WHEN the First Opium War broke out, the Chinese Emperor Daoguang was terrified at Britain’s attacks as their advanced weapons and navy claimed many Chinese lives.
The Emperor sent an emissary named Qi Shan to negotiate with the British.
The British said that they wanted the man who dared challenge them to be handed to them.
This was in reference to Lin Zexu, the man who burnt the opium that the British smugglers kept on the southern coast of China.
To end the conflict, the Chinese authorities asked the British to return to Guangdong.
In response the British demanded that they would only return if Lin Zexu was removed from his office for good.
The British returned to Guangdong and the courageous and determined Lin Zexu who had been defending in Guangzhou was stripped of his authority.
In 1841 CE the British colonised Xianggang (Hong Kong) which is an island in the South of China.
In response to this invasion, the Chinese government sent an army to Guangzhou under the command of Yi Shan to fight the British and to prevent them from going further inland.
Notwithstanding, the British managed to advance inland and took Humen province after bombing it.
The Chinese troops in Humen fought bravely under a general called Guan Tainpei, but were slaughtered because of their inferior weapons.
Yi Shan cowardly surrendered Guangzhou to Britain after succumbing to pressure and hearing of the defeat of the other provinces by the British forces.
However, the general population of that land put up a fight.
In a Guangzhou suburb called Sanyuanli, the civilian population tried with no weapons to fight the armed Europeans and they were almost completely annihilated.
The defeat of the Chinese in these 19th century wars remind us of the wars our ancestors fought and lost against the European invaders here in Africa due to inferior weapons.
In the case of China, the irony is that the Chinese were the inventors of gunpowder, not for the purpose of making weapons, but to make firecrackers for their traditional ceremonies.
This was yet another of Chinese inventions being used to their disadvantage by the West against the Chinese people.
The British advanced further and took many provinces.
In June of 1842 CE, the British captured Shanghai.
They slaughtered the Chinese army with their more superior weapons and then advanced to Nanjing in August.
Nanjing was the capital of China then.
The Chinese government of the Qing dynasty was forced to admit defeat and had to sign the Treaty of Nanking.
The Treaty of Nanking was the first of many unfair and oppressive treaties that the Chinese were forced to sign by foreign invaders.
This would be likened to the Rudd Concession and other treaties here in Zimbabwe, which through trickery some of our forefathers signed in the process ‘surrendering’ the country to British control.
In the Treaty of Nanjing, the British demanded China pays a ridiculously high amount of 21 million silver dollars.
In that same treaty, the British forced China to cede Hong Kong and let it be a British colony.
The treaty also allowed Britain and allied countries to open trading ports in the following cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Xiamen, Fuzhou and Ningbo.
At the time, China, though a single entity, was divided into numerous states and this made some of the areas in the country not comprehend the reality of the British invasion.
As such, China remembers this era as a period of semi-colonisation.
The government which was under the Qing dynasty had become weak because the officials had become corrupt and thus, inefficient.
China’s traditional system of governance was clearly not equipped to deal with the challenges of the modern era.
Within a year after China’s loss to Britain, poverty had overwhelmed the nation. The inefficiency of the government led to several civilian uprisings against both the Qing dynasty and foreign rule.
In 1843 CE, a man called Hong Xiuquan formed a society called the God Worship Society in Guangdong province.
Hong treasured traditional Chinese culture and values and had identified the teachings of the Bible, with those of ancient Chinese philosophers like Confucius.
Thus Hong had embraced Christianity and often accused the white missionaries of being hypocritical in not adhering to the teachings of the Bible, but rather acting like heathens.
Hong centred his movement on the values of human equality and rights.
He accused the Qing rulers of having a selfish mindset that hindered the nation from achieving prosperity and peace for they often fought over power and wealth, at the expense of the people and the nation.
Hong’s teachings were accepted by many Chinese people, but made him an enemy of the Qing rulers and the white invaders.
By 1849 CE, Hong had over 10 000 followers with whom he carried out a peasant uprising in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region.
Here he established the Taiping (Overly Peaceful) heavenly kingdom.
By 1853 CE, Hong’s followers were numbering hundreds of thousands.
The Qing fought against Hong in many battles, but Hong won most of them.
That same year, Hong attacked and took control of Nanjing where the Qing government was headquartered.
Hong renamed it Tianjing which literally means ‘heavenly capital’.
Hong tried to set up a ‘system of land ownership of the heavenly kingdom’, which would allow for an ideal social order for all Chinese people to share land, food, clothing, with no trace of hunger and oppression.
Hong’s movement was very effective, but power struggles began in the leadership that eventually led to the Taiping people to fight among themselves.
In 1856 CE, the Qing government, with considerable assistance from the British and other white nations, managed to take advantage of the instability of Hong’s movement and attacked them when they were vulnerable.
Zeng Guofeng, a Qing official and leader of Hunan province besieged Tianjing in 1863 CE with the use of firearm brigades supplied by Britain.
In July of the following year, Hong died of illness.
His effective movement had been suppressed, but only after 14 years of fighting. The Qing occupied Tianjing and renamed it Nanjing as before.
Although Hong lost, his accusations against the Qing were confirmed as the dynasty continued to allow foreign powers to abuse the Chinese, and at times even allied with the whites against the Chinese.
More civilian uprisings would follow until imperial rule was finally ended owing to the efforts of Dr San Yat Sen in the beginning of the 20th century.
But before this, the West would again engage China in an all out war and further lead the nation into subjugation to European powers.
In 1854 CE, Britain, with the assistance of France and the USA cunningly requested for the Chinese government to ratify the Treaty of Nanking which China had been forced to sign earlier in 1842 CE.
The Chinese government refused and that is all the Western nations needed to find an excuse to go to war with China.
In October of 1856 CE, the British, allied with French and USA forces, waged what is now remembered as the Second Opium War against China.
It was called the Second Opium War because it was caused by an unsettled treaty which China was forced by Britain to sign in order to end the First Opium War.