"If we take the initiative, we can dominate; if we do not, we will be dominated."

Someday I will find the time to write about Macartney, and his visit to China.  (But not this day!)  His visit to China while disastrous without question started the clock ticking against the Qing.  However, 100 years later all the British Bulldog could manage was a pile of rocks and a fair wounding of China’s pride.   Same for the French, the Germans, the Russians and so on.  All those nations taking a bite out of China was only so much of a morsel really.   Even Hong Kong was thought by many an observer nothing if not but gristle to the steak.

That is, nobody really took anything that China wanted.  Or felt so keen to fight for. 

And quite frankly, in the beginning, the Chinese never really felt that apprehensive about the West anyway.   The Chinese looked at the West and probably thought something along the lines of “this too will pass”.

Yes the Chinese had stumbled a bit, here and there.   Battles fought far off always having the desired effect of not being heard in Peking.   It’s peculiar to hear the Chinese mutter about their century of humiliation.  Yes, the Western Powers behaved badly.  Yes, they carved out geographic areas of influence.  But they built buildings that still stand in Shanghai.  They brought missionaries and God.  Many of them learned Chinese and married and successfully integrated themselves in to Chinese society.  (The Great Sir Robert Hart comes to mind)

A few of them even knew the Imperial Family!

No. 

The worst was yet to come.  And that day was July 8, 1853, some sixty years after Macartney’s sojourn to Peking.  It was on this day a meeting took place, ironically not even in China, and the world as we knew it in Asia finally began to fade away.  What the Chinese were in due course to feel, to endure would have nothing in comparison with their oh so trivial loss of Hong Kong or seeing a few of their boats sunk on the Pearl River.  

(You’ll notice I’ve chosen to use Peking rather than Beijing as well, Peking seems more in tune with the times of that era)

Alas, on this day China was nowhere to be seen.  The cruelest thing about this day is that China wasn’t even an afterthought.   Which makes the punishment China later endured, because of this day, all the more cruel.   Make no mistake, while China understood what had happened on this day, it is profoundly guilty of not having acted upon its understanding of how events would affect the Heavenly Kingdom.   Did China pay attention to the meeting?  Yes, it did.  Did China look ahead to predict how events would change China’s place in Asia? 

Let the results speak for themselves. 

Twenty million dead is a good place to start.

Of course we are talking about the day Perry sailed into Edo Bay and confronted the Japanese.   The goal for America was to open trade with Japan.    At the time Japan was only trading through well-regulated channels with China, Korea and somewhat the Netherlands and Portuguese.

Like China, Japan was under a self-inflicted regime of isolation.  Except one could argue that Japan’s self-imposed isolation was even more stringent than China’s; any Japanese attempting to leave Japan were under threat of execution.

The Japanese self-imposed exile from The Planet was Sakoku.   Interpret it as you like, the meaning was the same, ie stay the hell away, and lasted from 1633 until the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853.   Long story short, the Americans succeeded in opening up Japan with a vast armada of only four ships.

The Chinese meanwhile, closed the country off from the outside world much earlier in the 1420’s, albeit mainly through banning foreign trade.  It can be argued China’s self-imposed exile ended through multiple defeats at the hands of the British Navy.   Not Japan’s however.  While China’s closing off from the outside world ended with the bang of cannon Japan’s more so with a whimper. There was no violence.  No great humiliation.   No talk of Losing Face.   No hem and no haw.  And that perhaps has made all the difference.

If Britain had been the first country to sail into Edo Bay, chests full of opium, who knows how things would have turned out?   But Britain was busy with its “conquest”.  Its hands were full with India and now China.   Japan could wait.

At the end of the day it must be bluntly said; Japan simply wasn’t as full of itself as China was.  And perhaps a starker reality can be shared; Japan simply didn’t think as highly of itself as China did.  In this regard Japan was more practical, and despite its “splendid isolation” was able to quickly grasp the situation at hand.   China however, showed an amazing ability to look the other way.   Has any country been guilty of keeping its head in the sand for so long?   For so long had such a false impression of itself?

Luck was on the American’s side.  As Perry and his flotilla sailed into Edo Bay, the glue that maintained Japanese cohesion and thus rule was coming undone.  Not three weeks upon his arrival the Tokugawa Shogun Ieyoshi died.  His successor only seven years old.   Timing is everything.   If America had attempted to force Japan to open only a decade earlier its efforts most likely would have ended in failure.

The Japanese reacted quickly with the famous phrase,

 "if we take the initiative, we can dominate; if we do not, we will be dominated"

Unlike China, where the Emperor held supreme authority, the Japanese Emperor did not.  For two hundred years he was a puppet.   However, in 1866 the Japanese Emperor again regained authority over Japan.  The Emperor’s name is Meiji, and this time was called the Meiji Restoration.

The Japanese acted quickly to modernize their country.  In 1868, the Meiji Emperor proclaimed,

"Knowledge shall be sought all over the world, and thereby the foundations of imperial rule shall be strengthened."

The Chinese understood the threat.

Li Hongzhang himself, the most famous diplomat of the Qing, believed the Japanese were the biggest concern of China’s.

Still China dithered.  Its Confucianist scholars dominating decision making.  Its Emperor walled off from reality. 

People ask how Japan became strong during the time of Meiji, while China remained weak?  I think there is one minor and one major reason for this.  The smaller reason is Japan had the luck of geography on its side.  The Western Powers were simply too busy carving up China for themselves.  Proselytizing and scheming against each other, working to weaken China while becoming stronger and richer within China at the same time.  

In essence, the West was seduced by their own potential for personal and strategic gain.  As today, China’s size was a seduction no man could ignore.  Korea and Japan?  Not even an afterthought.  Greed saved them both.

One might say the trip further East wasn’t even worth the trouble.   And China for most of the 19^th century was simply too occupied with Barbarian intrusions to care much about Japan.   And didn’t Korea still pay tribute?

Geography kept the barbarians away.  But when they arrived, Japan did not dither. It had no Scholar Class to deal with.  The Tokugawa Shogunate on cue collapsed and a strong Meiji government ensued. 

Japan also had luck on its side.  What if the Tokugawa Shogunate was not in decline?  What if he was in the middle of a forty year reign? Alas, timing was on Japan’s side and to their credit they rode this “good luck” for the next eighty years. 

And what of China? 

Around the time of the rise of Meiji, China witnessed the rise of Cixi.   The year was 1861.  We have discussed the Meiji long enough.  Everything the Meiji was, Cixi was not.  And this has made all the difference.  The Meiji Government was full of competent leaders, focused on making Japan strong.  Cixi’s main qualification was she once shared a bed with the Emperor.

Simply put, two nations shared the same “luck”.  One took the “road less traveled”, and the other…well we give you Cixi.

Cixi was a leader China could have survived a hundred years earlier.  But Cixi was not the leader China needed with the British Bulldog at the door.  The shadow of the West’s talons was looming larger and larger, with each concession and military defeat.  Christianity was beginning to take hold in China, a direct threat to the narrative of Confucianism.  A direct threat to the ruling class.

Japan found a way to overcome their ruling class….the samural class.  China still found itself obliged to it. 

Cixi focused more on pleasure and xenophobia.  True, in the end she came to democracy, but it was five decades too late.  And perhaps only then only for show.  Ordering the death of Guangxu just before she died.

The years 1860 to 1890 dictate Asian history to this day;  Japan rises, invades China.  China rises, still resents Japan.  Even today they push for the resignation of America’s top Naval officer in the Pacific because he is “half” Japanese.

Basically, despite China’s “headstart”, it was a march squandered.  The time period between 1860-1890 doomed China.  Keep in mind during this time Japan’s population was 35 million.  China’s population at least 300 million.  Is there really an excuse for Japan’s domination of China at all? 

It would take a lot more than the usual post to delve into why….how… China, in its time of absolute crisis, allowed itself to be ruled and dominated by such an unqualified person (Trump?), to the detriment of all.  Chinese tradition is certainly to blame.  

China’s eclipse spelled eventual doom for not just Korea but all of Taiwan, which is still separate even today.

Both China and Japan had foreign military advisors.  The difference was Japan’s focus on the Sea.  Japan’s military advisers warned that whoever controlled Korea could threaten Japan.  Japan bought into this.  Korea, still playing the game of exclusion, was easy pickings.

The Nagasaki Affair further led to anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan.

Finally, the First Sino Japanese War took place in1894.  A crushing Chinese defeat that led to the loss of both Taiwan and forever Korea as a tribute state.   In only thirty years, Japan had grown strong enough to not only kick China out of Korea, but begin its slow march across China.

Marco Polo Bridge…Shanghai….Nanking….

And Taiwan?

A story only half read.  Maybe my children will be able to tell us how it ends.