Restless Empire

by Odd Westad

  It is unlikely that China will get a Western-style form of government within the average lifetime of the readers of this book. But it is also unlikely that the CCP will remain in power the way it is today for several decades to come. The most plausible outcome is a fairly authoritarian government at the center, which will grudgingly allow some more provincial self-rule and more cultural autonomy for minorities. Such a blend—even if it is not what most foreign friends of China would like to see—could keep the country in political shape for a long time to come, and frame its relations with the outside world in a non-confrontational manner. But these are the views of a historian who cannot predict the future any better than others who know the country and its people well. What is certain, though, is that those who expect China to remain for a long time as it is today will be proven wrong. Its turbulent past points toward a changeable future, during which both locals and foreigners will be surprised at the continuous resourcefulness and adaptability of the Chinese people.

  SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

  THE LITERATURE ON CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS in English has expanded massively over the past few years. When I began studying the country, there were only a handful of general texts available, many written by academics who had barely visited China. Now there are thousands, on every possible aspect of China’s dealings with the world. Even though quality has improved significantly overall, quite a few leave a bit to be desired, as one can imagine when publishers worldwide are rushing to get texts on China into print. The following is a brief overview of where to start one’s reading, with suggestions for each part of this book. Take it for what it is worth: It is a small selection, and there will be new work appearing by the month. A visit to a bookstore may land unexpected treasures.

  To begin with, get hold of a book on China’s general history over the past 250 years. There is nothing better than Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China (2nd ed; 1999). For the twentieth century, there is also Rana Mitter’s magnificent A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (2004). It would be worth having a look at a book that puts Chinese history into a larger regional perspective; try Charles Holcombe, A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century (2010).

  On the foreign affairs of the Qing empire, see William T. Rowe’s splendid overview, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (2009); Joanna Waley-Cohen’s dissection of the Qing’s military pretensions, The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military Under the Qing Dynasty (2006); Peter Perdue’s outstanding account of Qing expansionism, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (2005), and Mark Elliott’s telling portrait, Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World (2009).

  On foreign imperialism in China, see Ulrike Hillemann’s exploration of the links between China and the British Empire, Asian Empire and British Knowledge: China and the Networks of British Imperial Expansion (2009); James Polachek’s discussion of the effects of the British attacks on China, The Inner Opium War (1991); Robert Bickers’s overview The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832–1914 (2011), and the first two volumes of Frank King’s excellent The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (1987; 1989).

  On relations between China and Japan up World War II, see W. G. Beasley’s magisterial Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945 (1991); Joshua Fogel’s instructive exploration Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time (2009); the edited survey collection by Akira Iriye, The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions (1980); Douglas Reynolds’s analysis of the impact Japan had on the first Chinese republic, China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (1993), and Parks Coble’s Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937 (1991).

  A good overview of the foreign affairs of the Chinese republic and its contexts is Frederic Wakeman’s and Richard Louis Edmonds’s edited collection, Reappraising Republican China (2000); William Kirby’s exploration of Germany and Republican China (1984) is highly instructive, as is Arthur Waldron’s intriguing account From War to Nationalism (2003). The best biography of Chiang Kai-shek is Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the Struggle for Modern China (2009); the most in-depth critical biography of Mao Zedong is Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (2006).

  On China’s beginning transformation, see Benjamin A. Elman’s overview, A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (2006). David Wright explains the Chinese understanding of new knowledge in Translating Science: The Transmission of Western Chemistry into Late Imperial China, 1840–1900 (2000). Frank Dikötter discusses the myriad transformations through consumerism in Things Modern: Material Culture and Everyday Life in China (2007). Zhaojin Ji explains the significance of new financial practices in A History of Modern Shanghai Banking: The Rise and Decline of China’s Finance Capitalism (2003). In Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (1986) Emily Honig explains how the Chinese working class came into being.

  On foreigners in China, see the background in David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 (2nd ed.; 2006). Jonathan D. Spence’s To Change China: Western Advisers in China, 1620–1960 (1969) shows the bravery and folly of some foreigners. Adrian Bennett’s John Fryer: The Introduction of Western Science and Technology into Nineteenth-Century China (1967) is an excellent overview of the life of perhaps the most important transmitter of Western thinking into China in the nineteenth century. Marie-Claire Bergère, Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity (2009) presents the role of foreigners in China’s most international city.

  On Chinese abroad, an excellent overview is The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (1999), edited by Lynn Pan. The best analysis of different forms of Chinese migration is Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936 (2001). The grand old man of Chinese migration studies, Wang Gungwu, has collected some of his key contributions in The Chinese Diaspora: Selected Essays (1998). Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (2009) is an outstanding reinterpretation of the motives behind Chinese emigration.

  China in World War II is, remarkably, a study that is just coming of age. For an overview, see Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945 (2010). The beginning of the war is covered in Stephen R. MacKinnon, Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China (2008). Christian Henriot et al., eds., In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai Under Japanese Occupation (2004) deals with the situation in China’s largest city, while Mackinnon et al., eds., China at War: Regions of China, 1937–45 (2007) discusses other parts of the country. The often overlooked military dimensions are discussed in Mark Peattie et al., eds., The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 (2010). An often inflammatory issue is ably dealt with in Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (2005).

  The origins of the foreign affairs of the Communist Party are delineated in an outstanding account by Michael H. Hunt, The Genesis of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy (1996). I explore the developments during the Civil War in Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (2003). Chen Jian’s China’s Road to the Korean War (1994) is a modern classic. My edited collection Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance (2000) discusses the development of the Sino-Soviet alliance. Two excellent books—Lorenz M. Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (2008), and Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (2009)—present new findings on the collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance and its effects.

  On High Maoism and its disasters we are lucky to have a set of fine recent books: Frank Dikötter’s superb Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (2010); Michael Schoenhals and Roderick MacF
arquhar’s useful overview Mao’s Last Revolution (2006); Ma Jisen’s The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China (2004); and not least Feng Jicai’s edited Ten Years of Madness: Oral Histories of China’s Cultural Revolution (2007).

  On China and the United States see William Kirby et al., eds., Normalization of U.S.-China Relations: An International History (2005); James Mann’s excellent About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton (2000); Henry Kissinger’s own idiosyncratic summing up at eighty-eight: On China (2011); Simon Shen’s Redefining Nationalism in Modern China: Sino-American Relations and the Emergence of Chinese Public Opinion in the 21st Century (2007); and S. Mahmud Ali, U.S.-China Relations in the “Asia-Pacific” Century (2008).

  On China and Asia see Jonathan Holslag, China and India: Prospects for Peace (2010); Vinod K. Aggarwal and Min Gyo Koo, eds., Asia’s New Institutional Architecture (2008); Claude Meyer, China or Japan: Who Will Lead Asia? (2011); and Hasan H. Karrar, The New Silk Road Diplomacy: China’s Central Asian Foreign Policy Since the Cold War (2010).

  On China’s international future there are a number of useful starting points: William A. Callahan, China: The Pessoptimist Nation (2010) provides a snapshot of Chinese attitudes at the start of the twenty-first century; Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (2009) presents a stark view of a coming power shift; Scott Wilson, Remade in China: Foreign Investors and Institutional Change in China (2009) shows how China is changing and is changed by international capitalism; and, finally, two sharply differing views of the significance of China’s new position: Edward Steinfeld, Playing Our Game: Why China’s Economic Rise Doesn’t Threaten the West (2010) and Stefan Halper, The Beijing Consensus: How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century (2010).

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I AM DEEPLY INDEBTED TO ALL THE SCHOLARS and writers whose work I draw on for this book of synthesis. Having accepted the need to limit the use of notes in a book that is primarily intended for a general reading public, I feel guilty that ideas borrowed from so many of my colleagues and friends are not properly acknowledged. I can only offer the weak excuse that the book may hopefully stimulate the reader’s interest in further reading on the topic, and that the English-language works to which I am in most debt are listed for such purposes here.

  I do need to note a special thanks to a few friends who have stimulated my interest in Chinese history over twenty-five years. My teacher Michael H. Hunt opened the world of Chinese history for me, and has been the source of lasting inspiration and friendship. This book is for Michael and Paula, for so much warmth and fun over the years. My close friends and colleagues Chen Jian, now at Cornell, and Niu Jun, in Beijing, have greatly advanced my understanding of China (and of many other things). Together with hundreds of other scholars in China and abroad they have remade the study of Chinese history over the past generation.

  Other friends from various walks of life have also helped out by reading the manuscript or parts of it. I am particularly grateful to Antony Best, Michael H. Hunt, Emmanuel Roman, Dominic Lieven, Maurice Pinto, Munir Majid, and Stein Tønnesson.

  Lastly, I need to thank my colleagues at the London School of Economics, my intellectual home for the past fifteen years, for their support during the research and writing of this book. A particular thanks goes to Michael Cox, Svetozar Rajak, Emilia Knight, and Tiha Franulovic—makers of IDEAS.

  NOTES

  EMPIRE

  1. It is often predicted that: See, for instance, Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari, Global Growth Generators: Moving beyond “Emerging Markets” and “BRIC” (New York: Citigroup Global Markets, 2011) or Karen Ward, The World in 2050: Quantifying the Shift in the Global Economy (London: HSBC Global Research, 2011). The Chinese Academy of Sciences anticipates: See, for instance, China Modernization Report 2006, at Zhongguo xiandaihua wang [China Modernization Network]: http://www.modernization.com.cn/.

  2. Benjamin I. Schwartz, China and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 114.

  3. Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990).

  4. James Legge, The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena and Copious Indexes, vol. 1 (London: Trubner & co., 1861), 9.

  5. But if you do want to study it, Ralph Sawyer’s is by far the best edition on the market: Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 9th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

  6. See Peter C. Perdue, “Strange Parallels across Eurasia,” Social Science History 32, no. 2 (June 1, 2008): 263–279; and Victor Lieberman, “The Qing Dynasty and Its Neighbors: Early Modern China in World History,” Social Science History 32, no. 2 (June 1, 2008): 281–304.

  7. In this book I will be using their reign names to identify Chinese emperors: The emperor whose reign name is Kangxi was at birth given the Manchu name Hiowan Yei (Xuanye in Chinese) of the Aisin-Gioro clan.

  8. An excellent overview of these processes is Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  9. On “the eighteenth-century genocide par excellence”: see A. Dirk Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 188. Then he incorporated: see Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).

  10. Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period, 1603–1868 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

  11. Gerbillon and Pereira both spent most of their working lives in China, dying there in 1707 and 1708 respectively. On the Russian side, incidentally, the main advisers on China were the Croat Iurii Krizhanich (Juraj Križanić) and the German Gerhard Friedrich Müller; see Michael B. Petrovich, “Juraj Krizanic: A Precursor of Pan-Slavism (ca. 1618–83),” American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 6, No. 3/4. (Dec. 1947): 75–92; and L. Maier, “Gerhard Friedrich Müller’s memoranda on Russian relations with China and the reconquest of the Amur,” Slavic and East European Review, 59 (1981): 219–240.

  12. Not just wanton destruction; a visit to the Sir Percival David galleries at the back of the British Museum in London, recently renovated through a donation from the Anglo-Chinese Sir Joseph Hotung, shows that the British knew enough about imperial Chinese porcelain to steal it rather than destroy it.

  CHAPTER 1: METAMORPHOSIS

  1. “Han Chinese” is a tricky concept. Until very recently, Chinese people’s main identification would be with their province or home area, and the term “Han” has been most often used to distinguish non-Chinese ethnic groups living in the PRC from the Chinese, but since “Chinese” is now used as a term for all citizens of the PRC, “Han” has been added as a signifier for the majority group. New DNA evidence shows a clear north-to-south spread of the Chinese population over the last two millennia and establishes a reasonable degree of genetic cohesiveness of the (Han) Chinese; see Jieming Chen et al., “Genetic Structure of the Han Chinese Population Revealed by Genome-wide SNP Variation,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 85, no. 6 (December 11, 2009): 775–785.

  2. Wang Kaixi, Gemo, chongtu yu qutong: Qingdai Zhongwai liyi zhizheng touxi [Lack of Understanding, Conflict and Convergence: Divergence of Rites During the Qing Dynasty] (Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue, 1999), 200.

  3. Although Asian geography had been mapped: Matteo Ricci, Il mappamondo cinese del p. Matteo Ricci, S. I. (3. ed., Pechino, 1602) conservato presso la Biblioteca Vaticana (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica Vaticana, 1938). This is Ricci’s Kunyu wan’guo quantu [Complete Map of the Myriad Countries on the Earth] (Beijing, 1602), the most complete (and most beautiful) of these mappae mundi. It was mainly based on the Flemish scholar and geographer Abraham Ortelius’s Typus Orbis Terrarum from 1570. The best overview of ear
ly Chinese mapmaking is Zhongguo gudai dituji [Chinese Ancient Maps], 3 vols. (Beijing: Wen wu, 1990). A masterful cultural compromise: Da Qing tongshu zhigong wanguo jingwei diqiu shi [Model of the Myriad Tributary States of the Great Qing from Around the Globe].

  4. See Jürgen Osterhammel’s magnificent China und die Weltgesellschaft: Vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in unsere Zeit (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989).

  5. Governor of Guangdong to Imperial Court, 30 November 1814 in Lo-Shu Fu, ed., Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644–1820), 2 vols. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966), vol. 1, 394.

  6. Jiaqing Emperor decree to Grand Council, 14 June 1818, in ibid. vol. 1, p. 413.

  7. Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium in China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 58.

  8. Echoing a prohibition—never enforced—against opium smoking from 1729.

  9. Chinese Repository, Vol. 8 (February 1840), 497–503.

  10. Later Chinese historiography often portrays the Manchus as cowards who ran away while the local (“Chinese”) people stood and fought; in almost all cases of serious battle the exact opposite was true.