tianjin from 1858, which mandated the, the, the, the admission of foreign troops, foreign diplomatic representatives into Chinese cities, including the capital at Beijing. Chinese, although they had been forced to sign this treaty were reluctant to fully implement. They didn't really want foreign diplomatic representatives coming into their, their capital. They dragged their feet on this. And because of this, the British and the French launched a second military invasion of China, this is what we call the second opium war in 1859 and 1860. It involved the, the military occupation of Beijing, the imperial court, the emperor and, and, and the imperial officials had to flee the capital. They left the capital went up north to the, to the city of Chungda, the Manchu secondary capital. Since Beijing was occupying the foreign troops the British and the French carried out one of the great atrocities of this whole period, which was the looting and the burning of the Imperial summer palace in the northwestern suburb of Beijing. This was a beautiful complex Italian architects had been brought in in the 18th century to help construct it. It was a blend of Western and traditional Chinese architecture and gardens and just, it was a lovely, lovely compound. And the British and French troops looted it, it took them days and days to carry out all the wealth that was in the palace, and then they burned it. In the picture at the bottom. This is the ruins of the summer palace are still an important kind of iconic symbol in Beijing of this legacy of what the Chinese call the century of humiliation, the repeated invasion, occupation, defeat and humiliation of China at the hands of Western imperialism. The second opium war is ended with yet another treaty, the Convention of Beijing from 1860, which finally opened the capital the Chinese capital up to Western diplomatic representation. So now the Western powers begin to establish their embassies. What in this context they called the legations within Beijing, they were they occupied a particular quarter in the southeastern part of the city, but all the Western powers join in this process, they established their diplomatic enclave. And now, you know, the sovereignty of China is further eroded further compromised by by these activities. By the 1860s, the later 1860s, the 70s into the 1880s, the Chinese government or at least significant elements within the Chinese government, finally begin to take seriously the need to try to respond to these challenges from from the Western powers and individuals like Lee Hong Zhang, Zhang Zhidong, Zuo Zhongtang, these, these kind of provincial level Chinese administrators begin to put together a program that we call the self strengthening program, where China would would reinvigorate itself would strengthen itself would build up its capacity to resist and stand up to the Western powers. And this involved a number of reform initiatives. On the one hand they created a new institution within the Chinese state called the only young and the only young man, it sometimes it sometimes characterized in in Western scholarship as sort of the new foreign ministry of China. It's really a set of offices which were designed to deal with the threat from the Western powers. Okay, so it included things like a translation bureau to translate texts from the West, so that Chinese could could learn more could understand more about what the foreigners were up to what they thought they were doing. It included initiatives to begin to develop industrial enterprises in China, Chinese owned and operated modern productive capacity. It included a bureau for training Chinese to speak foreign languages so they could engage with the foreigners more efficiently and more effectively, and it also involved the sending of delegations to Western countries to study and to learn about how the foreigners operated what made them so powerful. What could China do to try to strengthen itself. A lot of the leaders of the totally young men and of these initiatives were figures like the three on the left there, who were, who were Chinese officials not members of the Manchu ruling aristocracy, but, but sort of pragmatic Chinese officials who who wanted to solve the problems facing the empire. And of course, central to all of this was the question of military modernization, building arsenals building shipyards, developing a domestic capacity to produce modern weapon. The only way by strengthening China militarily that it could even begin to hope to to stand up to the power of the West, the Western powers had made it very clear that they were happy to deploy military force to subdue and humiliate China. So the self strengthening movement was all about trying to develop a capacity to to resist the power of the West on China's own terms. Well, that process. While it was pursued with great enthusiasm by some elements within the Qing state. It faces its, its most serious test in the first Sino Japanese war in 1894 to 1895. And that the self strengthening movement, which was an admirable effort to try to strengthen China to give China the capacity to resist outside aggression. It was never the predominant policy orientation within the change state. There was a strong and dedicated core of officials who worked to improve China's capacities, but in the overall span of the Chinese government, the Qing government. There was, there were a lot of officials, a lot of institutional interests, which simply couldn't couldn't quite get with the program. They wanted to preserve their own power their own privileges. They wanted to stick with the way things had always been. And what that, what that results in is a kind of half hearted approach to self strength. And when Japan, which had been singularly devoted to its own modernization, its own westernization to the development of a modern industrial economy and military. When Japan and China come into conflict in 1894. When Japan defeats China. Not without any effort but but it's a pretty decisive loss on the part of the Chinese. There'd been a rebellion in Korea, the Tong Hawk movement, an anti Western movement in Korea, the Qing dynasty wanted to intervene to support the Korean monarchy. They wanted this to Japan and Japan in secret diplomatic exchanges said sure that's fine. But then, when Chinese troops entered Korea, the Japanese publicly denounced this as a Chinese invasion, and sent their own troops in to fight against China. The war was fought mostly in Korea, a little bit in the Aldung province in Northeastern China, but also in the in the sea between China and Korea. And it culminates in a pretty decisive victory for the Japanese, the modern Japanese military is able to defeat the only partially modernized Chinese military. This again is an even further humiliation for China, not just to be victimized by the Western barbarians, but now to lose a war to Japan, which had traditionally been seen as a kind of secondary culture within the larger East Asian context. Here's a final effort, a serious effort at reforming the Qing dynasty what we call the 100 days reforms in 1898. As soon as the Sino-Japanese War was over in 1895 which happened to be a year when candidates for the Imperial examinations had gathered in Beijing. And 80,000 highly educated patriotic Chinese examination candidates sign a petition calling for reform of the imperial state and figures like Kang Yawei, Liang Qichao, Tang Satoong, all become involved in efforts to modernize and update the Chinese imperial administration. In 1898, the Guangxu Emperor brings in these three and a number of other reformist officials as part of his Imperial advisory body. And for 100 days the emperor issues a series of edicts, trying to modernize trying to reform the Chinese state, trying to make it more efficient. Changing the educational system, opening up the government to the input of ordinary citizens. But all of that is brought to a halt in September of 1898 by the Empress Dowager Sushi, who throws in with the conservative Manchu aristocracy, with the reactionary elements amongst the Chinese imperial officials, to a halt to these efforts to reform and modernize the dynasty. That was probably the last real chance that the imperial system had to adapt itself to these changing conditions. But instead of reform, what we get at the end of the 19th century is an anti-western rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion. This was a popular uprising beginning in Shandong Province in eastern China. Shandong had been a sort of sphere of influence of the Germans. There was lots of Christian missionary activity. And there were a lot of frictions and tensions and resentments that built up in rural society in Shandong. The Boxers were a traditional kind of martial arts society that was also very patriotic, and they wanted to expel the foreigners. At first, the Qing dynasty wanted to sort of stop the Boxers because they were afraid that they would upset the foreigners. But after the suppression of the reforms in 1898, the Empress Dowager decided that maybe the Boxers could be a lever to try to resist the further demands of the western imperialists. So then the Qing dynasty begins to support the Boxers and encourage the Boxers. By 1900, a large contingent of Boxer rebels come to Beijing. They're welcomed into the city by the Qing government, and they then besiege the foreign diplomatic neighborhood, the delegation quarter, as it is referred to in June of 1900. They besiege it for almost two months, wanting to suppress and expel the foreign powers from China. Not surprisingly, the foreign powers respond to this with yet another military expedition, what's called the Eight Power Expeditionary Force, an alliance that included everybody from Russia and Japan, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, even the Austro-Hungarian Empire sends a contingent. The Eight Power Expeditionary Force comes to Beijing. They lift the siege. They impose a heavy burden on the Qing government and indemnity, a huge financial burden that the Chinese government was going to have to pay off all the way down to the middle of the 20th century. They further humiliate the Qing state. They execute a number of officials for having collaborated with the Boxers. It's yet another defeat and humiliation for the old imperial system. And not surprisingly, in many ways, it marks kind of kind of the last moment for that system. In the first decade of the 20th century, there are a few late efforts to reform the Qing dynasty. The old imperial examination system is abolished in 1905. They make some very modest efforts to developing broader political participation, provincial consultative assemblies in a couple of places are convened. But they're not even looked to as significant participants for another 10, 20, 30 years. It's a very long term, slow process of reform that was envisioned by the Qing. By this time, the dye has already been cast figures like Sun Yat-sen, who was the founder and coordinator of the Tong Meng Hui, the sort of umbrella organization over a number of revolutionary anti-Ching anti imperialist movements. Sun Yat-sen leads the movement for overthrowing the old imperial order, seeing it as having become not just incapable of modernizing, but a dead weight holding China back from being able to become a part of the modern world. In 1908, both the Guangxu Emperor and the Empress Dowager Tsui Xi died, really on the same night, in somewhat suspicious circumstances. But that leaves the dynasty adrift. A little boy, Aisin Jodo Pui, is named as the emperor. He's only three years old. He's a council of regents of Manchu nobles is appointed, but they're unable to salvage the dynasty. And in 1911, in October of 1911, the Xinhai Revolution breaks out. Military mutinies in beginning in Hong Kong and what's now Wuhan and central China, and spreading across the empire, spell the end of the old imperial order. That's where I'm going to stop tonight. And next week, we'll pick up the story with the efforts to find a new way, a new path forward to build a new China that are going to animate the first half of the 20th century. So at this point, take down my slides, and I'll be happy to answer questions. Dr. Hammond, there were two, two chats directed to you directly with questions submitted by the audience. Sure. I see 53 entries in the. Okay. The one that was sent to you was timed 544 from May from May lamb to you at 544. I can read the question to you would you like me to read just just read the question. Okay, this is a question from Dr Russell John, who was the presenter moderator for the webinar session one and three. I was asked how did British legitimate legitimate legitimate legitimate opium production and trade, given. Given given they knew it was illegal addictive and seemingly morally wrong. Did they have just economic free trade agreements, or did they have other rationales. If you if you read the parliamentary debates in in 1838 when when parliament was trying to decide what to do. The British opium traders in in in Canton in Guangzhou had petitioned parliament to say look the Chinese are interfering with our trade, they've confiscated some of our opium and destroyed it. They're suffering great economic losses. Help us out. When parliament debated what to do. They didn't, they didn't debate it in terms of, oh, we have these drug dealers that that want to make sure they can make a profit. They debated it in terms of of the ideology of free trade they said look. The British merchant, no matter what the product is should be able to go anywhere they want, meet with whomever they want, and make whatever deals they can. So it was constructed as a as a principled position in support of this idea free trade. Free trade itself was only popular in England at that point, because finally, the British had something that they could sell effectively in other markets for centuries for 1617 18th century. The British practice what we call mercantilism, which was government protection of capitalist trade. Because the British didn't really have a lot of goods that they could sell out in global markets. So the government created monopoly structures and other forms of protection to ensure profitability for British for British businesses. But now, when British businesses were more competitive. Suddenly the idea free trade was very attractive. So they that's how they articulate they legitimize themselves they said, we're just defending the principles of free trade. What that meant of course was opening the door for the opium trade, but also for all other kinds of British manufacturers, right. So it was a, it was a, it was a confrontation that was triggered by the opium trade but it soon grew far beyond the opium trade. Okay. Thank you, Dr Hammond that was very interesting and enlightening. There's another question from the audience. How much did China have to pay Japan for losing the first sign of Japanese war of 1894. Well, the, the, the treaty that ends the Sino Japanese war the first site Sino Japanese war. It actually involved a significant financial indemnity, but China had to do a number of things that were that were very damaging. First and foremost, of course, they had to renounce the long long historical special relationship between Korea and China Korea had been very closely bound up with China. Korea had its own version of the Confucian examination system. And at the very top of that, the Chinese and Korean systems kind of merged Korean, the highest level Korean examination candidates could actually go to Beijing and sit for the Chinese imperial examinations, which gave them even more prestige back in Korea. And China was obligated to help Korea with its its military defense. And of course this went all the way back to the Imjin war, back in the 1590s when Japan had invaded Korea then. There was a long and very intimate relationship between Korea and China, and that had to be renounced the Chinese were forced to say, we will no longer give China give Korea our support our defense, our care, you know, Taiwan, the island of Taiwan, which was a province of China itself, had to be seated to Japan became part of the Japanese Empire for the next 50 years. It wasn't so much a strictly monetary or financial indemnity, so much as the concession, political concessions, territorial concessions, and the beginning of course of the dramatic erosion of China's relationship with Japan, which which would culminate later in Japan's direct invasion of China itself. Thank you. Among the questions submitted. There were several very interesting questions one of them I just want to bring out. And that is the British colony of colony of Hong Kong, actually in mouse, the small island of Hong Kong, the island across the land across the bay, the island, and then the new territories which is the large piece of land connecting Kowloon and mainland China. So how was that became part of the colony of British during the 19th century. Can you elaborate on that. This treaty, actually is more than one treaty. Right, that's right it's a it's a kind of piecemeal process. The island of Hong Kong is seated to Britain. As a result of the first opium war as a result of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 the British wanted a base of operations that would allow them to to develop naval facilities and to to have a permanent trading presence that was separate from what had been the cantan system up at Guangzhou on Chameon Island right there off outside the city of Guangzhou. And so they forced the Chinese to cede Hong Kong Island to them right away. Kowloon was added a little bit later around the time of the second opium war. As a further concession by that point, Britain was developing its trade developing its naval facilities there, and they wanted control of both sides of the harbor. Not just Hong Kong Island, but also the the area immediately adjacent to that on the north side the mainland side of the harbor. So Kowloon is is acquired at that point. The economy as the population in Hong Kong grew, and as the economy developed, they wanted, they needed more territory for residential development, and more territory for they wanted a kind of agricultural hinterland, if you will. And so in 1897, the new territories were added to Hong Kong on a 100 year lease. And it is of course it's the expiration of that hundred year lease in 1997. That was the trigger in a sense for the negotiations that led to the return of all of Hong Kong to to Chinese sovereignty. So the new territories, the little strip of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island would have been pretty unsustainable. And really by that point, the Chinese were just sort of done with, with, you know, with tolerating the British presence. So the, the, the end of that lease the end of the lease on the new territories was, was a perfect occasion for saying look let's just put this historical problem, you know, to bed let's just let's just pass this by. And that led to the agreements that that returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a minor, minor correction of the date. It was actually in 1898 is a 99 year lease not a hundred year lease. Okay, very good. Okay, thank you. So that that's very good. So the Hong Kong situation is actually very complicated. It involves three different treaties, as you explained. Yeah. Another question. And you mentioned that the Americans were also involved in selling opium to China. As a matter of fact, they make so much profit. And you mentioned that, especially in New England territories, a lot of riches were made, which went to the New England. Now, the quick one of the question was that did the United States have to go to war to China, in order to get some of the benefits that Britain extracted from China. In other words, did they have to go to war with China. The Americans, the Americans, you know, once, once America becomes independent of Britain in the in the 1780s. America American commercial interests were very eager to develop trade with China the first American ships going to to to Guangzhou to be part of the Canton trade, go in in the 1780s, right. And that trade develops step by step over the rest of the late 18th and the 19th century. As the opium trade begins to develop as the British begin to develop the opium trade the Americans see that and and they want to be a part of that. They can't be sourcing opium in India because that's a monopoly held by the English East India Company. So the Americans start buying opium from the Ottoman Empire in Turkey. The port of Izmir on the on the agency in Turkey becomes the source where American traders go to buy by opium, and they bring that opium then out through the Mediterranean all the way down around to China, and they and they become part of the opium trade themselves. So they join in to to that trade and they become you know, important players but not the dominant players it's always the British who are who are the biggest players. When the opium war takes place, the Americans are not belligerents the American don't the Americans don't become part of the war between Britain and China. China is forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. Two years later, the United States signs the Treaty of Wang Xia with China. Part of the whole unequal treaty system was a clause that was included first in the Treaty of Nanjing and then in subsequent treaties with all the other countries. That's called the no most favored nation clause. And what the no most favored nation clause says is that there shall be no most favored nation. No country is going to get a more favorable position than we are right. So the British do this first the Americans do it later. And I like to think of it, I like to characterize it as kind of equal opportunity imperialism, right. The British signed the treaty in 1842 and that gives them particular concessions and agreements with China. But if a later treaty is signed with anybody else. Any concessions in that tree, which weren't in the original treaty with the British automatically come to Britain anyway. The United States, the Americans do this the French do this everybody does this so that whatever one imperialist power gets from China, everybody else gets as well. So the United States doesn't have to fight a war with China because they get the benefits of the British war with China, when they sign their own treaty, because they get the same concessions already made, plus a little more, which the British then get as well. So from the point of view of the imperialists it's a wonderful, let's all share the booty kind of kind of system. Okay, in light of the late, latest, but there's one more question I would like to ask. And that is, it was mentioned in one of the earlier webinars, and it will be mentioned again in the later webinars. I just want to ask you whether you want to say anything about the interesting period of the Berlin game treaty around 1868. The Berlin game treaty. It's an interesting moment in the relationship between the United States and China. The Berlin game treaty extends to China. Certain certain concessions certain almost privileges of diplomatic equality. The Berlin game treaty facilitates, for example, immigration from China to the United States, it's going to be overwritten very soon by by reactionary agreements by restrictions on on immigration as early as the 1880s. So 14 years later 1882, we begin to have Chinese exclusion acts and things like that. But for a brief period the Berlin game treaty seems to be a moment when the United States was trying to kind of advantageously position itself vis-à-vis the Chinese government. This is a strategy that we see the Americans pursuing from time to time. The open door notes, for example, in 1900, where the United States tries to push back against the potential, you know, a partition of China. Because the United States wants to be sure that it has access, that it has the ability to be trading to be to be engaged with China without having to carve out and protect a particular sphere of interest. So I think the Berlin game treaty is an interesting moment, but it is overwritten by by, you know, protectionist and racist attitudes that that reshape the American Chinese relationship in the later 19th and on into the 20th century. Thank you very much. Since we are running out of time. I'm sure we can continue the discussion for a long time. But I would like to thank again Professor Hammond for giving us an excellent summary of the critical events involving the opening and interaction between China and the world, starting the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, and you continue to talk about in the 20th century next week. It really helps us to understand better why this period is known as the period on equal treaties and see clearly how injustices were dealt to China from very early on, and has continued to today, as we discussed in the next four webinars. In the last minute, I just want to show what's coming next Wednesday and the other four webinars. So I think your stop screen scare so I can share my screen, right? Absolutely. Okay. Okay. Next week, Professor Hammond will talk to us again. He will talk about modern Chinese history. 20th century. And then on the following week, October 27, Julie Tang will talk about Hong Kong, and I will talk about Xinjiang. And then the following two weeks after that, George Koo will talk about US-China relationship. First he talks about the 19th century, and then he will talk about the 20th and 21st century. And then the last webinar will be on November 17, Sheila Xiao will talk about China is not US enemy. So, I hope all of you will come back next week and listen to the rest of Professor Hammond's recollection, recall of the modern Chinese history in the 20th century. Once again, I want to thank Professor Hammond and the audience for participating. And good night and see you next week. Good night to you all pleasure to be here. Thank you.