The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence

End of the Ming, Beginning of the Qing

    The book begins in the mid-17th century as the Ming Dynasty collapsed and the Jurchens (soon to re-name themselves Manchus) began to conquer territory in China's north, first under Nurhaci, and then under his son Dorgon. Dorgon decreed that all Chinese men would cut their hair into a queue, as the Jurchens wore it. This hairstyle required shaving the front half of the head and letting the back grow long into a ponytail. Ming Chinese men had prized long hair as a sign of masculinity, so this was especially resented. Dorgon also decreed that all Chinese would adopt the Manchu style of dressing with a high collar and a tight jacket fastened at the right shoulder instead of the loose-hanging Ming robes. Foot-binding was also banned, but this ban was flouted and eventually reversed, allowing foot-binding continue, especially in the upper classes.

    The new Qing rulers succeeded in controlling China by integrating Chinese bureaucrats into the new dynasty and adapting themselves to Chinese ways. The Qing retained the six Ming ministries to handle civil affairs, finance, rituals, wars, justice, and public works, but changed them by placing leadership of each in the hands of two presidents: one Manchu and one Chinese bannerman or civilian Chinese. The vice-presidents would be two Manchus and two Chinese. The Manchus also established a system of nine aristocratic ranks, by which a family automatically dropped one rung on the ladder with each noble incumbent's death unless the emperor re-promoted a member of merit. Qing rulers also perpetuated the Ming system of examinations, passage of which would grant a man exemption from corvee labor dues and from corporal punishment. It could also mean a lucrative post in the bureaucracy.

    The Qing dealt with several rebellions, many of which led by Ming sympathizers, before their rule was fully established. The one that seemed the most dangerous to me was the Revolt of the Three Feudatories against the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661-1722). Three princes managed to rebel and take most of China from the Yangtze River south, but lost in their war due to indecisiveness, Kangxi's ability to command his court and long-range strategy, the courage of Qing generals, the inability of the three revolting princes to coordinate with each other, and the princes' inability to appeal to loyal Ming supporters, who disliked the princes' for their previous cooperation with the Manchus. So the Ming revolts were not strong enough on their own, and revolts of Chinese who had cooperated with Manchus were unable to succeed because their could not win over Chinese who saw them as traitors.

The Heights of Qing Rule

    During Kangxi's reign, the Qing also conquered Taiwan. They were interested in Taiwan because Koxinga, a Southern Ming general, seized Taiwan from Dutch rule and hoped to use it as a base from which to promote a Ming restoration on mainland China. From 1661 to 1683, Taiwan (but really just some of it) was a thorn in the Qing Dynasty's side and managed to control some coastal areas of China, but Kangxi conquered it in 1683, leaving a garrison of 8,000 troops on the island permanently. Kangxi also expanded Ming rule into Tibet, drawn into a power struggle when the Dalai Lama was murdered and a successor improperly chosen. He managed to install a successor loyal to Qing.

    The Jesuits were successful during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor and served at the Imperial court, impressing the Chinese court with astronomy and mechanics. The Kangxi Emperor granted an edict of toleration in 1692. However, the toleration was contingent on the Jesuits abiding by Kangxi's stipulation that the Chinese rites of ancestor worship and public homage to Confucius were civile ceremonies, not religious ceremonies, and could therefore be practiced by Christian converts. Pope Clement XI decided to condemn the Chinese rites and the Confucian rituals and outlawed further discussion in 1704, and again in 1715, which was then reiterate by Benedict XIV in 1742. In 1721, disagreeing the Clement XI's decree, the Kangxi Emperor expelled the missionaries, and in 1724, the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1722-1735) banned the "Heavenly Lord Sect," as Catholicism was known in China at the time. It wasn't until 1939 that Pope Pius XII would decide that the Chinese rites were indeed civil in character. This period of prohibition on Catholicism, according to Spence, played a major role in preventing the spread of Western teaching and science.

    While the Kangxi Emperor's reign may have been the height of the Qing Dynasty, its failures were critical to the Dynasty's subjugation by European powers over 100 years after his death. Kangxi, like his father Shunzhi (r. 1643-1661) was unable to implement a national survey of landholdings. Land in the provinces remained registered according to the last good survey (done under Emperor Wanli in 1581), and the numbers of per capita units subject to tax assessment were henceforth frozen on the 1712 figures. This seriously impeded Kangxi's successors in rationalizing China's finances. When the Kangxi Emperor died in 1722, he had not publicly named an heir. His fourth son, who became the Yongzheng Emperor, announced that he was the dying emperor's choice, and was able to take the throne without much controversy.

    The Yongzheng Emperor was succeeded by his fourth son, the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735-1796). China's population crashed in the crisis years at the end of the Ming Dynasty and only recovered during Kangxi's reign. It then doubled under Qianlong. But the increase in China's population did not lead to colonization or emigration, as in other societies, since the Chinese divided land equally among all sons instead of mostly to the first son. In Europe, primogeniture or primogeniture-lite led to younger sons becoming adventurers and colonizers of far-away lands, while equal division in China kept China growing in population, but mitigated its influence on other lands.

The Decline and Fall of the Qing

    Spence is critical of the Qianlong Emperor as someone who "has been praised too much and has thought to little, [] someone who has played to the gallery in public life, mistaken grandeur for substance, sought confirmation and support for even routine actions, and is not really equipped to make difficult or unpopular decisions." The biggest challenge of Qianlong's reign was opium. Yongzheng had allowed for medicinal uses of opium, but banned "pushing" the drug to new users and running public opium dens. It wasn't until 1800 that the Jiaqing Emperor (r. 1796-1820) banned opium imports and domestic opium production and further banned smoking of opium altogether in 1813. I won't go deep into the Opium Wars here since I already did a whole book on it before. But we can say in short that the Qing were unable to keep opium or the foreigners who sold it out of the country. However, from another perspective, it is impressive that the Qing were able to survive opium/the Opium Wars and colonialism. The other major challenge of the 19th century, which the Qing also weathered, was the Taiping Rebellion.

    The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850/51 and lasted until 1864, resulting in a death toll between 20 and 30 million people--about 5-10% of China's population. It was led by Hong Xiuquan, an ethnic Hakka who proclaimed himself to be the brother of Jesus Christ, which was revealed to him in a dream after failing the imperial examinations for a third time, leading to a two-day long nervous breakdown in 1837. In 1843, Hong failed the exams again, and reflected back on his dreams in 1837, read more about Christianity, and outwardly identified as a Christian, burning all the Confucian and Buddhist statues in his house and in local villages. He went and became a preacher and studied under a Southern Baptist missionary, Reverend Issachar Jacox Roberts. He made his own translation of the Bible (with some changes convenient to adapt it to a Chinese audience), and developed a following that was between 10,000 and 30,000 people by 1850. Authorities ordered the group to disperse, and attacked them in 1851, but Hong's followers emerged victorious and beheaded the Manchu commander sent against them. The government then blockaded the rebels, but they broke through and seized Yongan in September 1851. The rebels were forced out again and were on the move evading government forced until they seized Yuezhou on the Dongting Lake in December 1852. This was the wealthiest place they had taken, and they gathered lots of loot, arms, and gunpowder. Then they had a string of successes, seizing Hankou in December and Wuchang in January 1853 (both now in Wuhan), culminating in the capture of Nanjing in March 1853, which they made their capital.

    After taking Nanjing, the former Ming capital, Hong gave up de facto power to his disciple Yang Xiuqing, who convinced the Taiping rebels that he was the Holy Ghost, and therefore he received his orders directly from God, which had precedence over Hong, who was merely the younger brother of Jesus. The Taiping required segregation of the sexes and absolute bans on opium smoking, prostitution, dancing, and the drinking of alcohol. Money was held in common and shared, which worked for a long time since they had seize so much of it from the cities they conquered. But being unable to escape the classical Chinese tradition, they still mandated examinations, but changed them to be based on Chinese translations of the Bible and Hong Xiuquan's revelations and literary works. They also divided land among all families based on family size, with men and women receiving equal shares.

    The Taiping ultimately failed, however. One reason for this was that they failed in collective leadership. Talented leaders were killed in the course of the rebellion, and the most brilliant of the survivors, including Shi Dakai and Yang Xiuqing, lost faith in Hong. Hong ended up assassinating Yang in 1856, and Shi, Taiping's greatest general, left Nanjing the same year after his wife and mother were murdered by feuding Taiping generals. He attempted to set up an independent kingdom in Sichuan, by was trapped and killed by Qing troops in 1863. Also difficult for the Taiping is that they were Hakkas, not Han Chinese, and were seen as just as foreign if not more so than the Manchus. Hakkas are largely descended from North Chinese who emigrated to the south but maintain a separate identity from the Han. My understanding is that their refusal to bind their women's feet was particularly appalling to their Han Chinese subjects. Critically, the Taiping rebels failed to gain foreign support, which went to the Qing, who had agreed to terms with the British in the Opium Wars. Having made major treaty gains and essentially having vassalized the Qing, the West supported the Qing just enough to defeat the Taiping rebels.

    These major treaty gains came from the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858. In the midst of the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing were also dealing with the Second Opium War from 1856-60. In 1860, they finally accepted the terms of the British, allowing a British ambassador to reside in Peking, the open preaching of Christianity, greater travel rights for foreigners in China, more trade further up the Yangtze (as far as Hankou/Wuhan), more ports along the coast, reduced taxes on interior trading, standard weights and measures, and for official communications to be made in English and to no longer use the term "barbarian" to describe the British.

    China's turbulent 19th century led to massive emigration, only sometimes voluntary. Others were literally kidnapped by procurers for plantation owners after the end of the Atlantic slave trade. Often the laborers were shipped off in cargo holds with less than six square feet per "passenger" and scores died on every voyage. Chinese travelled mostly to the Caribbean and California. But few Chinese arrived in time to strike gold in the rush of 1849, and mostly ended up in other lines of work.

The End of the Qing and the Warlord Era

    The 1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai or Hsinhai Revolution, finally brought down the Qing. While some groups like Sun Yat-sen's Revive China Society (the future Kuomintang) had been agitating for revolution for years, it wasn't until a military rebellion broke out that the Qing were overthrown in 1911, while Sun was overseas raising funds in the United States. The revolutionaries elected Sun Yat-sen as the first president, but their position was weak, and negotiated to have Puyi, the last emperor of China, abdicate in exchange for naming Yuan Shikai, a major Qing general, as the new president. After elections in 1913 indicated a major victory for the Revive China Society, Yuan began arresting Revive China officials, leading Sun Yat-sen to flee the country and call for revolution against Yuan Shikai. Yuan then dissolved the government in 1914 and established several military governors, each with his own army, setting the stage for the future era of warlordism. Yuan attempted to proclaim himself emperor in 1915, but his military governors started to rebel, and he was forced to abdicate only three months later and died in 1916.

    The Warlord Era lasted from Yuan Shikai's death in 1916 until 1928, when Chiang Kai-shek achieved victory in the Northern Expedition and officially/nominally unified China. Warlords were engaged in a non-ideological competition in which they frequently balanced each other--when one got two strong, the others would scheme or ally against him. The group that would triumph over all was the former Revive China Society, renamed the Kuomintang (KMT), the Chinese Nationalist Party. The Kuomintang had accepted members of the smaller Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in order to gain the support of the new Soviet Union, but tensions were never eliminated. After the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, the KMT began purging Communists, and captured Wuhan and Nanchang. This led to Communist plotting against the Nationalists, which was ended in the Shanghai Massacre in 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek killed thousands of Communists, eliminating them from KMT ranks. With this purge achieved, he set out for the north and achieved another victory in the Northern Expedition, successfully reunifying China.

Chinese Civil War: Communists and Kuomintang

        From 1927-37, the CCP would be an insurgent group fighting against the KMT, which controlled a mostly-unified China. By 1934, the KMT had driven the Communists out of the more prosperous and populous eastern portion of China, forcing them onto the "Long March," a yearlong 12,500 km retreat that ended at Yan'an, where the Communists formed a rump government. It was during this time that Mao Zedong became the leader of the CCP, with only 7-8,000 Communists arriving in Yan'an out of nearly 100,000 that set out initially. However, this period of civil war ended in December 1936 when the commanders of the Northeastern Army, intending to convince Chiang Kai-shek to prioritize fighting the Japanese who were invading Manchuria instead of the Communists, kidnapped Chiang in what became known as the Xi'an incident. They were successful, and initiated a more or less united front between the Nationalists and Communists as they both focused on the Japanese until 1945.

    But Chiang was largely unsuccessful in fighting the Japanese. Throughout the Second World War, while the Japanese lost territory in the Pacific to the Americans, they gained territory in mainland China. The result was that Chiang won only a pyrrhic victory, and was critically weakened for the fight against the Communists. The Nationalists were totally outgunned by the Japanese, for example, in 1940, the Chinese had just 37 fighter planes and 31 old Russian bombers while the Japanese had 968 planes in China and 120 in Indonesia. The actual training and use of Chinese troops was worse too--of 1.67 million Chinese men drafted in 1943, 44% deserted or died on the way to join their units. Between 1937 and 1945, 1.4 million, or 10% of men drafted, died before seeing combat. Critically wounded, the Nationalists were defeated by the Communists immediately after the end of the Japanese, and were forced to flee to Taiwan. I'll end my chronology here.

Why Did China Fail to Modernize?

    First and foremost, China was a closed society, which rejected outside innovations. When outsiders' innovations were important, this meant China fell behind. Then, after failing to adapt to changing times, the Qing Dynasty succeeded in surviving about 100 years longer than it should have, being propped up by Western, imperialist governments abroad. During this time, necessary reforms were still suppressed. Then, after it finally did fall, no one faction was able to unify the country until almost four decades later, and China moved from one era of Open-Door Policy imperialism into the more straightforward Japanese conquest of portions of China. Then, the winning faction of the Civil War never successfully defeated Japan, instead relying on outside powers to do it for them, which meant that once Japan was out, that "winning faction," the KMT, was not strong enough to defeat the Communists. That's my one-paragraph explanation.

Miscellaneous:

• Just a crazy connection: Spence writes, "In 1741, the British discovered the importance of having a Far Eastern base (the Portuguese already had Macao, the Spaniards Manila, and the Dutch Batavia) when a commodore in the Royal Navy, George Anson, on assignment to attack Spanish shipping in the East, put into Canton harbor after his flagship suffered severe storm damage." What Spence doesn't mention, but I know, is that he lost several other ships as he crossed the Straits of Magellan, one of which was The Wager, which I read about in a David Grann book earlier this year.
• Something interesting about the influence of Catholicism in China is that it sort of rebounded back in Europe through the works of Voltaire. Attacking the Catholic church, Voltaire used information provided by missionaries in China to attack the church. After all, if, as the missionaries claimed, China was so moral, then it was attributable to Confucius, not Christ, so it was possible for a country to succeed without Christianity. Voltaire wrote poems in honor of the Qianlong Emperor.
• It is always funny to see a whole book I read summed up in brief in another book. This was written about extensively in Stillwell by Barbara Tuchman: "So while Stilwell made some progress in developing training programs for Chiang's armies, most of China's resources went into building up a line of airfields along the eastern edges of the territory controlled by the Chongqing regime, between Hengyang in southern Hunan province, and Liuzhou in Guangxi."

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

    This was another great shipwreck book, my third of the year. It tells the true story that would go on to inspire Moby Dick but is less about the actual whale attack and more about the story of survival afterwards. It is enhanced by the narrative of Thomas Nickerson, a teenage cabin boy who wrote his version of events as an old man, which was lost until 1984.

    Clearly Philbrick is in love with Nantucket, and wrote either in the beginning of the book or somewhere else that he moved there. Nantucket was a very interesting whaling boom town, initially from the whales near its shores, and by the 19th century, with whalers sailing across the entire world. Whalers' journeys were marathons of several years. This meant that the women of Nantucket adapted to a three-years away, three-months-at-home rhythm. Apparently, many of them became addicted to opium. And life was hard and maternal mortality high, so many husbands returned home to find their wives dead and perhaps another child added to their plate. It is appropriate that the whalers had similar life patterns to the whales they hunted: young sperm whales leave the family unit at about six years old to make their way to colder waters, where they live alone or with other males until returning in their late twenties to warmer waters. In both whales and whalers, men spent their lives away from their families.

    Whalers knew whales incredibly well. They could tell you that before diving, a whale blew once for every minute that it would spend underwater, and that it would generally continue in the same direction and speed underwater as it had before the dive. The whale they hunted was the sperm whale, which had blubber, but more importantly, oil and spermaceti, named because it looks like sperm. Whalers would send out smaller, twenty-five-foot whaleboats from their large ship, and the men would row out to a sperm whale and stick it with a harpoon and hold on for a "Nantucket sleigh ride" that could last for several miles at fifteen knots, making it the fastest journey a human could take at sea at the time. The critical move was to use a lance to pierce through the whale's vital organs with a lance that would cause it to choke on its own blood, but often it took as many as fifteen stabbings to kill a whale. The killing blow could transform the whale's spout into a "fifteen- to twenty-foot geyser of gore." The whale was stripped of blubber and then decapitated. The sperm whale's head, which accounts for almost a third of its length, contains 500 gallons of spermaceti. And its stomach contains ambergris, an opaque, grey substance that is used to make perfume and is worth more than its weight in gold.

    While hunting several whales in a pod, the ship was suddenly bumped by a large male sperm whale. That one may have been an accident, but then the next hit was surely intentional, and managed to sink the already low-quality ship. The ship sank within hours, and then the survivors decided to head in three whaleboats for South America, ironically to avoid cannibals, which they would become after long weeks at sea. They would endure horrible hunger and thirst. They would reach a phase in which saliva becomes thick and bad-tasting and the tongue clings to teeth and the roof of the mouth. There is severe pain in the head and neck and many people begin to hallucinate. And then the tongue hardens, speech becomes impossible, and then the tongue swells, squeezing past the jaws. Eyelids crack and eyeballs weep tears of blood. Swelling in the throat makes breathing difficult, and the person dying of thirst enters a sort of living death, withering and blackening.

    Eventually, a few of the whalers will survive and make it to South America, where they are discovered just off the coast. What is craziest is that they all went back to whaling after. The captain, George Pollard, actually got shipwrecked again in another storm and then never served as captain again. The book is a great story and worth a read.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Galapagos tortoises can live for more than a year without any food or water.
• Whalemen were able to create post offices on the uninhabited islands that they frequented and traded mail when they passed other whaleships.
• The South Pacific Gyre is a "Desolate Region" where currents conspire to allow for very little life in that part of the ocean.