Christian missionaries which provoked the resentment of many local residents. The most well-known incident took place in Tianjin. The French had built a cathedral and an affiliated care center that adopted children. On occasion, money was given to those who brought children there and consequently, a few ruffians kidnapped children and gave them to the church in exchange of cash. In the summer of 1870, some adopted children died of infectious diseases and were buried in a mass grave. Because of poor burial, stray dogs feasted on the dead bodies of children. Some believed that these children had been tortured by the church. It was even rumored that the children’s eyes were gouged out and their hearts torn out. At this time, a child trafficker was captured by the local authorities and confessed that one of his accomplices was a Catholic. When informed about this, the magistrate immediately asked for instructions from Chonghou, the highest imperial official in Tianjin. Chonghou delivered a formal note to the French consul in Tianjin, notifying that the suspect be examined by the investigators. Soon residents and staff from the French Consulate clashed. The Consul ordered Chonghou to suppress the residents by force. The clashes were fierce and resulted in the French Consulate, some foreign banks, and Christian churches being destroyed by fire.35 In total, twenty foreigners, including the consul and his secretary, as well as sixteen Chinese Catholic converts lost their lives in this incident.
Seven Western countries—Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and the United States—protested and sent their warships toward Tianjin. A French admiral threatened to burn Tianjin to a cinder. The United States’ Minister to China, Frederick F. Low, in his letter to Hamilton Fish, the Secretary of State, said that many more menacing threats were made such as beheading all Chinese officials, overthrowing
the Chinese government, and turning China into a protectorate.36 The threats frightened Qing and it ordered Zeng Guofan, who was on medical leave, to immediately return and handle the affair. Zeng knew that China had no choice but to compromise.37 Despite knowing who was responsible for the incident, he removed the top government officials in Tianjin and sentenced 20 people to death and sent another 25 people into exile. In addition, 500,000 taels of silver were paid to France as compensation. Chonghou went to France, where he, on behalf of the Qing government, offered a formal apology. Zeng admitted that the case was not handled well.38 Some accused Zeng of being a coward.39 Zeng also felt ashamed because of his poor handling of the Tianjin incident.
The Sino-French War was a stimulant to the jiao’an that took place in Fujian and Zhejiang, where some churches were burnt. More than 40 missionaries were expelled from Guangdong and Guangxi and 50 or so churches were destroyed. There were huge protests against the missionaries in Sichuan and Hebei. In Dazu, a county of Sichuan, a poor miner in September, 1890, launched an armed revolt, rallying the people to resist the established power of the church. The next summer and fall, resistance to the church swept through the middle and lower regions of the Yangtze River. In the Chengde of Zhili (present-day Hebei), tens of thousands of local residents dealt a heavy blow to the Catholic church. Four years later, the Chengdu incident broke out and dozens of Catholic and Protestant churches were burnt to the ground in Sichuan.
Jiao’an was representative of China’s relationships and conflicts with the West. The Beijing Treaty granted foreign Christian churches the right to do missionary work in China. However, conflict between the foreign churches and Chinese residents was inevitable due to the cultural differences and the conflicts of interest regarding land. In many cases, the foreign missionaries gave protection to Christian converts whenever they were involved in disputes. To make matters worse, the foreign governments backing the missionaries used the unequal treaties to pressure the Chinese authorities. They even applied extraterritoriality to Chinese Christian converts. As a consequence, few local governments dared to get involved in disputes involving missionaries and their protégés, and, as a result, Chinese residents often had to endure injustices. Evidence that China was further in decline.
The 1895 Sino-Japanese War
Ancient Japan devoted great attention to learning from China. In the 1860s, Japan started its own self-strengthening movement known as the Meiji Restoration. However, next to Japan’s national endeavor, China’s SSM paled in comparison. Although the two Asian counties stood on the same scratch line, Japan soon left China, its old teacher, far behind. Japan’s Meiji Restoration was based on economic growth, military advancement and cultural reconstruction, whereby Japanese society could be totally overhauled in light of Western modernity. In contrast, after three decades of SSM, China struggled to modernize, particularly where the powerful ultraconservatives were concerned.
Some said that in three decades (1860–1895) China invested, in total, 53,000,000 taels of silver in founding approximately 60 modern corporations. Each year, China set up two factories and invested 1,700,000 in each. Of these, 21 were for the military complex and accounted for almost 70%ercent of the total assets. For the rest, there were 120 capitalist enterprises with total assets of 58,000,000. Every year, four civil corporations were founded and each was worth less than 2,000,000.40 In Japan, it is estimated that more than 5,600 companies were created over more than two decades (1868–1892) and the total investment was 289,000,000 yen. Thus, Japan founded 225 enterprises every year and each was worth 11,000,000 yen or 7,000,000 taels of silver.41
Indeed, Japan developed much more rapidly than China at this time. The Japanese government redeveloped the whole of society on the model of Western capitalism. Japan had transformed itself into a laissez-faire capitalist constitutional state. Japan sold state-owned enterprises cheaply to private owners, revealing that capitalist Japan had already taken shape. Such actions were not possible in nineteenth-century China, which was still steeped in colonialist practices and semi-feudalism.42
As early as the sixteenth century, some Japanese politicians attempted expansion. Japan’s Meiji Emperor attempted to extend his territory to Ryukyu, Korea, and Taiwan. Yoshida Shoin 吉田松阴, who pioneered the Meiji Restoration, recommended that Japan take Manchuria (in northeast China), Taiwan, and Luzon (belonging to the Philippines). Fuzuzawa Yukichi 福泽谕吉, an educator renowned for his radical Datsu-A Ron (an editorial advocating that Japan completely abandon its Asian roots and fully integrate itself into European [Western] civilization), said Japan should treat China in the same manner as the West treated China and Korea.43 These politicians, thinkers, and educators advocated for the preparation for an aggressive war against China. At the same time, Japan did its best to develop a navy and an army, set up a general staff under the direct control of the emperor, as well as send a huge number of spies to China. In 1887, Ogawa Mataji 小川又次, a Japanese general, wrote The General Plan of Conquering China (征讨清国方略), analyzing in detail China’s economy, politics, and defense, recommending that Japan strike preemptively and deploy eight divisions to storm Beijing and capture the Chinese emperor.44
Three years later, Yamagata Aritomo 山县有朋, then Prime Minister of Japan, in the inaugural National Diet (1890) said that Korea was indispensable to Japan’s national interest and that Japan must capture China in order to protect itself. The Japanese Emperor at the fourth Diet (1892–1893) gave voice to Japan’s long-held dream and said, “thereafter the capital may be extended so as to embrace all the six cardinal points, and the eight cords may be covered so as to form a roof” (兼六合以开都掩八纮而为宇).45
